Chancellor Todd Roberts sent this message to the NCSSM community on June 1, 2020:

Dear NCSSM Community,

The death this past week of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer coupled with the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor has again brought the injustice and brutality that African Americans continue to experience in our country front and center. To the members of our NCSSM community who are feeling the fear and pain brought by these senseless deaths, I grieve with you.

In specific, I want African American students and their families, and African American colleagues on the faculty and staff to know how sorry I am for your pain and suffering, which I can only imagine, and that I stand with you in affirming that your lives matter and that the insidious and systemic racial inequity woven so deeply into our nation’s culture and institutions must end. Scholars and activists have long sought to hold America to its ideal of liberty and justice for all, yet it has never been more clear that for many, this is just that, an ideal, and one that we seem to be moving farther from. I hope that we all can seek to listen and learn as many speak their truth in our community, our state, and our nation, and I exhort each of us to join in this effort to insist that we be better.

I am determined for our school and our campus community to continue to embrace our belief that diversity, equity, and inclusion enrich and strengthen lives and our community and to ensure that we are a place that is safe and secure for all, where we value one another as human beings and can together do the hard, painful, intentional work of living into a more just reality — and help inspire generational leaders who can help our country do the same.

Though we are not all together on campus right now, we want to support each other through these difficult times and will be following up later this week with information and resources to help support members of our community.