Campus Dispatch Vol 3

Ann Cudd gave an eye-roll inducing speech at PSU’s 2024 commencements. Below is a transcript of Ann Cudd’s speech, along with some helpful edits that really get at the spirit in which she lead the PSU this past year.

Good afternoon PSU family and welcome to our 2024 commencement celebration. I could not be more thrilled, more proud, or more excited to be standing here today with all of you at my first commencement as Portland State University President. It is my great honor job to celebrate the accomplishments of the class of 2024. Collectively and individual you have achieved and surpassed many significant milestones during your academic journey and today you get to be here among colleagues, among family, among your PSU community to celebrate. There are many challenges is an ongoing genocide in our world today. You the class of 2024 know that better than perhaps anyone else. The pandemic put its imprint on your college experience. I know there were many difficulties to navigate along the way, a genocide, the complicity of the U.S. government and PSU, as well as having your school president invite violence on you by inviting the police to campus. and I hope that it makes today’s achievement even sweeter.

You have impressed us aggravated me with all your resilience and tenacity, and I know that you will make PSU and your families proud remember the fight you put up. Not just today but in the years to come. Today’s ceremony is an ending but it’s also a beginning of my failed first year as president. Each of you is perched at the edge of your next adventure arrest. I hope that you can look deep within yourself and find out how you can be “all in” as long as you’re not on PSU property or outside any of our “free speech” zones. Whatever is next with you bring your full self with you fall in line. When faced with a fork in the road, choose love the easy way out like calling the police as I did. Whatever that looks like for you. They say that if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life but let’s be real— usually when you do what you love you work harder than you’ve ever thought possible capitalism is a scam I’ve spend my career upholding, love has nothing to do with it.

I love  the job I have as Portland State University president. Frankly, it’s my dream job to be leading a cut departments and programs at a university committed to serving its students and its communities in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. This is the pinnacle of my career but I don’t think it would be news to anyone when I tell you that my first year has been full of challenges but even in the most discordant hours I was reminded of what makes PSU so special, it’s you that I work for PSU’s board, not the students and I make over half a million dollars (plus a housing stipend). Even though I’ve told them nothing they do will change things in the Middle East, PSU’s brilliant students care deeply about the world around them and continue to stand up against a genocide.

You are activists stupid to believe you can change the world (or at least we need you to believe that). You are seeking out inequities and calling for justice. You are looking for new challenges to tackle. You are looking for ways to make our world better not just for ourselves, or yourselves, but for your neighbors, for your families, and for communities anywhere who needed comfort for poor, working class, racialized others and I cannot support that. Knowing that fills me with hope dread. You fill me with hope fear that I’ll lose my power, money, and lifestyle and as you leave your PSU experience behind, I also urge you to take with you the skills that you have learned here and use them to stay involved with your communities and the world around you I am heartened by the fact that many of you will continue going to court over the summer, be denied diplomas because of students conduct violations, and still be reeling from experiences of violences and sexual assault at the hands of the police. I also hope you will stay connected to your alma matter. PSU alumni are fierce problem solvers and change makers and once you cross this stage you will count yourselves among them. Congratulations on this significant achievement and thank you for making PSU proud. Good bye and good riddance.

Portland State University Professional Schools Commencement Ceremony — 2024

Watch: Professional School’s students boo and walk out on Ann Cudd (starts at 36:00min)

Read Senna Dillsi’s (Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling) June 16th speech at the Hooding Ceremony for the Counselors Ed Program speak about Palestine, PSU’s role, and the need to advocate for justice beyond client based work.

I wanted to begin my speech today with a few acknowledgements. First, Salam-alaikum, which is the muslim greeting that translates to “may peace be upon you”. Second, Eid Mubarak, or Happy Eid, as today is a holiday for myself and my fellow muslims. Third, happy father’s day. It is an honor to be here with you all today, as we begin a new chapter of our lives.

I am so happy to see you all here. We did it; somehow we got through three years of grad school and have made it to the finish line. Remember zoom university, or seeing a client for the first time? Stubbornly, I will admit - the faculty and every student in this program that came before us, were correct: who we were going into this program and who we are today are completely different people. We have been through the ringer - holding a container for our clients while simultaneously juggling essays, discussion posts, countless readings, portfolios and licensing exams; more often than not maybe we found ourselves without someone to hold a container for us. 

I have learned so much from you, my classmates. Each of us came to this program with a variety of lived experiences that brought us to this field. We built something amongst ourselves these last three years that became vital to our wellness – we built a community. Through sending memes, way too many group chats, watching each other’s counseling sessions - How can three years feel so long and simultaneously so short? It was just yesterday we were in Theories 1 with Dr J on zoom, more than half of us with our cameras off. I may or may not have been cooking dinner during that time - and I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one multitasking during that first year. Second year was the first time we all had class in person, since the pandemic. Having class in person allowed new friendships to flourish, although strangely, on the other side, I feel nostalgic of that time online. Truly we have been part of a unique graduate school experience. Thank you for sharing it with me, I am so immensely grateful to know you all.

As counselors, we bear witness to the human experience on a uniquely intimate level. We meet our clients in some of the most difficult times of their lives, and we hold so much care and empathy for their struggles, and their resilience to overcome them. I urge you this: allow your power of empathy to extend beyond just the work with clients one-on-one. Let your empathy be a source for change. There is power in caring for one another, in advocating for justice. Our work commands this of us; let us command it of the world. 

While we are graduating today, this celebration would be inappropriate without recognizing that there is no graduation for the Class of 2024 in Gaza. It would be ignorant for me to speak here on my university campus, without acknowledging that all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed, in partnership with this university’s complicity. 

Upon this graduation, let us acknowledge that this university funnels students into jobs working at weapons corporations, building the bombs, drones and missiles used to commit genocide in Gaza. These corporations supply the destruction of homes, hospitals, universities and life in Gaza, across Palestine, as well as Sudan, Yemen, Syria and more. The last several months we have seen the administration of this university silence student protestors, and bring militarized police onto campus to brutalize students, staff, and faculty. Portland State lists the promotion of access, inclusion, and equity as values that they hold. Is it considered accessible, inclusive, and equitable when our university president boasts a salary of $600,000 a year yet there are students who are houseless & food insecure, students who take on thousands in debt to earn an education?

Let us acknowledge why we as counselors and graduates of this university should care. We cannot expect our clients to change, if we willfully choose to remain apathetic in a broken system. Allow me to explain - the pain our clients carry does not exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of the corruption in this world, it is the result of existing in a system that values profits over people. Therefore - what we ask of our clients we must also ask of ourselves: to make change. To fight for a better world. One where a “good job” isn't contingent on the destruction of human life. If we are not operating from this lens, I fear our work is void of value. I hope we all work ourselves out of a job, that we see a world where humanity is of the utmost importance - keeping our humanity is quite literally what keeps us human; sacrifice that and we lose ourselves.

This degree is no longer my own. This degree is for every single one of us who made countless sacrifices to get to this point. Any of us who felt confused & overwhelmed by papers and assignments, and being graded on our feelings and our trauma. This is for every graduate assistant who was exploited in their job, every student here who faced food insecurity and poverty. This degree is for all of us, the graduates of the Counselor Education class of 2024. It is a symbol for our hard work, personal sacrifice, our dedication and commitment to care for human beings, and to care for our community. This degree is also for every Palestinian student who has been killed since the beginning of the genocide, may we see a permanent ceasefire and a liberated Palestine soon.

As we transition into this new stage of life, no longer students, but soon to be licensed professional counselor associates, or school counselors - I have a request for all of you. Remember the power you have as counselors - the ability to grow a capacity for more life - in ourselves, in our clients, and in our communities. Be discerning in how you foster community, ask for help when you need it, and when you don’t - we still have so much to learn from one another. There is a whole world beyond this place that needs us - and we can’t do this work alone. Congratulations to us, may our futures be full of resilience, solidarity, community and joy. Thank you. 

PSU students walk out of commencement in solidarity with Palestine, the 12 universities destroyed, 98 faculty killed, and countless students killed and injured in the genocide in Gaza! Students chanted “disclose, divest, cut all ties — Stop supporting genocide” as they walked out during Ann Cudd’s remarks.

As of June 17th, PSU students, including those who walked at the 2024 commencement, have been receiving official letters of Student Conduct Violations. Those found guilty of violating the Student Code of Conduct could face transcript holds, exclusion from University property, and expulsion.

Please sign on to the open letter below insisting to the Dean of Student Life and University Leadership that “students who participated in civil disobedience and protest on campus maintain their right to an education at PSU.” No one should be denied an education.

We are educators, researchers, student resource providers, staff, administrators, students and community members at Portland State University. We insist that students who participated in civil disobedience and protest on campus maintain their right to an education at PSU.  We join educators and scholars at NYU, University of Georgia, University of Michigan, and UCLA to denounce any practice that denies this right to education, including expulsion, suspension, and negative transcript notations. 

Disciplinary action that excludes students from education is the wrong approach. Revoking the right to learn is not your only option. PSU’s Student Code of Conduct also includes approaches based in repair, such as meditation, education, and community service.  We urge you to engage in a restorative justice approach and reject punitive discipline that prevents students from continuing their scholarship. A recent report authored by the Director of PSU’s Center for Student Success, Linda Jessell, says “[t]he national interest in the Restorative Justice model results from the growing awareness that existing disciplinary strategies for student misconduct, which have included more punitive penalties such as suspensions, expulsions, and juvenile justice referrals, have not proven effective.” 

Continue to open letter

CFP: Dispatches from the Encampments and Beyond: Teaching and Student Protests for Palestine.

Radical Teacher seeks submissions about teaching in and about the protest encampments and other forms of student activism that have emerged during the spring of 2024 across the U.S. and the world. Please send submissions by July 15, 2024