Nov. 4, 2024
Dear Students and Colleagues,
Tomorrow, we elect the next president of our United States. Given the nature of this election season and the differences represented in the candidates’ priorities and leadership styles, you are certainly not alone if you are wrestling with apprehension and anxiety, whatever your political orientation. Be that as it may, I am reaching out today not to comfort but to challenge.
I write to each of you as the leaders that you are, wherever it is that your passion drives your influence to be exercised – whether in your academic, artistic, athletic, political, religious, social, and/or family life. Whatever your spheres of influence are – e.g., with few or with many, with siblings or with students, with colleagues or with teammates – I ask that you join me in reflecting upon our role as leaders this week. As leaders, our bearing, our words, and our actions will matter to those who depend on us in the various ways that they do.
Across the nation, growing fears of unrest and violence in the aftermath of this election are reported. On our campus, on this land, I need you to help me to lead in the opposite direction, toward unity and healing. Toward this goal, Raudel Bañuelos, Chumash Cultural Advisor and honorary doctorate, urges us to look this week to the mountain that overlooks our campus. Sacred to the Chumash, sat’wiwa is meaningful not only as a site for celebrating the winter solstice and welcoming the return of the sun, but also as a place where the people would come together for healing, setting differences aside and enacting the values of honor, dignity, and respect. As Raudel says, “We need to foster this good medicine today. The more we listen to one another and share empathy and curiosity about our differences, the more we see the commonalities that are in all of us. That sacred mountain that overlooks us, that is what it is all about.”
I deeply appreciate this guidance. I am learning to think about sat’wiwa as a balance of sorts – as a powerful presence that can serve as a counterweight to apprehension and anxiety, grounding me in my values, and reminding me to cultivate curiosity as a response to conflict. I hope these thoughts are useful to each of you, too, as you help the people in your care to ground themselves in the values they hold dear, this week and always.
Sincerely,
Richard Yao, Ph.D.
President