Once again, we are moved to speak on the incidents of racial violence that have occurred these last few weeks. Many of us in the Ada community – particularly those among us whose communities are directly affected by police shootings – are coding and grieving, listening to lecture and grieving, eating lunch and grieving. While our academic program continues as usual, we know that there is an exhausting dissonance for our Adies in trying to stay focused at school and process these events simultaneously.
Our program director Crystal wrote it well in a another blog post, “As a school, we understand the need for students to silo their emotions so that they can concentrate, but as humans, we understand the difficulty of this task given the state of our world today.” At Ada we know that compartmentalizing isn’t always possible. So we will be coding and grieving, coding and listening, coding and advocating. As an organization, we stand with #BlackLivesMatter and against the institutional racism and bias that threaten the safety of black Americans.