Black Lives Matter to West London College

#BlackLivesMatter to all of us at West London College.

We stand together as a whole college community against racism and oppression. We are united in our shock and sorrow at the recent injustice and tragedy in the US, resulting in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, both at the hands of police officers. We are immensely proud of the ethnic diversity of the college’s staff and student bodies, and we recognise the profound impact that these tragedies have had on our entire college community, as well as across London and the UK.  

We recognise that, as a further education college, we have the power, ability and responsibility to achieve positive change. We recognise that we have a duty to educate ourselves, as well as others, on anti-racism and racialised privilege in order to be bold about calling it out and to achieve long-overdue changes.  

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has demonstrated the need for us to have challenging and uncomfortable conversations where we are all listening to and learning from one another. We will be raising awareness and creating dialogue with our staff and students to determine what we can all do to make these long-overdue changes. We commit to being an anti-racist college. We encourage our learners to understand and respect one another, and we support this through our tutorial and enrichment processes, as well as in our expectations of behaviour. We will be looking very closely at what more we can do to extend this support, helping our students and staff to acknowledge the problems of systemic injustices and to be part of the solution.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela