“We condemn Stevens’ LGBTQ+ take back of Gianforte Family Hall”: an expanded boycott from Stevens alumni to withhold any future donations

Dear fellow community members of Stevens Institute of Technology,

As recent graduates of Stevens, we are filled with great anguish as Stevens Institute of Technology’s administration, Stevens’ Student Government Association (SGA), and the SGA’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Accessibility (DEIBA) committee attempt to end the 2021-instituted boycott of Gianforte Family Hall (GFH).

For the past seven years, students, staff, professors, alumni, and even Hoboken community members have mobilized against Gianforte Family Hall––to, both, stand against accepting money from a politician actively harming the people of Montana, and, more broadly, as another symptom of Stevens administration’s willingness to do whatever it takes to ascertain capital, even if it means placing moneyover their very community.

The purpose of this letter and expanded boycott is to inform you of the seven-year movement againstGianforte Family Hall, spell out how Stevens’ administration has been manipulating current students toreverse a legacy of student activism, and how you, as current community members, can create a future without Gianforte’s legacy staining our campus.

Take Stock – The six-year long movement against Stevens aligning itself with Greg Gianforte

Stevens opened Gianforte Family Hall in 2019: named after Gregory Richard Gianforte, the current governor of Montana. Greg Gianforte is infamously known for body slamming a reporter during an interview on his candidacy for Congress, and for the wide-array of damaging legislation he’s passed in Montana–including an anti-trans sports ban, ending same day voter registration, a bill allowing strangulation of wolves after doing so himself, and enacting several laws restricting abortion.

Movement against Stevens administration naming a building after Greg Gianforte began in 2017 (when it was first announced) through the campaign #IWillNotSITBy–headed by Andy Waldron, Joe Risi, andKyle Gonzalez. Their petition, which garnered 693 signatures, requested a public explanation behind the naming of what-was-then-known-as Gianforte Family Academic Center; and a condemnation of Gianforte and his affiliated, discriminatory groups.

In 2019, the movement was re-formulated as a push to rename Gianforte Family Hall, after Greg Gianforte revoked his $10 million conditional gift to Stevens that they name a building after him and his family. This push was headed by the Diversity and Inclusion Committee (DNI) of the SGA, founded by Nasir Anthony Montalvo during their time at Stevens from 2017 to 2021. DNI was founded as a part of the SGA to address several pain points marginalized community members were experiencing at Stevens, specifically in response to students of color being targeted by current Vice President of Student Affairs, Sara Klein, to feature in video marketing materials for the University. The students involved with DNI were advocating for autonomy and agency as they navigated through a campus that did not (and does not) have sufficient support systems for them and other marginalized groups.

DNI protested GFH on its opening night in 2019, and started a petition that raised over 1,700 signatures (more than double of the original petition).

Most notably, DNI instituted a boycott of the building in 2021–where 55 student organizations pledged to boycott Gianforte Family Hall, explicitly stating to not use GFH for any activities as long as the building continues to be named after Greg Gianforte.

Take In – The “LGBTQ take back” is a manipulation scheme by Stevens Student Affairs to end the Gianforte boycott

For three years, this boycott has been extremely effective. Most student organizations continue to not use GFH for student activities, and most students from Stevens’ LGBTQ and cultural student groups continue to advocate for not using GFH. However, three years passing also means many of the initial students involved with the movement have graduated. This means that new classes of students, like ones in charge of the DEIBA Committee (formerly DNI), for example, have no first-hand context around the boycott––thus being further prone to disinformation by administration.

As a result, Stevens Institute of Technology’s administration has convinced the leaders of SGA and DEIBA that the boycott “inhibit[s] the free expression of our identities as students,” and are using them as a proxy for an “[LGBTQ] take back” of the building.

Not only is this a misnomer (how can our community reclaim something that was never ours?), it is an empty gesture that Stevens’s Board of Trustees is using to get their money’s worth for the building. The take back consists of putting up rainbow paraphernalia and having pride events in GFH; what material improvement does this make for the “free expression” of queer and trans Stevens community?

In the Student Government Association’s email to campus on April 5, 2024 (through Stevens’ campus-wide emailing system that requires administrative drafting and approval, we want to expressly note), they make bogus or untruthful claims of efforts they have “accomplished” as part of this take back. One of these promises is “the development of an office focused around facilitating student belonging,” which was already created years prior to this take back known as Diversity Education (a former division of Student Affairs).

Now rebranded as the Office of Student Culture and Belonging, this office is doing the very opposite of fostering belonging by endorsing use of Gianforte Family Hall.

Again, for three years, this boycott has been extremely effective. Why else would Stevens administration, SGA and DEIBA need to implement an entire campaign to embrace Gianforte Family Hall as part of campus?

Now that the original organizers of this boycott have graduated and moved on, Stevens has waited to strategically launch this campaign to influence students into “reclaiming” a building named after someone who is actively deleting all Black, queer, trans, femme existence.

Take Action – Refuse to let Stevens Administration decide your future

We recognize, and amplify the fact, that current students have the autonomy to approach Gianforte Family Hall in the ways they see fit. From the very first actions by students in 2017 to denounce Gianforte’s donation, this movement has morphed, changed and expanded with every new class of students.

Our Stevens campus has a long, demonstrated history of students, faculty and staff organizing for the issues they’re passionate about. Take for example in 2017, when students stood up to Residential Education against the announcement to mandate meal plans, and made them rescind their action. Or in 2021, when the Muslim Student Association and Stevens Christian Fellowship successfully founded a Quiet Space after years of being shut down. Or even way back in 1957, when 57 faculty participated in an 18-day union strike (the longest strike of the union at the time) for better pay and working conditions. Across the petitions, social media posts, and related media to Gianforte Family Hall, our community has let their voice ring true. Whether it be when @followstevens posted a Progress Pride flag on Instagram in 2021, and 58 comments tore them apart with statements like “stevens put my deadname on my diploma & refused on multiple occasions to correct it;” or when former Professor Lee Vinsel lambasted Nariman Favaradin’s handling of the Gianforte announcement in 2017, saying “ the Gianforte controversy has brought to light that the Stevens campus has a pervasive culture of fear—especially a fear of reprisal and retaliation.”

Our community organizing power is demonstrated, strong, and spans across generations.

It is disingenuous, now, for advocacy organizations like DEIBA and SGA to turn their backs on you, the very community who has shown time and time again we have the power to decide our future.

An empty gesture of reclamation has always been the plan of Stevens’ administration. Will you sit by and allow Stevens administration to disinform you, the Stevens body, once again? And, dually, let DEIBA and SGA erase the very legacy of student activism they’re meant to uphold? 

We are imploring you, as students, faculty, staff and alumni, to not sit by as Liliana Delman, Sara Klein, and Stevens Institute of Technology’s Presidential Cabinet cosign Gianforte’s, racism, transphobia, creationism, violence and voter suppression–and use students to do it.

Do we believe at this time that Gianforte Family Hall will be renamed? Probably not, at least not without the full-scale disruption of campus operations.

But the purpose of this boycott and our organizing is not solely about renaming Gianforte Family Hall. GFH is another symptom of Stevens administration’s refusal to value student voices and place people over capital.

YOU have the power to change this campus for the better. A longline of community members before you have planted seeds, and this movement (and others) will only continue to grow shall you lean into your autonomy.

Do not let Stevens’ administration erase this grave mistake of theirs from history.

Do not let President Nariman Favardin continue to get away with below-bare-minimum support of our marginalized community.

Stevens doesn’t get to decide when a boycott against them ends–we do.

Signed Boycott Pledge from Stevens Institute

of Technology Community Members

We, the below-listed members of Stevens Institute of Technology, condemn Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT), SIT’s Student Government Association (SGA), and the SGA’s Diversity, Equity,

Inclusion, Belonging, and Accessibility (DEIBA) Committee and their “LGBTQ+ take-back” as a masquerade for ending the student organization boycott of Gianforte Family Hall (GFH).

In our condemnation, we expand the student organizational boycott from 2021 by pledging as individuals:

● to not give or donate to Stevens Institute of Technology during our lifetime;

● to not enter or utilize Gianforte Family Hall/Gateway Academic North building;

● to stand in opposition to the Student Government Association and its DEIBA Committee’s “LGBTQ take back”

until SIT’s administration addresses Gianforte’s values, explicitly states their incongruence with our campus values, and, ultimately, renames the building.