UCWAZ Statement on 9/22 Homicide at UA

Below is our official statement on the 9/22 homicide at the University of Arizona. 

Approved by the UCWAZ Executive Committee and released publicly on Thursday, September 26th, 2024.

We at the United Campus Workers of Arizona (CWA Local 7065) mourn the loss within our community after a local community college student was shot and killed by an assailant on our campus. This death marks the second homicide by gun our campus has experienced in the past two years. It also comes in the aftermath of the murder of Professor Tom Meixner on our campus. We express our sincere condolences to Minhaj Jamshidi, their family, friends, and loved ones. Our community of workers and students is growing increasingly anxious about our safety on the University of Arizona campus, as well as concerned for all those students and community members who were traumatized by this latest killing. A university campus is a place where we should be learning, teaching, and working without fear that we might be targeted at any moment by gun violence.

While university leadership is not directly responsible for this act of violence, we at UCWAZ urge our administration to take further steps to better support community members. We appreciate that those who witnessed the murder were offered free counseling from the University of Arizona, but are concerned that notification and support for the campus community in the wake of the tragedy was slow and insufficient. Students in the dorms adjacent to the incident received only the blanket UA Alert text messages and, as a result, were afraid to leave their buildings to attend classes the next morning. Clear communication in the hours following such an incident is essential to the physical and emotional well-being of all involved and affected. 

Even as of 3 p.m. the following day, the wider campus community had received no statement or explanation from the UA administration beyond a link to a police report. We urge university administration to respond in appropriate time with an accompanying substantive acknowledgment of the deep harm that is inflicted when someone is shot on our campus. We believe it is vital to provide comprehensive post-traumatic services and to ensure that student support remains robust. To be most effective in appropriately addressing gun violence on campus, we urge UA administration to implement a plan of action in the coming months. 

This plan of action should include:

• The reinstatement and enhanced funding for community resources and spaces, including, but not limited to: improving mental health care access, restoring our student cultural centers, and reopening the campus pharmacy –; all critical resources that have been eroded in recent years, but are essential to a healthy and thriving campus community capable of recovering from these painful events.
• A coherent and efficient centralized communication method. While UA alerts were issued, students did not receive warnings until 30 minutes after the event took place, far too much time for it to be considered effective. 
• A public statement from administration speaking out about the need for legislation that protects our campus community from this kind of violence. Only legislative action can reduce the widespread availability of guns used in incidents such as this. 

We at UCWAZ believe we can recover from this latest tragedy, and that meaningful and timely action from university administration is essential to the recovery process. They must take concrete, tangible steps to make our campus safer and our community healthier. 

In solidarity,

The United Campus Workers of Arizona, CWA Local 7065

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