560 13LL-Michael Brown, Fergurson,Mo. Winston-salem, nc, Wake Forest University, CRB library

9/9/15




On campus, complaints relating to sexual assault, racial profiling and mental health came to a head last week in a confluence of events resulting in the protests

The college is also in the process of investigating its Safety and Security operation. In recent years, there have been a series of allegations that campus Safety has engaged in routine racial profiling. Margolis Healy, a Burlington, Vermont-based consulting firm, was tasked with evaluating Vassar’s Safety and Security and offering recommendations for improvement.

For example, a number of Vassar community members have said that Security officers stop individuals and ask to see their IDs with seemingly limited cause. Such practices have led some community members to believe that the Security officers are engaging in racial profiling, particularly if they are stopping individuals of color.
Kiese Laymon, a Vassar professor, published an opinion piece in Gawker on November 29, detailing his experiences of racial profiling as a Black professor on the Vassar campus. He wrote that he was routinely asked to show his campus ID to security, even in his own office.
According to The Miscellany, the Margolis Healy report did not attribute Security officers stopping community members to racial profiling, but rather to unclear internal procedural directives. Nevertheless, the report did find that some in the Vassar community believe that Security officers engage in routine racial profiling ― suggesting that the Vassar administration must work to correct this problem of perception.

The report, which is still in its preliminary stages, is not yet publicly available, according to Roellke. A Margolis Healy representative said that the company could not comment on client affairs.

There have been concerns raised over the years that there may be race-based kinds of interactions on campus that are problematic,” Roellke told Diverse. “We hadn’t had a study done on Safety and Security for more than a decade and that, coupled with the retirement of the director of Safety and Security, along with five other officers during a recent very early retirement incentive, suggested that this was a really great time to take a whole look at our Safety and Security operation.”

Dr. Leonard Nevarez, a professor of sociology at Vassar College, wrote an op-ed in the Miscellany last week that he has “never felt so demoralized at this institution,” as in the past several weeks.

 

Dr. Leonard Nevarez, a professor of sociology at Vassar College, wrote an op-ed in the Miscellany last week that he has “never felt so demoralized at this institution,” as in the past several weeks.

“It’s possible the administration thinks this is just the general noise of being an administrator, so I just wanted to make clear that, no, that this is a particularly serious moment, that they need to heed the students’ issues,” Nevarez told Diverse ― alluding not just to the perception of racial profiling, but to problems with sexual assault and inadequate mental health resources.

In response to the protests, the president’s office issued an email on Dec. 10, listing the initiatives the college plans to implement to address student and faculty concerns. The college plans to create a senior officer position to oversee institutional diversity and inclusion, and two current faculty members have been named as the new advisors to senior administration on issues of race and inclusion — among other measures.

“A lot of the things that they’re suggesting now are good things, but they’re things that a number of us proposed years ago,” Laymon said, adding that two years ago a committee he was involved with had submitted a revised action plan for Safety and Security.

Roellke said that the college will continue to make changes. “We’re still smack in the middle of the process of studying ourselves,” he said.

Catherine Morris can be reached at cmorris@diversseducation.com

 

Campus Pol-ce Departments Struggle with Issues of Race

Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 28, 2014

As reported in The Chronicle of Winston-Salem, N.C., students at Wake Forest University held a town-hall meeting last month to discuss black students’ perceptions that the campus police ask them for their identification far more than they ask other students, and give disproportionate scrutiny to parties held by black fraternities and sororities. Regina Lawson, the university’s police chief, told the audience that her department had established a new bias-reporting system and plans to train its officers to avoid unconscious discrimination.
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/12/campus-police-departments-struggle-with-issues-of-race/

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"I’m a Scholar, Not a Criminal: The Plight of Black Students at USC"

http://makiahisms.com/2013/05/04/im-a-scholar-not-a-criminal-the-plight-of-black-students-at-usc/

note: the issues with the security guards as univerisity[s] is not just my issue;

Godwillst