Listen 10 min
Share
Comment on this story Comment
Days after a shooting rattled the campus of Morgan State University and canceled homecoming festivities, nearby Bowie State University welcomed students from the Baltimore school with open arms. Bowie was preparing to host its own homecoming weekend, stacked with events from a football game to a step show.
Fast, informative and written just for locals. Get The 7 DMV newsletter in your inbox every weekday morning. ArrowRight
Then a shooting touched Bowie’s grounds too. Police said the incidents were unrelated, and it’s unclear what connection the shooters had at either school. But it has thrown both schools at the center of a campus safety dilemma that has been affecting colleges nationwide.
The back-to-back attacks that left seven people injured have also raised questions over what, if any, access the public should have to public universities. These schools not only have an obligation to the public — they are funded substantially by taxpayer dollars and often serve as gathering places for their larger communities — but also a responsibility to keep their students and employees safe.
Advertisement
Recent violence has also prompted campus safety plans that include more police and security — a measure that has been welcomed by some, but is concerning to others on campuses with large populations of Black students who may be distrustful of law enforcement.
“We’re so big on family, and we love when we have outside people and the public come,” said Nianna Perkins, Bowie State’s student body president. “Right now I think our main focus is making sure the community here feels safe.”
The community at Morgan State is still reeling after police said two shooters opened fire near a residence hall Oct. 3, injuring five people — four of whom were students. Shots erupted after the coronation of Mister & Miss Morgan State University, and sent students fleeing across campus.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said the shooting was probably the result of a dispute between two groups. The victims were not the intended targets, he said. Police released photos of people of interest in the shooting and are offering a reward of up to $9,000 for any information leading to an arrest.
Morgan State to limit open access to campus after shooting
Now, the school wants to enclose 90 percent of the campus to limit “unfettered access” to it, David K. Wilson, the school’s president, said Tuesday. Those plans include the installation of more blue security lights, technology that will allow officials to identify who on campus is carrying a weapon, and extending the Morgan Wall — a physical barrier on the edge of campus, Wilson said.
Advertisement
Before the shooting during this year’s homecoming week, the university had “taken decisive action to increase safety and security provisions as a result of two previous homecoming incidents,” Dell Jackson, director of public relations at Morgan State, said in a statement.
While plans for a perimeter structure and fencing have been a part of the campus’s design strategy for about a decade, the university is moving forward to complete the enhancements, Wilson said in a letter Thursday.
Officials also want to place more security personnel at the school’s entry and exit points and guard booths throughout campus. The university said the proposed enhancements will cost about $22 million, and the proposal will go to state leaders, Wilson said.
Wilson made the announcement at a town hall on campus, days after saying the university would be taking heightened measures to lock down the campus, which is open to outsiders. The school had already added a second security guard to each of Morgan State’s dorms and detailed an armed officer to Thurgood Marshall Hall in the wake of the shooting.
Advertisement
“We are an open campus in an urban environment and we now are making plans to close that in a way to have opportunities to dispatch security to points where individuals are entering the campus,” Wilson said at an Oct. 6 news conference. “Individuals will have to show ID and say they have a reason for entering campus.”
Morgan State Police Chief Lance Hatcher said the university had previously upgraded lighting, added security cameras and hired more police officers and security guards to protect students.
“We are an open campus,” Hatcher said at the news conference. “We are here to support not only our Morgan community but the surrounding community. We want them to have access to the campus, but it’s a thin line. We have to walk that line pretty well to support our community partners as well as our community members.”
Racist wall that separated Black school from White neighbors torn down
More strict security is welcomed, but leadership should be mindful of the potential toll, which makes the process a “double-edged sword,” said Raniya Holmes, 23, a recent graduate of Morgan State. Holmes created and got approval for a peace walk on campus Friday, a walk through the campus including both student organizations and community groups across Baltimore to come together for the “National Treasure.”
Advertisement
“If you’re going to allow people to have guests over, because again, we’re college students, we’re not kids ... that freedom shouldn’t be taken away from us, but how can we do this smartly?” Holmes said. “I also know that police presence can be really intimidating for a lot of African Americans, so I’d really suggest if we are going to do that, make sure that we have police that are coming in that are competent.”
Share this article Share
Leaders elsewhere are making similar calculations. At Howard University, where homecoming activities in D.C. start Sunday, officials are having conversations with law enforcement about what security upgrades might be necessary for the week-long event, a spokesperson said.
Bowie State officials, meanwhile, are trying to determine how much security is too much. Ahead of the Maryland university’s homecoming — where two 19-year-olds were injured in front of the Center for Business and Graduate Studies during a shooting Saturday night — the school deployed more security officers. Members of a SWAT team were on-site during the night of the homecoming concert, said Aminta H. Breaux, the school’s president.
Advertisement
Maryland State Police said the investigation is ongoing and asked for the public’s help, offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information that leads to an arrest. “Investigators stress that there is no indication that the shooters or victims were students at Bowie State,” police said in the news release Tuesday.
Even before homecoming, officials had installed more cameras, started using software to identify license plates and increased the number of security guards. Bowie State, along with several other historically Black universities, was targeted with multiple bomb threats last year.
Morgan State cancels homecoming events as campus reels after shooting
Now, officials are considering even more, such as facial recognition software or requiring visitors to register ahead of time for campus events. Leaders are also having conversations — among themselves, but also with faculty, staff and students — about whether to limit access to the public campus.
Advertisement
Breaux said she is trying to balance several responsibilities. Students and employees need to be protected, but she is also aware of the ugly history of over-surveilling and over-policing Black communities, she said. Her campus is open to the public, but recent events have raised the possibility of restricting access. None of the people involved in the on-campus shooting were students, she said.
“It’s a very challenging endeavor for any leader of a college campus,” Breaux said. “The question we’re asking ourselves is, is there a better way that we can continue to respect and honor our tradition of homecoming, but then to recognize that we need to restrict in some way who comes onto our campus.”
As campuses — both locally and across the country — continue to deal with gun violence, many are reassessing their safety plans, said Paul H. Dean, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. But he emphasized that college leaders should work collaboratively with students, employees, local officials and the larger communities that surround their campuses to strike the right balance between safety and access.
Advertisement
“You have to have that human element,” Dean said. “You have to meet with your community. Your community has to be able to trust you.”
Often, when shootings occur, someone on campus has information, Dean added. “The question is, do they feel comfortable coming forward?”
Other colleges have also struggled with gun violence this year. A gunman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fatally shot a faculty member a week after classes started in August. In February, a shooter at Michigan State University killed three students and wounded five others. That attack came mere months after an outburst of violence in a parking garage left three University of Virginia football players dead and two other students injured.
Even before the most recent shootings, the ever-present threat of violence has made top leaders rethink how they should protect their campuses. In 2018, Johns Hopkins University set in motion a years-long plan to build its own police force to respond to what officials said had been a surge of violent crime. Last year, as the force was beginning to come into existence, a Washington Post analysis found that violent crime on the school’s main campus had not increased between 2016 and 2019, the last full school year before the pandemic.
Understanding the District’s rising homicide count
More recently, officials at American University, while referencing the Morgan State shooting, said they are considering arming the school’s police force.
Advertisement
Students and faculty at George Washington University, situated near the White House and surrounded by federal agencies, clashed this spring over plans to arm some of the school’s police officers with guns. In August, university leadership said they would move forward, first arming two police department supervisors before moving on to other members of the squad.
Some students, however, say there are better options.
“For our generation, and for millions of Americans, gun violence is a daily looming factor. So to say we are safer with guns, or to say this should in any way [make us] feel more assured about our safety on campus is ridiculous,” said Arielle Geismar, GWU’s student body president. She suggested the school, instead, prioritize emergency preparedness. When a murder suspect escaped police custody in the university’s hospital in September, for example, not every student was aware.
“When that alert went out, some students didn’t even get the text to shelter in place,” she said. Although, it is possible not every student has opted into receiving such alerts. “Professors didn’t even know what to do.”
In light of recent violence, students remain hopeful. Perkins, the student government leader at Bowie State, said she still feels safe and that she doesn’t think gun violence on her campus is a recurring issue.
“I just want people to know that this shouldn’t be a negative connotation with HBCUs,” she said. “I still love my HBCU, I still love my campus. I appreciate the measures they are taking right now to get our campus to what it was.”
Justin Jouvenal and Nick Anderson contributed to this report.
Share
Comments
Loading...
View more