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Safety at Howard comes down to both town and gown

2023-09-13 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

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In the aftermath of a melee last month between several Howard University students and a group of 50 or so young people, university officials announced the creation of a “safe path” for students to use while crossing the campus.

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“At night, this is the path we want you to walk because every 100 or 200 feet or so, you will see a safety officer, someone who is trained and who understands the language to use and someone who will be responsive,” Tashni-Ann Dubroy, Howard’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, said during a town hall meeting held in response to the fights.

Imagine that: a “safe path” to protect Black students from Black harassers at a historically Black university, like some kind of underground railroad for smart children.

“What exactly is going on?” Nia Taylor, Howard’s Student Association president, asked campus Police Chief Marcus Lyles.

“Washington, D.C., is dealing with a crime uptick, clearly,” Lyles said. He asked students to attend a safety fair and consider taking “self-defense classes so we can empower you and make sure you know our phone number and make sure you know how to contact us.”

The university’s search for answers continues, school officials say, and security issues are being addressed.

Howard U. aims to reassure students after violence on and near campus

For instance, some of the students who were attacked said that when a security person contracted by Howard was asked for help, he did nothing. That security person and a campus police lieutenant were fired. Security guards are now posted at student housing facilities 24/7, school officials said.

Also, D.C. police were on the scene in time to break up the fight and arrest one juvenile for possessing a firearm. But the fights resumed, twice, while officers were still on the scene, and no other arrests were made.

Why not?

“It’s a complex situation,” Dubroy said. “We have primarily Black students on campus. Can you imagine what it is like for the [D.C. police] because they are dealing with mostly 14-year-olds who are Black, and if they start arresting 14-year-olds who are involved in the fighting and there is no context for media or the public, it will seem that the police are overreaching.”

Maybe that is a valid concern.

Then there are the many videos of the fights that were posted on social media. In some of them, D.C. police officers, some of whom were White, just looked on while juvenile members of the fight club danced around smoking what appeared to be marijuana.

“So, it looks as if the police are not doing anything,” Dubroy said, “but because we have a relationship with the police, we understand the complexity of what is going on and how difficult it would be for them to make an arrest.”

But during the fight, three students were pummeled. A fourth was knifed in the back and severely wounded.

“We won’t tolerate our students being bullied,” Dubroy said.

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Then what should police do the next time the fight club goes on a rampage?

The university will contact troubled youth who live near the school and try to help them, Dubroy said.

“Part of our existence is to serve our local community,” she said. “We have to ask ourselves why these juveniles are doing what it is they do. Why are they involved in a fight club? Why are they not in school? Where are the parents? Are they getting the social services they need?”

While campus police work to protect the students, university social workers will be working with children in the community, she said. “We are tackling this from a dual perspective of care,” Dubroy said, determined to help “even the kids who assailed our students.”

From its founding days, Howard scholars set a high bar for community service, especially in law, medicine and the social sciences. The esteemed professor Kelly Miller introduced the study of sociology at Howard in 1895 and later established the subject as a department with a mission “to prepare students to analyze, transform, and overcome conditions of oppression, exploitation and injustice.”

The answers to many of the questions that university officials ask today are already answered — by Miller and sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, who was mentored by W.E.B. Du Bois and became chairman of Howard’s sociology department in the mid-1930s.

Both brought academic rigor to bear in crushing pseudoscientific support of “biological determinism” and “black inferiority” that proliferated in the early 20th century. One need not waste time looking for some “crime gene” in Black youth to explain their behavior. No such thing exists. What the research of Miller, Frazier and other Howard sociologists such as Robert Staples and Andrew Billingsley shows is how poverty, racism, substandard housing and poor diet can create the very behaviors that have so many people on edge — at Howard and throughout the city.

A shaken Washington copes with surging violence: ‘This is not normal’

The uprooting of people through gentrification; creating homelessness and feelings of alienation; the extreme racial wealth gap among people who live in proximity; the loss of educational and employment opportunities as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting anger — these are nothing new. It’s just that the problems have been allowed to fester, to get worse and worse.

Those fortunate enough not to have experienced such hardships sometimes lack empathy and, when young, may be prone to ridicule. University officials say they have found no proof of students being involved in instigating the trouble, adding that only those who were there know the truth.

But there is a history of conflict between “town and gown” at Howard.

The school draws plenty of students from affluent suburban Black households throughout the country. What they think they know about Black youth from low-income urban neighborhoods comes from watching TV.

Instead of modeling good character and showing a willingness to help uplift others — like a member of the “Talented Tenth,” as Du Bois would say — some may come to Howard showing off new outfits and looking down their noses at people who live in nearby public housing, what Frazier called the superficial Black bourgeoisie.

Such interactions can light a fuse that may burn throughout a school year, only to erupt when students arrive for a new semester driving their parents’ car.

Nonetheless, violence has no place on Howard’s campus. There should be no need for a relay of security officers providing safe passage across the Yard. And neither can police stand by and watch in the event of trouble, no matter how young the assailant.

“I need to remind our community of who our students are,” said Lyles, the campus police chief. “If you come and you hurt us, you’re hurting yourself because our students are the future leaders.”

On the other hand, if that is true, then there will be no need for police to remind the community; for the students, by the way they carry themselves, will be all the proof that is required.

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