Groups divide on racial profiling claims

Campus minority groups are beginning to take sides on the two-week old controversy surrounding the alleged racial profiling of a black male College student.

Since the incident, UMOJA has spoken out against the way the issue was handled on campus by the United Minorities Council, whose alumni and past leaders have offered a mixed reaction to UMC Chairwoman and College sophomore Efe Johnson's efforts.

In a letter to the University community dated March 22, the UMC, Asian Pacific Student Coalition and Lambda Alliance cited the incident, in which the student was detained by police outside of Huntsman Hall, as a backdrop for the larger problem of bias-based profiling by campus police forces.

The letter further condemned the University for "insufficiently respond[ing] to the history of Penn Police using excessive force and bias-based profiling."

But UMOJA, the umbrella organization for black student groups on campus, has taken a different stance on the issue than the UMC and has openly criticized the UMC's handling of the situation.

Five days after the first letter was sent to the University community, UMOJA issued a statement "disagreeing" with that letter.

The organization called the groups' tactics "inappropriate and hasty," and UMOJA's statement asserted that all three groups should have attempted to communicate with the Division of Public Safety before taking the issue to the Provost's Office, the Undergraduate Assembly and the University Council.

UMOJA initially reacted more publicly to the incident, sending out an e-mail on March 22 with a separate statement written on behalf of the five minority coalitions: the UMC, the APSC, the Lambda Alliance, the Latino coalition and UMOJA. That statement criticized the University for the "institutional discrimination" that had persisted.

UMOJA retracted this statement a few hours later.

Both Johnson and UMOJA leaders refused to comment on the situation.

Nevertheless, though many involved campus leaders are remaining tight-lipped, alumni from some of those groups are speaking out.

"I think that UMOJA should refocus," said 2006 College alumna and 2004 UMC political chairwoman Fatimah Muhammad.

"I would like the entire campus to shed any particular annoyances or pet peeves they might have about this particular situation and move on and get to the bigger issue" of racial profiling at Penn, she said. "Think big."

Muhammad added that she is confident that all the groups concerned will "rise to the occasion to work together" to focus on larger issues, noting that "students on the whole don't believe" that racial profiling occurs on campus.

Other past leaders likewise support what's been done so far.

"I think they did a great job," said College senior Shakirah Simley, 2006's UMC chairwoman.

"Their energy is on how they can enact structural change, which I think is more important, . useful and constructive. I think this incident . is just a platform to talk about what's going on in the greater context," she said.

Penn alumna and 2005 UMC vice chairwoman Rocio Polanco added that the body did a "good" job of keeping the larger issue in focus.

"I think they're being strategic and logical and intelligent about the response in terms of pointing out the issue at large instead of continuing to beat people over the head with the incident," Polanco said.

Comments (7)

It is obvious that the Division of Public Safety has failed to gain the support of minority students on campus over the years. Although many minority students claim there is bias based policing on campus there really is no proof of this. A good leader representing the Division of Public Safety would have the support of most groups and when these misunderstandings occur everyone could move forward and address the real issues. This problem will never be solved with the current leadership as it is clear that Rush and her clan are out of their league.

[quote]"I think that UMOJA should refocus," said 2006 College alumna and 2004 UMC political chairwoman Fatimah Muhammad. "I would like the entire campus to shed any particular annoyances or pet peeves they might have about this particular situation and move on and get to the bigger issue" of racial profiling at Penn, she said. "Think big."[/quote] How are people supposed to "think big" if people can't even agree about the specific cases that actually get publicized? I respect UMOJA for at least trying to avoid being dogmatic about this stuff. Practically no one else (on any side of the debate) has avoided the temptation to say something stupid and useless.

Let's just take a look at the numbers and see who are involved in the crimes in and around campus. Now, who fits the "profile"? There is nothing wrong with educated, logical "soft" profiling. If the police receive information on a person that fits the description with background information (ie a PROFILE) they investigate and/or arrest them. There have been instances where people were unjustly stopped and those incidents deserve the utmost of attention and their needs to be corrective action, however, these incidents are few and far between. Numerous organizations such as the ACLU have investigated and sued police departments across the nation for alleged illegal "profiling" and none have held up in court because the suits were BS. There needs to be more of a focus on why young African American males are commiting the crimes to begin with, why African American males have a lower life expec., lowest literacy rates, highest diabetes rates, etc. not some groundless acusations that the "Man" is keeping them down. Sorry, the victim mentality arugument went the way of the telegram with idiots like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I get the impression, from reading this article, that the writer, in her efforts to get support for "what's been done so far..." needed to speak to past leaders. Does this mean that, although present leaders disagree, past leaders unanimously support what's been done or just those Ms. Kaplan spoke to or chose to quote?

[QUOTE id="903d4af6-ce05-4677-834e-2b55cb7c40ad"]It is obvious that the Division of Public Safety has failed to gain the support of minority students on campus over the years. Although many minority students claim there is bias based policing on campus there really is no proof of this. A good leader representing the Division of Public Safety would have the support of most groups and when these misunderstandings occur everyone could move forward and address the real issues. This problem will never be solved with the current leadership as it is clear that Rush and her clan are out of their league.[/QUOTE] Rush may be less than competent, but the problem is that a lot of people are comming into Penn with the All-Cops-Are-Pigs mentality from the outset, and no matter what the police do, they're at fault. Cops stop people of all colors all the time, but to these people when it's a white man, it's a misunderstanding, but when it's a black man, it's racism. The appropriate thing for the police and the university to do is to ignore the really idiotic complaints, and unobtrusively investigate the real complaints against the police without grandstanding for the PC crowd.

That was some lazy journalism. If this writer really wanted a meaty story, they would look into the long problems that exist between UMC and the minority coalitions. They work together fine on most issues, but the UMC has always been about trying to be the lead voice at the table, and that means sacrificing the priorities of API, Latino and sometimes black voices depending on the whim of the current leadership. UMOJA in a hamhanded way is demonstrating that the tension is still their to a degree. Funny thing is, UMC people were the only ones quoted. Maybe UMOJA people didn't want to comment, maybe thats because these issues generally get drown Awareness is important, but don't sacrifice the root of the issue to score political points. Deal with these issues with the administration in person and if they don't move on, then see what you have to do address it, but don't make grand unifying statements to make a political point, deal with the issue.

I'm glad that Efe and her group handled this situation the way they did. It shows, once and for all, that they're a bunch of knee-jerk, opportunistic leftists who care more about getting their name in the DP than hearing the facts of the case. Nobody on campus will take Efe & Co. seriously ever again, which is a good thing.

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