Image credit: Smith College, President Kathleen McCartney.
When Jodi Shaw, a Smith College alum and current administrative staff member at Smith, launched a new video channel just about a week ago discussing the hyper-racially charged atmosphere at Smith College, she received over 50K views and more than 1.5K permanent subscribers to her channel. Her initial video even prompted a letter from the college’s president addressing Shaw’s right to express her concerns, while not seeming overly pleased that it was being discussed.
Shaw has since released additional videos, allowing her story to unfold in short intervals which each leave us with much to ponder. She refers to an incident which occurred in the summer of 2018, which Shaw plans to discuss in more detail in subsequent videos. While the situation was investigated and deemed to be non-discriminatory, Shaw hints that this incident has had lingering effects.
I had written about the facts of the case as we knew them at the time. Here is a summary of what we knew publicly which may provide some background as we follow along with Shaw’s new video channel. I hope to be visiting with Shaw in the future and finding out more about her personally and professionally and more about her messaging goals. Meanwhile, I find her most essential message to all of us to be that we need to keep talking without fear of retaliation, retribution or social shaming. On this, I heartily agree.
AN INCIDENT AT SMITH COLLEGE
During the summer of 2018, an accusation of racial profiling occured at Smith College when an employee called campus police to report a person in the dining area.
An account of the incident is summarized in an article titled “Smith College launches outside probe after employee calls police on black student at lunch.”
The Smith College incident follows a similar trajectory to those that have occurred at other campuses across the US. Campus police are called and a student perceives the call is made only because he or she is Black. The student then takes to social media and the story goes viral.
Like other universities, the Smith College president quickly responds saying an investigation will occur to determine if the police call was racially motivated. Protests, rallies and marches are held. Often, facts are scarce and emotions run high.
However, one difference with the Smith College scandal is that a longtime employee and graduate of Smith College wrote the following letter questioning the interpretation of the events as they unfolded:
I have worked at Smith College for 33 years; I am also an alumna. However, I now find myself ashamed of Smith for the way the incident of July 31st has been handled.
The administration was so intent on their outrage that they failed to ask important questions of staff that could have cleared this issue up immediately.
The student in question was, at the time, a College employee. She was supposed to eat her meals at her assigned dining area across campus but chose instead to eat lunch in a residential dining hall that was open for feeding students/summer programs. However, the house itself was closed on that day, July 31st and had been closed since the end of the academic year in May. The student decided to leave the dining hall and lie down on a couch in the dimly lit living room. The staff member accused of unfairly confronting her was not wearing their glasses – she/he could not tell for sure whether the person on the couch was male or female, as can be seen from the use of different pronouns in the transcript.
The accused staff member is perfectly aware that there are black students at the College; however, the staff person had no reason to think that the unknown person was a Smith student. When he/she said the person ‘seems to be out of place’, she/he was referring to the fact that the house was closed; this is made apparent when he/she says, ‘I don’t see anybody in the building at this point’. In other words, there were no folks coming in early for a summer program that the unknown person could have been a member of. Both President McCartney and Amy Hunter (Interim Director of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity) seem fixated on the idea that the staff member thought this person was ‘out of place’ at Smith because she was black. This is ludicrous – the accused staff member has worked on campus and in student residences for over 30 years. Oumou Kanoute’s own actions put her ‘out of place’, not the color of her skin. This was never an incident of racial bias.
As staff, we are told that if there is a stranger in our area we are not to approach them; we should call Campus Police, which the accused staff member did. The call was made at 1:53 pm; lunch in the dining room was over at 1:30, so only staff should have been in the building at 1:53. The staff member leaves for the day at 3:00 and was responsible for securing the house. A dance program with many young children was scheduled to be housed in this dorm that weekend. She/he had no way of knowing if the person lying on the couch had come in off the street, or even if the person might have overdosed on drugs and needed help.
Amy Hunter writes that, ‘Smith College does not tolerate race- or gender-based discrimination in any form. Such behavior can contribute to a climate of fear, hostility and exclusion that has no place in our community.’ I must say that Smith staff are now living in such a climate. Staff now feel at a loss as to how to keep their areas safe – ‘See something, say something’ will no longer be practiced. At this point the lives of three dedicated staff members have been seriously disrupted, their jobs have been jeopardized, they have been labeled as racists and have had nasty comments and threats directed at them. Predictably, staff morale is at an all-time low.
A simple meeting between the student, the staff member, the responding member of Campus Police and a College representative could have solved this whole misunderstanding without the predictable social media circus and the associated histrionics. Why wasn’t such a meeting arranged immediately after the incident? Why did the College post inflammatory statements on the Smith website instead, essentially finding the staff member guilty before any investigating was done? The staff member has had a spotless work record for over three decades at Smith, handled the situation correctly and according to protocol, and has now been on leave for almost a month. How can this be considered fair and equitable?
Sincerely,
Tracey A. Putnam Culver, AC ’95
BA cum laude, PBK
In a subsequent media interview, Culver said many staff members emailed her to thank her for speaking up, although some students did remain unconvinced and felt questioning the narrative of a black student was wrong.
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As school reconvened for the fall, there was this from Smith College President about a month after the incident:
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Dear students, staff and faculty,
I write to offer updates and reflections on the July 31 call about a student to Campus Police.
A number of you have written to me to express concern for the student, especially as we begin the new semester. I want to assure you that I have reached out to her, offered a meeting and apologized on behalf of the college. Dean of the College Susan Etheredge ’77 and her team have been in contact with the student as well, to offer their support.
While the investigation of the incident is ongoing, both the student and the staff member have been invited to participate in mediation, a voluntary process that can offer a path forward for both parties. A core tenet of restorative justice is to provide people with the opportunity for willing apology, forgiveness and reconciliation.
In the context of a profoundly divided political and social climate, in this country and around the world, it is urgent that we, as members of an educational community, learn to speak with one another, not past one another, when we disagree, and to do so with the goal of true understanding. Learning how to have authentic conversations about our identities, especially race and class, is among the most challenging work many of us do—and we all need to learn how to do this work better.
I offer a case in point by sharing several excerpts from the hundreds of messages I have received from students, faculty, staff and alumnae, about the July 31 incident. As you will see, members of our community have expressed a range of perspectives. While you might disagree—even vehemently—with one or all of these viewpoints, they provide a way to understand the challenge that lies ahead in healing and improving our community.
- “It’s not really possible to articulate a ‘truth’ about which experiences are and which are not influenced by race. For the student, race was most certainly central because it speaks to every part of her life experience and how she has seen Black people treated. People of color can feel frustrated by the question—Was race involved?—because to ask the question does not recognize their life experience.”
- “While instances of racial profiling can stem from hate, I also believe such profiling often stems from a lack of education on the matter. I’m sure many Smith students, employees and faculty come from predominantly white communities, and they, perhaps, have been directly or indirectly taught to fear people who appear different from themselves.”
- “At this point the lives of three dedicated staff members have been seriously disrupted, their jobs have been jeopardized, they have been labeled as racists and have had nasty comments and threats directed at them.”
- “The student was extremely hurt by the incident. AND the caller might not have done anything wrong, given the context and the instructions from the college about how to handle suspicions. Both can be true.”
- “We all think we know the story. We only know the perspective we bring to it.”
Let us each ask ourselves how we move from different perspectives, like these, to deeper understanding and needed structural changes. I am heartened by the fact that a number of our faculty and staff members have been piloting programs to examine the ways in which race, gender, class, implicit bias and power influence our assumptions, interactions and conversations. Clearly, Smith has a great deal to do to ensure that the college is a place where each of us feels we belong. I have never worked at a college or university as committed to social justice as Smith College. However imperfect our campus community—indeed, our world—might be, this ongoing commitment gives me hope.
Each year, I send a message to the community about our sustained work on inclusion, diversity and equity. You will hear more from me soon about specific opportunities for training and education, with the goal of meaningful, systemic change. I embrace the work that lies ahead.
Sincerely,
Kathleen McCartney
President, Smith College
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Smith College appears to have demonstrated extreme transparency in its handling of the incident, right down to a transcript of the original phone call. Complete documentation and final investigative reports are available here: https://www.smith.edu/news/campus-police-call
Smith College protected the identity of the employee, even though the offended student did post a demand on Facebook to have the identity released and attached photos of two staff members as potential perpetrators. The post was later deleted and Smith College confirmed neither of the employees posted on social media were correct.
The ACLU announced it would be representing the student in seeking restorative justice even after the investigation was completed, expressing displeasure at the outcome, and reupping the claim that it was “a racially motivated suspicious person” call.
https://www.aclum.org/en/news/aclu-represents-black-student-profiled-smith-college
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For more about the reliability of the investigation of bias incidents on campuses, see
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