After Local Cops Mistakenly Detain 10 Black Students, Washington U. Wonders What’s Next

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The news has made the rounds widely this week: Ten black students at Washington University in St. Louis were stopped by the police and wrongly accused of leaving a nearby IHOP restaurant without paying before heading back to the campus.

The incoming freshmen were in town as part of a summer program for new students who plan to study science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.

Teddy Washington, one of the students who was stopped, told a local TV station that the group was heading back to the university when two police officers suddenly blocked them from the front and back with their cars. Some of the students showed officers receipts as proof that they’d paid for their meals. “We did everything we were supposed to,” he said.

The students were then forced to walk back to the restaurant, escorted by several squad cars. The restaurant’s manager said the young men didn’t fit their description of the suspects, and the students were released.

There’s another layer to the incident, too: Washington University was singled out four years ago as one of the least economically diverse colleges in the country. Since then, university leaders — led by Holden Thorp, the provost — have revamped the admissions process and spent millions to recruit and retain more students from underrepresented backgrounds. Students like the ones who were stopped this month.

The incident occurred off campus and involved the local police department in Clayton, Mo., adjacent to St. Louis, where Washington University is located. University officials swiftly condemned what happened; Thorp wrote on Twitter that he was “embarrassed to be a resident of Clayton.” Administrators have also met with the students involved.

What else can the university do? The Chronicle asked a Washington University administrator and several experts to weigh in.

1. Work with local police departments to eliminate bias.

Kevin R. Murphy, the Clayton police chief, apologized on Monday for what had happened. But he also stressed that his officers hadn’t broken any department policy. “The additional cost of this kind of criminal activity is that it leaves the community open to collateral damage such as this incident,” the police department said in a statement.

The university’s Association of Black Students wasn’t satisfied. “Murphy characterizes this misconduct as a mere inconvenience,” the association wrote in a statement. “This indicates that there is likely a significant failure on his part to understand the responsibility of law enforcement to ensure that civilians are treated with dignity and respect.”

The group is calling for local police officers to undergo training aimed at curbing racial profiling and illegal stops, as well as another apology from the department and the release of any findings from its internal review of how the officers had handled the incident.

Washington University supports the students’ efforts, said Lori S. White, vice chancellor for students. Washington University will also host workshops on interacting with local law enforcement, in response to a request from students, White said.

“We never want students to be fearful about calling the police,” she said.

Beyond that, Washington University “needs to figure out a way to inject itself into the local fight against police harassment and brutality and profiling in the greater St. Louis area,” said Ibram X. Kendi, an American University professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center.

“As a university,” Kendi said, “you have to recognize that the only way to make sure black students are treated fairly is if black people in the surrounding areas are treated fairly.”

2. Carefully consider how students’ off-campus experiences might be affecting their life on campus.

“One important thing that campuses need to recognize is that the racial climate is shaped both by what happens on and off campus in the surrounding community,” wrote Kimberly A. Griffin, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Maryland at College Park, in an email. “Students certainly spend time beyond the campus gates, and their experiences in college-adjacent communities can have a significant impact on their sense of belonging.”

Beverly Daniel Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College, pointed out that the incident took place after midnight. “Is there someone on the campus the students could have called at that hour to assist them, if they had needed that?” she wrote in an email. Perhaps a dean of students, or a campus security officer?

Washington University can’t control the actions of the local police department. But the university can reach out to the small businesses that are near the campus in advance of a new academic year, said Bryan K. Hotchkins, an assistant professor of higher education at Texas Tech University.

Here’s how such a message could be framed, he said: “Because our university is one that we feel extends throughout the city, we want to introduce our students to you. They’re going to spend the next four years spending money at your business. We want you to know who they are and how important they are.”

Institutional leaders can also make clear to local businesses that racist behavior is unacceptable and that the university community won’t support establishments where such discrimination occurs, Kendi said.

And colleges can measure how off-campus interactions affect students’ sense of safety, said Shaun R. Harper, a professor of education and business at the University of Southern California and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center.

Harper said his center’s new campus-climate assessment, which will soon be available to institutions, asks questions that “help administrators understand how particular groups of students are experiencing the city or town in which the college or university is located.”

3. Keep tabs on these particular students as they progress through their first year.

“How do you measure the psychological scarring of the students who had that experience?” Hotchkins asked. Are they going to hesitate to move around the campus and the surrounding area from now on? How might that stress affect their academics?

“That’s their first introduction to college life,” he said.

Most students who drop out do so during their first year on a campus, and a disproportionate number of them are students of color, Harper said. There are some often-cited reasons for that, he said: Students can’t afford to stay in school. They weren’t prepared for the academic rigor of college.

But what about the role that racism, on or off campus, plays? “It really does contaminate your college experience,” he said. So Washington University officials should keep an eye on these 10 students as they progress through their freshman year.

White said administrators had told the students that the university would “help facilitate conversations, if they wished, with the City of Clayton so the students could tell the city administrators how they felt about what occurred.”

White added that she is “just heartbroken” about what happened, particularly given the diversity numbers projected for this fall’s incoming class. About 12 percent of freshmen are black, twice as many as in 2014 — and 14 percent are eligible for Pell Grants, up from 6 percent.

“The students that were impacted by this incident are so excited to be at Wash U.,” she said. “I would hate for that experience to dampen their enthusiasm and the enthusiasm of prospective students.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.