After Racial Profiling of a Student, Smith College Hires an Investigator to Review What Happened

Smith College has hired an outside investigator to look into a recent incident in which a college employee called the police on a black student eating lunch on campus, Kathleen McCartney, the college’s president, said in a letter to the community Thursday.

The college hired the Sanghavi Law Office to conduct the investigation, and released a redacted transcript of the original call to police on Friday. The employee who placed the call has been put on leave, the institution said.

The incident is similar to one that occured at Yale in May, in which a white student called the police on a black graduate student napping in a dorm common room.

On Tuesday, Oumou Kanoute, a rising sophomore at Smith, was approached by a campus police officer while eating in a campus common room.

Kanoute is working as a teaching assistant and residential adviser on campus this summer. After seeing her relaxing on a couch in the common room, a college employee had called police to report someone who seemed “out of place,” according to the transcript.

“I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t making any noise or bothering anyone,” Kanoute wrote in a Facebook post late Tuesday. “All I did was be black. It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a women of color.” Kanoute also shared videos of her interaction with the police officer who approached her.

Public outrage was swift and furious. At the time of this article’s publication, Kanoute’s post had been shared 2,700 times and had collected more than 1,000 comments.

‘This Painful Incident’

In the letter to Smith students, staff, and faculty, McCartney apologized to Kanoute, whom she did not name, and outlined steps the college was taking in anti-bias efforts.

“This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their daily lives,” the letter said.

This fall every Smith faculty and staff member will attend anti-bias training, McCartney said in the letter, and the college’s Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity will hold workshops for faculty and staff on identity and inclusion. Smith has also set up a webpage with statements about the incident and an FAQ.

This isn’t the first time that Smith has dealt with charges of racism. In 2016, two letters leaked to students sparked protests and accusations of racism from the campus community. The letters, one written by adjunct faculty in the college’s School for Social Work and another written by a professor in the school, accused college administrators of admitting students not equipped to perform academically.

“Why do you, as administrators, continue to offer differential outcomes to students of color, in spite of overwhelming data that demonstrates that many of our students, including white-identified students, cannot offer clients a social work intervention that is based upon competence, skills and ethics,” Dennis Miehls, who was a professor and department chair in the school, wrote in one of the letters.

Kanoute, the student approached by police, expressed intense frustration that whoever called the police didn’t simply approach her.

“If whoever saw me had a concern about me being there, they could have asked me,” Kanoute said in an interview excerpted on Twitter. “I speak four languages. I’m sure I could speak one of the languages they spoke.”

Follow Claire Hansen on Twitter at @clairechansen, or email her at claire.hansen@chronicle.com.