The rioting, looting, arson, and vandalism that happened here this week might have horrified people across the country, watching it unfold on 24-hour news channels and Facebook feeds. But no one in this city should have been surprised. Much of Baltimore has long been a tinderbox of crushing poverty, pervasive violence, racism, and stark socioeconomic divides. It was only a matter of time.
For the dozen or so colleges that occupy Baltimore, the city has been a laboratory, a challenge, a stigma. The unrest of the past few days — spurred by the death of a black man who was severely injured while in police custody — is leading some of the city’s colleges and scholars to ask new questions about their role here.
Raymond A. Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Studies at Morgan State University, took part in a march downtown on Saturday, one that turned violent before the end of the night.
Despite the violence, he said, he was proud to see many of his students engaged. “Black scholars have to exist not only in the so-called ivory tower, but they’ve got to exist in the ebony tower as well and connect themselves to the community in which they teach.”
The riots broke out after days of protests over the death of Freddie Gray, who died a week after he was arrested in West Baltimore, on April 12. Rallies and marches had proceeded peacefully until Saturday, when protesters clashed with police officers and with fans heading to a Baltimore Orioles baseball game. Mr. Winbush, who said he has had his own unsettling encounters with the Baltimore police, was there: White bystanders, drinking at the bars around Oriole Park at Camden Yards, called the protesters “niggers,” Mr. Winbush said, and while he urged calm among the marchers, “a lot of these young guys, they didn’t like that. And that started to trigger it.”
Although Sunday was quiet, by Monday afternoon police cars and businesses were damaged, looted, and burned. Much of the chaos happened along North Avenue, just two miles from Camden Yards, in a struggling part of the city that surrounds Coppin State University.
Going Into Communities
Kiara Davis, a senior majoring in dance at Coppin State, had joined a group of students Tuesday morning to walk along North Avenue, picking up trash and debris left by the protesters and rioters. Faculty members and students need to be more closely engaged with their neighbors, she said.
“We are that beam of light on North Avenue,” she said. “We need to go into the community and have conversations with the people.” That means talking not just with anointed community leaders, she said, but with regular folks, like the students at nearby Frederick Douglass High School, who had been blamed for some of the mayhem.
“There is a disconnect with the kids there,” she said. “We need to go in and try to get through to them and show them that this isn’t the way.”
Long before rioters smashed windows and torched buildings in West Baltimore, the devastation of the city was plain to see, said James Thomas, an adjunct professor of political science at Coppin State. He grew up just five blocks from the university, before the neighborhood was plagued with crime and blight.
Mr. Thomas, sitting in a lounge on the top floor of the university’s shining new health building, watching footage of the city’s protests on television, pondered what role his institution should have in the neighborhood now.
“This is an opportunity for the school to become engaged,” he said.
The Johns Hopkins University has been working in urban studies and urban renewal for years, he pointed out, and students at the Maryland Institute College of Art have engaged the city through art and quirky businesses, like a radical-left restaurant-bookstore on North Avenue.
Meanwhile, Coppin State has been too isolated from the community around it, he said. The university should be sending more students into the surrounding neighborhood to study lead poisoning, poor nutrition, crime, and housing.
“This is a laboratory for understanding the urban condition,” he said.
‘How Much More Can We Do?’
There is a question of how much a university really can do to solve such systemic problems. Kenneth O. Morgan, an assistant professor of urban studies at Coppin State, acknowledged that every academic department could have a role in tackling the issues. But the big push has to come from the city, state, and federal governments, he said.
“It’s not one of those things the universities can fix,” he said.
Mortimer H. Neufville, president of Coppin State, said that the university fulfills an educational mission in the community and provides other support and services to its neighbors, including hosting a charter high school on its campus. Mr. Neufville added that he had made a proposal to the City of Baltimore to hold part of its police-academy training on the campus. The arrangement, which is still under consideration by the city, would help foster a positive relationship early on between police officers and the citizens they will serve, he said.
But he also noted that Coppin State has limited resources. “How much more can we do?” he said.
Keeping Students Safe
It’s unclear what kinds of repercussions the riots will have for Baltimore colleges. Samuel Hoi, president of the Maryland Institute College of Art, has sent memorandums and emails to students already on its campus, and to their parents at home, to tell them that the college, known as MICA, is doing all it can to keep them safe.
MICA — which sits on North Avenue, less than a mile from a CVS Pharmacy that burned during the riots — is offering counseling to students disturbed by the unrest, and it will convene a forum to talk about the college’s response to the riots. The forum will focus in part on how students and faculty members might harness artistic energy to contribute to Baltimore’s renewal.
For any Baltimore college, Mr. Hoi added, it’s a particularly bad time for bad publicity: Many high-school seniors are making decisions now about where they’ll go to college in the fall. He and his senior staff members are coming up with ways to tell prospective students and their parents about the vitality of Charm City, despite what they might have seen on the news.
“We are trying our best to explain that the city is resourceful and resilient,” he said. “I’m telling parents that part of the reason I came to Baltimore is because it’s a fertile laboratory of learning and innovation, precisely because of this mixture of opportunities, vibrancy, and urban challenges.”
Scott Carlson is a senior writer who covers the cost and value of college. Email him at scott.carlson@chronicle.com.
Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and assorted other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.
