Teens pulled from college tour; racism suspected
SANTA CRUZ — Lorraine Kahneratokwas Gray was nervous about her two teenage sons taking the family’s only functioning car to drive seven hours north by themselves.
Brothers Thomas Gray, 19, and Lloyd Gray, 17, were traveling from the family home in Santa Cruz in the Española Valley to Fort Collins, Colo., a city they had never visited before.
But the brothers had saved their money to visit Colorado State University. It was the dream school for Thomas, a guitarist and music theory student at Northern New Mexico College. He wanted to be closer to Denver’s music scene.
According to their mother, Thomas and Lloyd, a graduating senior at Santa Fe Indian School, were talking about possibly attending Colorado State together.
“I felt so relieved when they texted me and said, ‘We’re
here,’” said the mother of six, whose sons traveled there Monday. “I was like, good, now they’re safe.”
Less than half an hour later, she said she received a second, “frantic” call from her eldest son. Someone who was touring the campus in the same group had called the campus police to report her sons, claiming the teenagers were making them nervous because they were too quiet.
Responding officers took the two brothers aside and detained them. By the time they were released, the tour had moved on and they never caught up .
Lorraine believes the caller who reported her sons — the mother of another prospective student in the tour group — felt threatened by her sons because of their race. The family is Mohawk and moved to Santa Cruz from New York in 2009.
“What else could it have been?” she asked reporters at her home Thursday.
Thomas told her he believed all of the others on the campus tour were Anglo.
The incident has received national attention and extensive news coverage in the Denver area since Lorraine posted about the incident on Facebook earlier this week. “I’m so furious now I could explode!” she posted.
She wrote that she told her sons to leave immediately and that she felt they had been victims of racism and weren’t safe.
CSU’s administration sent out a campuswide email Wednesday about the incident. It said that its Admissions Office, the Vice President for Diversity’s Office, the Native American Cultural Center and campus police will review how to avoid or better handle similar incidents in the future.
“The incident is sad and frustrating from nearly every angle, particularly the experience of two students who were here to see if this was a good fit for them as an institution,” the message said.
Thomas Gray said at the family home Thursday that he and his brother registered and checked in for their CSU tour before joining the group. Thomas said he personally introduced himself and his brother to the tour guide.
About 10 minutes later, Thomas said, two police officers approached the brothers, patted them down, told them about the parent’s complaint and questioned them for 10 to 15 minutes. “They were kind of, like fast, like fastpaced,” he said. “Asking us to answer questions real quick.”
Lorraine questioned why the police didn’t approach the tour guide instead to see if there was a problem and wondered how the officers knew whom to take aside.
The Wednesday email from the CSU administration said the campus officers verified that the brothers were supposed to be on the tour and then released them to rejoin the group. Thomas said that after the brothers couldn’t catch up with the tour, they returned home.
According to the email issued by CSU officials, the tour guide wasn’t aware that police had been called or that they had approached the Gray brothers during the tour.
Lorraine Gray says she doesn’t buy that. She said she was “heartbroken” for her sons.
“I was so worried about them having an accident or getting lost in the city,” she said, holding back tears. “But to get the call from the place I thought they were going to be safe, I just wanted to jump into a time machine and get over there. I couldn’t do anything to help them besides to tell them to get in the car and come home.”
Lorraine said she did speak with one of the responding officers Monday after her son’s call.
“He said, ‘Maybe it will be a lesson for your kids that when they’re in a public situation to speak up.’ And I wasn’t happy about that,” she said.
She noted that she has always taught her sons to be cautious of police because of tension between officers and people of color that she said has “escalated” since she was a kid 40 years ago.
She added that she has received messages from CSU officials, as well as a Facebook message from the tour guide, apologizing for the incident. The tour guide’s long message said that she didn’t feel her sons had acted suspiciously. “I’m so sorry that I could not have stopped this from happening,” the guide wrote.
Lorraine said she co-directs the Four Bridges Traveling Permaculture Institute, which she described as an educational farm.
A CSU spokesman declined to comment beyond the statement issued Wednesday.
Thomas said he will continue working on his music, but now he is not sure how he feels about Colorado State.