College tour a lesson for a post-9-11, divided world
The two Native American teens from the Española Valley whose tour of Colorado State University ended abruptly after campus police pulled them aside for questioning got a raw deal. Of that, there is no dispute.
But was it racism at play, an overprotective parent raising a red flag to law enforcement because the teens seemed to be acting suspiciously, or some of both?
The mother of the teens says it was outright racism, and her Facebook post about the incident has captured national media attention, sparking another debate on race in America. She is now in contact with the ACLU and contemplating further action.
But the incident also speaks to the uneasiness on school campuses right now, coming less than three months after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in which Nikolas Cruz walked into his former high school and fatally shot 17 people. In the wake of that shooting and others like it, authorities have been begging the public to report anything suspicious: If you see something, say something.
It’s also worth noting that two of our nation’s worst mass shootings occurred in Colorado: the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 in which 15 innocent victims were killed and 24 were injured, and the Aurora theater shooting in 2012 in which 12 people were killed and 70 others injured.
None of this is meant to suggest Thomas Gray, 19, or his brother Lloyd Gray, 17, posed a threat during their ill-fated visit to CSU late last month. But it provides insight into what the unidentified mother may have been thinking as she called 911.
“There are two young men that joined our tour that weren’t a part of our tour. They’re definitely not a part of the tour, and their behavior is just really odd,” the woman told authorities.
“It’s probably nothing. I’m probably being completely paranoid, with just everything that’s happened.”
So what exactly made the woman uncomfortable? According to the police report, the caller reported that the teens “wandered” into the group 45 minutes into the tour and didn’t give their names when the tour guide asked. The woman told an officer that several people in the group were uncomfortable because the two boys were laughing and keeping to themselves and didn’t seem to be interested in the tour. The mother was also concerned about their dark clothes with “weird symbolism or wording on it.” She also noted that one of the boys had his hand in his oversized sweatshirt. The woman told the dispatcher that she believed the brothers were Hispanic.
The teens’ mother told reporters that her sons were too shy to introduce themselves to the tour group, but one of her sons introduced himself and his brother to the tour guide, and the tour guide disputes that the teens were acting suspiciously.
Which brings us back to the original question. Was the caller justified in calling police? Would that mother have called 911 if the teens had exhibited the exact same behavior, but had been blond and light complected? Was it unconscious bias kicking in, the phenomenon whereby people make snap decisions based on societal stereotypes without realizing it?
This was truly an unfortunate situation. But, given today’s climate, it’s unfair to automatically condemn the woman who called police as racist.
As for CSU’s role in this matter, clearly the school could have handled it better. Video shows the officers who pulled the brothers out of the tour acted professionally and expediently, but they should have gone a step further and made sure the pair re-connected with the group after the situation was resolved.
We give the college credit for offering to reimburse the brothers for the cost of their travel to the university and offering them a VIP tour of the Fort Collins campus. School officials are considering changes for their campus tours, including giving all guests a badge or lanyard so they are clearly identifiable and establishing a new protocol for campus police to notify tour guides if officers need to pull anyone out of a tour group.
But those are the easy changes that can be instituted with the stroke of a pen.
CSU President Tony Frank — in a poignant message to his campus community — notes the real work needs to happen within each of us, and it’s going to be hard.
“It seems to me that we can all examine our conscience about the times in our own lives when we’ve crossed the street, avoided eye contact, or walked a little faster because we were concerned about the appearance of someone we didn’t know, but who was different from us,” Frank said. “That difference often, sadly, includes race. We have to be alert to this, look for it, recognize it — and stop it. We simply have got to expect and to be better; our children and our world deserve it and demand it.
“I make that declarative statement from within a glass house: a white man in a position of authority. I have, in my own journey, come to believe that privilege is like someone shining a bright light in our eyes; it makes it hard to see things that others can see unless we force our eyes to adapt.”