A Bias Response Team investigation concluded during winter break that a University Housing employee’s report of a November incident involving three black high school students was not racially biased.
During Finals Week, the team found that housing employee Silke Crombie reported the incident to the Department of Public Safety based on claims made by an unidentified University student who told her three high school students tried to sell him drugs in the Carson Hall lobby.
DPS officers stopped the three Jefferson High School students who matched that description about five minutes after the call was made. The students were among about 600 high-school seniors on campus for the annual Gateway to the Future minority recruitment event Nov. 30.
When the incident occurred, some members of the response team and Gateway organizers believed Crombie made a first-hand, racially biased account of the incident based on the students’ race and clothing.
But they didn’t know her call to DPS was based on the account given by the unidentified University student to her.
“There was no discrimination from the housing staff,” said Mark Tracy, assistant dean for diversity programs and a member of the response team.
Crombie declined to comment on the incident, but Housing Director Mike Eyster, who is also on the response team, agreed his staff did not discriminate based on the students’ race or dress, because Crombie was reporting the University student’s claims.
“Did my employees act in good faith? They did,” Eyster said.
Before the team investigated the incident, University Housing did its own investigation, trying to piece together the events before DPS stopped the students.
Eyster said three black students had a brief conversation with the University student. No one nearby, including a Carson Hall janitor, overheard the conversation, and the three students left.
The University student then reported the incident to Crombie, but he didn’t want to stay until DPS officers arrived.
“He was really clear he didn’t want to talk to DPS,” Eyster said. “He was obviously sort of shaken by this.”
Eyster added the janitor walked with the student across campus to the Hamilton Complex.
“It would be really nice if the student would come forward,” Eyster said.
The three high school students denied selling drugs. Tracy said they told him they were in the Carson Hall Lobby, which is open to the public, but it is unclear if they were the same three students seen in the lobby.
But Tracy added that the University community shouldn’t instantly dismiss the incident as a misunderstanding, and discrimination may have occurred with the description that the students were wearing “urban clothes.”
Fitzpatrick said Crombie described three black males wearing “urban clothes.” But Eyster said neither Crombie nor the student ever referred to them that way.
Tracy said that with differing stories about who was involved and who said what, it will be hard to definitively determine what happened and if DPS inappropriately responded to the call, without the help of the unidentified University student.
“Nobody has really sat down and talked to the student,” he said. “No matter what, people perceived discrimination.”
He added that the response team and the University need to be careful and respond to situations like this only after they have all the facts and understand the entire situation.