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Syracuse University’s Student of Color Advisory Committee is recruiting new members six months after the committee informally disbanded during #NotAgainSU’s occupation of Crouse-Hinds Hall.

The committee, composed of more than a dozen students, took shape about a month after the Department of Public Safety was criticized for its handling of an assault of three students of color in February 2019. Committee members didn’t have the authority to change DPS policy but met regularly with DPS Chief Bobby Maldonado and other SU officials.

At the height of the #NotAgainSU’s occupation of Crouse-Hinds in February, many students involved in the committee chose to stop meeting and instead support the protest, former committee members told The Daily Orange. The decision to informally disband came as the committee felt that DPS hadn’t taken concrete action to meet their recommendations.

“The overarching goal was to increase trust and have that relationship between DPS and students so that students of color also felt safe and protected,” said Kate Abogado, who served as the co-chair of the committee with Maldonado. Abogado graduated from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the School of Information Studies in May. “That goal was not being reached.”

#NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students, has protested the university’s response to a series of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic incidents on campus since November. 

Both Abogado and Ashley Hudson, a senior policy studies major who served on the committee during the 2019-2020 academic year, said DPS didn’t take enough action in response to the committee’s recommendations. Some students on the committee began to lose faith in its ability to produce change after DPS did not disclose racist graffiti found in Day Hall in November 2019 to students, Abogado said.

“The biggest problem was (when) the initial vandalism happened in Day Hall, we weren’t notified, and that was basically the whole point of the inception of the committee, so that students of color could be integrated into that response process,” Abogado said. “We were supposed to be an advisory committee and everything we did was reactionary.” 

During the occupation of Crouse-Hinds, SU placed over 30 student protesters on interim suspension for remaining in the building past closing. The university later lifted the suspensions. 

DPS also faced renewed scrutiny when, during the first three days of the protest, officers barred students from accessing the building — preventing food and other supplies from reaching the protesters inside. Officers also struggled physically with protesters during multiple interactions. Videos and photos showed DPS Deputy Chief John Sardino reaching for his holster during a struggle with students outside Crouse-Hinds. 

If DPS officers respond by reaching for their belt when confronting students, they should not be armed. This is John Sardino. #notagainsu #FreeCrouse #NotAgainSUspended

A photo posted by notagain.su

Chancellor Kent Syverud announced in February that former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch would conduct a review of DPS, citing concerns raised about officers’ interactions with students, including protesters.

Abogado and the other members felt administrators were using the advisory committee’s existence to justify the protesters’ suspensions, she said.

“The words that they were saying were that there were other avenues to go about protesting and creating change,” Abogado said. “We didn’t even feel that was a productive way to bring about change because our decisions didn’t hold weight, or our suggestions were merely suggestions.”

Increasingly frustrated with SU administrators, DPS and overall inaction, several of the committee’s student members stopped attending the meetings and went to the protests instead, Abogado and Hudson said.

While a significant portion of the committee decided to disband, other student members were still willing to serve, said Natalia Rice, one of the committee members who chose to disband.

“For those who did decide to disaffiliate, there was a general consensus that we didn’t feel that DPS was taking the committee seriously, and saw it more as a symbolic step than something to actually enact positive change,” Rice said.

While several members said the committee informally disbanded, Christine Weber, public information officer for DPS, said in an email to The Daily Orange that the committee remained active through the end of last academic year. She said the committee is currently working to finalize its annual report, but did not provide a release date. 

Weber did not respond to a follow-up email asking whether any members of the committee stopped attending meetings.

Maldonado is reaching out to committee members who served last year to gauge their interest in continuing to serve, Weber said. The department will also put out a call for nominations for those who are interested in joining the committee this academic year.

Committee members’ frustrations with DPS began before the Crouse-Hinds occupation or the racist incident at Day Hall, Hudson and Abogado said.

One of the committee’s highest priorities was investigating whether DPS disproportionately shut down parties hosted or attended by students of color on South Campus compared to predominantly white parties. But students on the committee felt DPS showed little interest in actually investigating possible instances of discrimination, Abogado said.

“(That) meeting was less of a collaborative discussion and more of a way for them to prove it wasn’t true or defend themselves,” she said.

The committee analyzed recorded interactions DPS had with students on South Campus to see if officers had shut down more parties attended primarily by students of color than those attended mainly by white students, Hudson said. The committee was only given access to two weeks’ worth of recorded DPS interactions with students and found no evidence of discrimination, she said.

Analyzing the recordings was “the only concrete thing” the committee was able to achieve, she said. 

After months of inaction and the department’s mishandling of racist incidents and student protests, Hudson said she felt that her time would be more valuable supporting the protesters. The committee, she said, wasn’t achieving what it had set out to accomplish. 

“We expected so much more,” Abogado said.  

Published on August 30, 2020 at 10:33 pm
Contact Madison: mntyler@syr.edu