Less than one month after George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, Emory’s Black student leaders called on administrators to defund and disarm the Emory Police Department (EPD).
My peers were not alone in their calls for change. Following mass protests against police brutality this past summer, college students nationwide demanded institutions to defund their campus police departments and reconsider their relationships with local law enforcement.
Norm-shattering as they were, last summer’s demands for police reform at Emory were among the most recent in the storied history of Black student-led anti-racist activism at Emory. We must closely examine this history to better understand their calls for police reform today. In doing so, we can draw inspiration from the legacy of past Black student organizing that sought to make Emory a more equitable place for all and that still seeks to do the same.
This history must inspire non-Black Emory students to fight alongside our peers against the decades-long racism on campus. Concurrently, Emory administrators and the University’s police should look to the years following Emory’s desegregation in 1963 and address Black students’ concerns.
Emory’s Black students have spent decades peacefully pressuring administrators to address racism. In 1969, mass protests led by Black students and their supporters forced a racial reckoning at the University. They asserted that Emory’s integration efforts had fallen short, ranging from the inadequate facilities for Black student groups to the absence of an African American Studies program. But those students’ calls for change did not address policing; instead, their demands centered on interrogating the University’s reasons for integration less than a decade earlier.
In 2015, Black students at Emory again led protests against racial inequality, delivering a list of demands that highlighted biases toward Black students and the “overpolicing and underfunding” of Black student groups. Written just one year after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, these demands were steeped in righteous indignation. The most recent spate of protests arose in direct response to the many high-profile police killings of Black Americans throughout 2020.
Finally, the Coalition of Black Organizations and Clubs’ (CBOC) 2020 demands are a culmination of the work of Black student activists over five decades, accompanying the demands they presented in 1969, 1990 and 2015. The persistence of unjustified police violence against Black Americans in recent years led current Black student leaders to most recently demand that administrators defund and disarm EPD. Police brutality has become the focal point of the anti-racist movement at Emory and across the country; it is one of the most obviously, existentially inequitable aspects of our justice system. EPD has taken steps to respond to student demands, like updating the demographic information of its contacts, streamlining its data collection and displaying that data more prominently. But they have rejected calls for disarmament, and the University similarly rebuffed defunding them.
Ultimately, administrators and EPD must be responsive to student concerns, and this means seriously exploring ways to shift police funding to crisis counseling, community-building efforts, and scholarships for students from marginalized communities. Certainly, disarming police departments is complicated. Gun laws in Georgia are among the weakest nationwide. Additionally, school shootings are an ever-present threat, even with police constantly patrolling campus. But no Emory police officer has discharged a weapon while on duty in at least the past five years. Clearly, keeping Emory safe has not required lethal force as of late, though when police have used non-lethal force recently, they disproportionately targeted Black men.
All students, especially non-Black students, must stand with their Black peers and demand significant changes from the University to make our community safer for everyone. Just after segregation at Emory ended, it was Student Government Association (SGA) leaders, noting their primary responsibility of “maintaining the confidence of all students,” that supported the Black student activists demanding change. Their allyship is an example all of us must continue to follow. SGA and College Council (CC), among numerous other student organizations, expressed support for Black members of the University community this past summer.
However, they must go beyond ordering anti-racist literature and fundraising programs at Emory that promote diversity and inclusion. SGA and CC, among other student leadership groups, must stand behind Black activists and encourage policy changes in EPD and at the University level that make our campus more equitable while keeping it safe.
That pressure to change and reform must remain. Anti-racism at Emory is not a project limited to one decade or one group of brave and outspoken activists. It must be a continuing effort on the part of students, faculty, administrators, police and other University staff members to recognize the unique part each of us have to play at this institution.
It will not be easy, and there will be those who are dissatisfied when their demands are not met right away. But we must keep listening to one another and working tirelessly to fight racism. We must look to Black students, hear their concerns and address them accordingly if we are to ensure the brighter future for Emory that we all strive to see. If history teaches us anything, it’s that doing so made this school a better place in the past, and it will continue to do so moving forward.
Jake Busch (22C) is from Brookhaven, Georgia.
This article is one part of “1963,” an investigative opinion project. Read the rest here.
Jake Busch (22C) is from Brookhaven, Georgia, majoring in history and English and creative writing. He also writes for the Wheel’s Editorial Board. Busch enjoys playing basketball, reading about and debating politics and trying different kinds of ice cream. He plans to become a civil rights attorney.
Ultimately, what Emory and the nation reckon with is exactly what functions should be handled by a police force and which should be handled by other societal institutions. When you and others make the demand of “Defund the police” the question is left hanging of what functions are you asking to be cut in order to accomplish this mission?
Are you asking that certain roles that police currently fill be handled by people such as social workers? If so, great. Having social workers on call within a community to respond in lieu of police would be quite helpful, but unless they are staged around the community and able to respond to emergencies at a moments notice we have to either accept that there will be a substantial lag in time between when the provider is needed and when they arrive, or we will have to ask another provider (such as the police) to act in their stead until they arrive. No matter the choice, there will be a cost in either dollars or time to response.
If you wish to defund the police by starving them of utility – meaning removing the laws they are required to enforce – also good news. Every time you make a law you are also making a reason for a person to come find you and force you to comply. Even if the original penalty is merely a fine, if you fail to pay the fine eventually someone will use physical force to compel you to pay monies or confine you. If you limit the laws you limit the interactions and you can then focus on violent crimes.
Even if you do the above, there is still the reality that crimes of property and violence do occur and there is a community need to prevent and investigate these crimes. Either the community can accept some level of violence as acceptable and accept that occasionally a laptop is stolen, or they must work as a community to prevent such acts. However, the community cannot lawfully “punish” a crime after the fact. For that they must involve the state. And so, most communities have elected to delegate this responsibility to a third party that has both the sanction and the power of state.
In the case of Emory, we have a small police department that already gives students a wide berth. I went back and took a look at police reports from 2020 via the police department homepage. Of all of the reports the only that were even questionable was one for loitering in what appears to be the Oxford Road building, and one for defecating somewhere in public. The rest were for harassment, theft of property, and the like. There were a few arrests for possession of alcohol and drugs, but if we changed the laws those arrests wouldn’t be necessary.
In regards to actual cost, I know for certain that it’s not a case of what the officers themselves are paid. I recently saw a facebook post by the Emory PD saying they are recruiting. Curious, I checked out some websites that listed salary ranges and discovered that aside from management roles, the pay is more in line with armed security. Often times less. If not from salaries where do you cut? If not from numbers of officers (and ability to respond to emergencies) where do you cut? If not in training, where do you cut?
Do you wish to defund Emory PD completely and let the campus be patrolled by Atlanta PD or the county? Get ready for increased enforcement and a need to justify their jobs by generating revenue for the city/county. The Incentive for Emory PD is to create a safe campus for the students, do you think the other police organizations that would fill their shoes would give you better service?
I admire the desire to change our culture and make positive change, but at least to my eyes, the place to do that is not at the Emory PD.