Michigan State University Takes Initiative
In Addressing Racial Profiling On Campus

East Lansing, Mich.
Bruce Benson, chief of
police at Michigan State University, had heard about it on CNN. He read about it in scholarly police journals. And while attending national police conferences he heard the issue constantly analyzed and dissected.
Racial profiling, he noticed over the last few years, was ballooning into a nationally recognized problem, and even became an issue in the recent presidential debates and elections.
Until now, battling the problem — in which police officers stop individuals as possible criminal suspects solely because of their race or ethnic background — had drawn attention mostly in major urban areas. But minority students attending traditionally White institutions like Michigan State have long felt targeted by police because of their race, particularly when the campus is located in nearly all White suburban enclaves.
Benson wanted to take action before it became a problem on Michigan State's campus in East Lansing, and this semester he announced a "12-point" plan to combat racial profiling and improve police minority relations. National campus safety experts are calling the program the first and most comprehensive program of any college in the country designed to end racial profiling.
While police officials and community leaders from the Lansing chapter of the NAACP agree that there was no major incident that triggered the creation of the plan at MSU, minority students had complained in recent years about being treated unfairly by campus police.
Most recently, however, a Michigan State student stepped inside a barbershop near campus last spring hoping to get his hair trimmed. Instead he was humiliated. Four police officers rushed in behind him, surrounded him and pulled him outside. With his hands hoisted, they questioned him and searched him for weapons.
As it turned out, the police had the wrong man, and the student was innocent. A nearby credit union had been robbed, and police said the student loosely fit the profile of the suspect — a Black man wearing a dark jacket.
Realizing their mistake, the officers sped off in their squad cars. But the student, who received no apology, was left standing there — confused, frightened and frustrated.
"You could tell by the look on his face that he was hurt by it," says John Howard, owner of the barbershop. "It was like a slap in his face."
Students at MSU and other universities around the state say that problems like this —  where misperceptions lead to police mistakes — are common. While some are more subtle and others more egregious, each incident erodes police-student relations. Among the highlights of the
MSU's 12-point program:
Beginning next month, an MSU criminal justice professor will collect data for one year on all campus traffic stops to determine if racial profiling patterns exist. Video cameras will be installed on the dashboard of all MSU squad cars to record interaction between students and police at traffic stops.
Three pairs of police-student partnerships will be formed to allow students to get a glimpse into an officer's life and vice versa. Officers will attend a student's class, the pair will go to each other's homes for dinner, meet family and friends, and students will go on a drive-along during a police shift.
Police will maintain a Web site on the Internet describing what racial profiling is and what students should expect when stopped by an officer during a traffic stop. The data obtained on traffic stops also will be posted on the Web site.
The plan, which will cost MSU roughly $25,000, has drawn praise from students and community leaders who say that MSU police began addressing the issue long before the robbery mistake last spring. Geneva Smith, president of the Lansing chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says the department has "done a good job and has always been very proactive."
Smith was one of 12 campus and community leaders who helped the chief flesh out the 12-point plan. Tonya Upthegrove, president of MSU's Black Student Alliance and the only student who served on the panel, welcomed the dialogue.
Racial profiling "has never happened to me, but it has happened to a lot of my friends," she says. "It happens more to guys than to women."
In Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, students echoed similar concerns.
"There is a hostile presence sometimes among police at Black parties and social events," says U-M's Raquel Frye, a junior studying psychology. "More forums to discuss the issue would help the police hear opinions and make some people aware of it . . . some people don't think racial profiling exists."
U-M police spokesperson
Diane Brown says that while evidence does not suggest there is a problem to merit a plan as comprehensive as the one at MSU,
U-M police receive ongoing diversity training to address perceptions that might lead to poor policing. At Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., police
Lt. Mel Gilroy says police-
student contact is lessened because "our students tend to be older — the average age is about 27," he says. "Most live off campus and they go home for the weekends." Of OU's 14,000 students, only about 1,300 live in residence halls.