Does Smith College have a toxic atmosphere towards staff employees?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Smith College
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I took your advice and it was very useful. To be honest I had a previous sense of understanding that was altered by reading the full report. One excerpt stood out…

“The Responding Officer recalled that he said to the Caller, “it’s obvious she’s a student” and the Caller responded somehow saying that “it looked suspicious to him.”

While I am inclined to give all participants the benefit of the doubt I think calling the police on someone is a significant decision with potentially meaningful consequences. Earlier in the report it states the policy gave the employee discretion to engage the person or call the police (that has been reported incorrectly).

From the police officers statement and incredulous tone it seems obvious that even a modest amount of effort on the part of the reporting employee could have avoided the entire situation.

Some of the responsibility however is shared. The student had been warned by a different cafeteria worker as described as follows in the report;

“The Reported Party said that the Dining Employee approached her and said, “You know you’re not supposed to eat here.” None the less she ate in the non air-conditioned reception area of the closed dorm.

As you point out she did in fact have an access badge and was working as a TA but the dorm portion of the facility was closed for the summer and the cafeteria closed at 1:30 prior to the call being made.

The entire situation seems to have been entirely avoidable.

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42

This was a little matter that was blown up. You don’t think that’s toxic?

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No. It would have blown up at a great many institutions, so my main point is that it’s not a “Smith” problem.

In fact, it’s a national problem. It’s just when it happens at a place that gathers smart kids at a time in their lives when they are questioning the status quo, the reaction is going to be strong. I completely get the Smith student’s frustrations. AA kids are on these elite campuses with enough baggage as it is; then you find yourself one day minding your own business eating lunch somewhere and a staff member can’t be bothered to walk a few yards to find out who you are and perhaps learn (1) whether you just made an innocent mistake (like I myself have made several times) about where you’re allowed to be or (2) you’re in fact authorized to be there. He saw “Black” and called security. For those who don’t experience that sort of thing, I guess it’s easy to just say “nothing to see here; move on.” Others have a different take.

I’ve actually walked into the wrong place on the actual Smith campus myself and not had security called on me. And I was a visitor and ostensibly not a student.

Call it what you will. We’ve experienced Smith and I disagree with the characterization that there’s something rotten in Denmark.

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And this is a key point.

In a past life when I was helping design resilient systems, we studied major failures like the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, the Challenger disaster, and Chernobyl. One key takeaway is that major failures like these required many things to go wrong, not just one. In the Challenger disaster, there were multiple groups who considered the advice of the engineers who warned against the dangers of the launch, and each one overrode them, despite them having the most knowledge.

You are mistaken if you think I am only blaming Ms. Kanoute. While she is an adult and therefore responsible for her mistakes, she is a young adult, and therefore more prone to making errors of judgment. I am reserving most of the blame for Smith’s President, who continued the cascade of errors that made this into a national issue.

Those of you who have held management positions know that one of your jobs is to protect your employees backs when they are being unfairly treated. Regardless of what opinion one has about the janitor who called, there was no question that Ms. Kanoute mistreated Jackie Blair by doxxing her (who according to the report, didn’t speak to the janitor who made the call) and by doxxing Mr. Patenaude who wasn’t even there. As far as I can tell, nobody disputes this.

When Smith’s employees were being mistreated, it was Smith’s job to defend them. Because not doing so sets a precedent–the employees can be mistreated without repercussions. If it’s not obvious to you why that’s a toxic environment, I am stuck on how to explain this to you.

Smith’s president could have rapidly de-escalated the situation after the report came out by stating that the janitor followed procedure, but that the procedure will be investigated for bias. And a strong and heartfelt apology to Jackie Blair and Mr. Patenaude.

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The President not only failed to support these particular employees but used the incident and the report as proof of such levels of racism in the working class staff of the school as to require mandatory DiAngelo-inflected anti-racism training for all of them. Whether that created a toxic environment can only be guessed inasmuch as none dares speak up about it for fear of what happened to the one of their number, Jodi Shaw, who did. These workers aren’t the greatest exemplars of white privilege. You could call it an instance of punching down, unless that term is reserved for persons of color.

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46

I agree with much of your post, but do not agree that the student was culpable in the initial incident, and wonder if you perhaps aren’t giving her the “benefit of the doubt” that you are giving everyone else?

For example, it is not entirely clear that the student “had been warned” or that the warning (if one was given) was accurate or should have been heeded. The cafeteria worker said she just asked if the student was working at the camp, and the student explained that she was (and therefor was allowed to be there.) The student recalled that the cafeteria worker had said:

"You know you’re not supposed to eat here,” and the Reported Party replied, “Actually, I have access to this hall. No one let me in here.”

But either way, warning or not, the report indicates that student was authorized to be there. So it is not even matter of giving her benefit of the doubt. How can you fault a student for not heeding an inaccurate warning when the student knew she was allowed to be there?

Regarding the time, while “lunch in the Tyler dining area ended at 1:30 p.m. The Dining Employee said that at times people would remain in the Tyler dining area after 1:30 p.m.” It was around 1:40 when the employee called the police on the student. Why not give her the benefit of the doubt that it was reasonable for her to still be there 10 minutes after the cafeteria had ended lunch service?

Regarding the location, I don’t believe there is anything in the report that indicates that the front room was a separate “dorm portion of the facility [which] was closed for the summer.” No doors were locked, nothing was closed off, no signs were post, nothing indicated she couldn’t relax in the living room, which is where she entered the building with her valid key card. All the report said was that the door was closed because of air conditioning, not because it was an off limits section.

So are your really giving her the benefit of the doubt with regard to the initial incident? All she did was enter the building where she was authorized to be, get her lunch, and sit on the to eat, read, and look at her phone. What did she do that was so suspicious that it justified calling the cops on her?

Everyone here talking around and/or avoiding what seems to be a pretty obvious point. Whatever the explicit intentions of the employee, it seems incredibly unlikely that a 5’2" white female eating her lunch across the hall from the dining room would have seemed "out of place” so as to justify calling the police. This employee saw a black person, nothing more, and called with police without even bothering to check if it was a student.

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Apologies if I miscommunicated that impression, as I don’t view her as culpable in the initial incident. I was sharing stuff I had not seen in the times article. I don’t find anyone with a “large teddy bear” frightening.

I don’t think doxing was appropriate but she is a kid.

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48

Understood. I think we are in agreement that the facts set out in the law firm’s report paint a very different picture than what is being described here and in the press.

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@mtmind , you have concluded that there can be no other explanation for the janitor having called the campus police except race. But the report itself doesn’t draw that conclusion. One can quibble as to whether it exonerated the janitor, but it certainly didn’t make the confident finding as to his motivation that you, from your distance, are making. Would you be so confident if the incident were transposed to a boardroom or common room? Aren’t you yourself stereotyping the actors in this piece?

None of us can see into the hearts of our fellow human beings, so I’m ready to withdraw my speculation if you can see your way to withdrawing yours. Yes, the janitor seems to have had an option to approach this young woman and speak to her rather than report her. Like you, I think he should have done that. But he also had the option he exercised and, it seems, was encouraged to exercise - to simply call in security. I can imagine any number of reasons for doing this, including avoidance of a possibly awkward confrontation. Racial prejudice seems the least likely in the situatiuon. This wasn’t an urban campus in which the presence of a black person could have triggered a stereotypical reaction that this was a dangerous intruder from the neighborhood. He would have known that she had to be a student. To believe that he called the cops on her on account of her race you would have to believe that he disliked black people so much that he would have used this pettty infraction as a mere excuse to harass her. He himself didn’t think race was sufficiently important to even mention it when he reported the infraction. Obsessions on the subject of race are definitely in play in this incident, but they may not be coming not from the staff.

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Agree about doxing. Inappropriate and overboard in this context. OTOH, if the incident involved an act of overt or hostile racism on anyone’s part, then I wouldn’t shed a tear over the perpetrator’s subsequent difficulties in society.

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51

Agreed with your points. Even worse in this case one employee who wasn’t even present on campus at the time of the incident was doxed.

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52

I am glad to see that people agree that Ms. Kanoute was out of line for doxing the employees.

As a next step, I hope people can see that Smith College was wrong for not supporting the employees that were doxed and apologizing to them for what one of their students put them through.

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53

I don’t need to see into anyone’s heart to know that it is unacceptable for a college employee to call the police on a student for quietly relaxing over lunch. It would be superfluous to point out that this would be true even if the student were white, because this student wasn’t white and these things generally don’t happen to white people; at least not as often as they happen to non-whites.

As for all the thoughts and ideas and conclusions you try to attribute to me, I reject them all. In short, I have no idea whether this employee was an explicit racist, but I doubt he was. That is not what this is about, and it rarely is.

Nope. I accept that he called the cops because to him the person "seemed out of place” just like he said, and I doubt this was a product of explicit racial animus. But the fact remains that all he knew was that a black person was on a couch in an un-air conditioned room across from the dining room at 1:40 in the afternoon. Yet that was enough to conclude that he needed to call the police. This doesn’t mean he hates black people, or that he was trying to harass her. It means he didn’t seem to understand that there is nothing suspicious about a black student having lunch in a room next to the dining room. The officer understood this immediately.

The irony is, had this employee had the type of training you so often mock and ridicule (see your post above) then he might have understood that seeing a black person relaxing on a couch mid-day wasn’t necessarily grounds for alarm, and that perhaps the reason the person "seemed out of place” may have more to do to with his implicit expectations of normalcy, and that those expectations may be out-of-whack with the reality of the modern university.

Had he had such training, he may have bothered to put on his glasses and notice more than just skin color before calling the police.

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54

Well, let’s go to the report:

In other words, the janitor is being condemned for following a Smith policy. @mtmind, sometimes unfortunate things happen despite everyone doing what they have been told to do. Not sure why you refuse to see that.

What defines maturity (for someone like Ms. Kanoute) or leadership for Smith’s president, is what people do after something unfortunate occurs. Both failed that test.

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55

Given that the janitor thought the person was male, by definition the person he saw was not a Smith student.

Would you like to try to reframe your argument after recognizing that the janitor did not realize this was a Smith student?

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First, as the officer indicated, there was nothing “suspicious” about this person. It was obviously a student having lunch.

Second, the law firm report set out to answer very narrow questions about whether the employee (or others) engaged in “intentional” racial discrimination in violation of the college’s affirmative action policy. The employees conduct could be (and IMO was) wrong even if not intentionally racist.

Third, you keep noting that the employee didn’t even know if this person was male or female, as if that helps his claim that “the person was suspicious.” A more sound argument is that this employee didn’t know anything other than that it was a black person! (In his call to the police employee sometimes referred to her as “she” and sometimes “he.”) He knew nothing. He didn’t know that there were lunch plates in front of the person. He didn’t know the person was reading books. He didn’t even know that the person was wearing a hat, looking at her phone, etc. All he knew was that it was a black person. There was nothing suspicious happening therefor no sound basis to call

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MT, you want to make this incident all about race - no one could read your last post and conclude otherwise - and yet you say you don’t really care what the janitor might have been thinking. You even acknowledge that the same thing could have happened to a white student. But that it happened to a black student in this case is enough for you to conclude that this mandatory anti-racism training is necessary for all staff. This doesn’t quite compute.

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I’m done here. It is the same posters on their same culture war crusade, and nothing I say will change their mind.

If anyone wants to better understand what happened, then read the law firm’s report.

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I am not getting “culture war” from the comments here. We all bring to this set of events, including the report, our experiences and knowledge. It is complicated and charged. It is not fair to anyone, the people involved or other posters, to cast motivation in over-simplified terms.

I think what you are saying is that even if the janitor wasn’t intentionally racist, his action in reporting was still a result of subconscious racism. Could be. We weren’t there, we don’t know him or his thoughts. There are plausible reasons for him to report that have nothing to do with the color of someone’s skin, and it is plausible it was subconsciously because of the color of her skin, too. The core why of the reporting is unknowable, and any attempt to guess is projection.

What are the questions worth asking, knowing full well this isn’t the last time something like this will happen?

(1) What could the admin have done better? That’s @hebegebe ’s main question, along with (2) what the student could have done better.

You seem focused on (3) what the janitor could have done better - a valid question and not incompatible with the others.

Would it have been better if the call wasn’t made? Sure, we know that now, but it was a valid choice at the time and the protocol is just as much responsible as the person invoking it. People make imperfect decisions in the moment- relying on protocol is supposed to help, in this case it didn’t.

The student was reasonable in assuming there was a racial element to what happened, in the moment, even if there wasn’t. She brings her life experience to the situation. If a white person were sitting where she was and a campus police officer approached, the white person likely wouldn’t feel threatened or even find it remarkable. For her it was legit traumatic. That isn’t the fault of the janitor, in my view; I don’t think anyone can believe he intended to inflict trauma, though he might have been oblivious to the possibility. As for the student, who knows if she apologized or not. Just because it wasn’t reported, it doesn’t mean she didn’t make a gesture of some kind. The doxing was out of line, but as someone said above, she’s young.

The school jumped to conclusions and in trying to do damage control made the situation worse. They have a lot of work to do, and culpability for throwing its employees under the bus.

The huge silver lining in this is that the campus police officer saw the situation for what it was and handled it congenially. Thank goodness. I wish people focused on that more.

Back to the original question of the post - There are a lot of institutions struggling with this issue. Smith just had their struggle on a national stage. I don’t expect they are any more or less supportive of employees than any other college.
This was an extreme situation and probably not indicative of how they are generally, especially now that they have learned from the experience.

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That’s an interesting statement @mtmind , as it presupposes that you have come to the “correct” conclusion and that @marlowe1 and I are “wrong”. Where does that supreme confidence come from?

Using your own words back at you, the janitor’s guilt cannot be found in the report, but you are certain it is there (implicitly, if not explicitly).

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