Does Smith College have a toxic atmosphere towards staff employees?

You have a wisdom to your posts @CateCAParent, and I learn from them. But I do have a comment about the “threatened” part (I will leave aside the “find it remarkable” part for now).

BLM has made many things better, but some things a lot worse. And one of the things it has made worse is an irrational fear of the police, most particularly among black people. Now, the data show that overall black people are treated worse by police than white people. But in terms of numbers, an unarmed person is about as likely to be killed by lightning as by the police. It is really that rare, but unarmed shootings make the news far more than fatal lightning strikes.

Then when it comes to women vs men (both armed and unarmed), it is men that are killed 96% of the time by police. Black women are slightly less than 1% of those killed by police, whereas white men make up 43%. Adjusting for population (assuming black women make up 7% of the population and white men about 30%), white men are more than 10x as likely to be killed by police than black women. Yet non-violent white men generally have little fear of police, but black women often do.

For those that want to check the data, it can be found on the Washington Post website (filters available at the bottom):

I learn from you posts, too, and appreciate your wisdom as well.

Fwiw, I come at this scenario as as a white, middle-aged female lawyer. So putting myself on that couch (I wouldn’t be on that couch, because I would want air conditioning for my hot flashes and I would ask permission from someone first), I would be mildly amused that someone saw me as a threat, maybe even weirdly flattered that someone even noticed me at all, feel badly that the officer had to waste his time, shuffle along to my next thing or find a better couch (I can see myself asking the officer if he had any recommendations), and at most report the encounter with a chuckle to my husband over dinner. I might make a mental note of how impressive and responsive the security on campus was.

So remarkable isn’t quite the right word. I might say something to someone, but only as part of a highlight reel of my boring day.

The whole fact pattern is like something you get in law school. Tweak a fact, how does it change the outcome? The student being a middle aged white woman changes it a lot. I would not be noticed. If I was, no one would report me. If the police were called, the officer’s behavior wouldn’t change (good job officer!). But I see him as there to help me as much as anything else. I certainly don’t feel a need to record him. Or make a public statement. Or research who reported me. It isn’t the least bit political to me.

But I can understand why, in a world where people see recordings of Black people being killed by police on social media far too often, she recorded the interaction and felt threatened. I don’t doubt the statistics confirm her fear was out of proportion to the risk, but it wasn’t unfounded.

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The one thing we can all agree upon is that no employee at Smith is going to report anyone for anything in the immediate future. And that makes the Smith campus a more dangerous and less pleasant place for all.

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Since you are a lawyer (and I recognize that there are many different types of lawyers and this might not apply to you), do you have an opinion on what liability Smith may have in terms of how they treated Jodi Shaw, Jackie Blair, Mr. Patenaude, or the janitor?

I believe Smith was sued by some former employees and settled out of court

Really great post. I appreciate that, notwithstanding the mess that ensued, you appreciate the nuance involved for a young black woman on a campus where, historically, she’s not the norm. You were able to go beyond “janitor guilty/non-guilty” and “we can’t read his mind”. She likely wasn’t afraid. She was likely fed up and thought, “This is ********”.

The people at Smith appreciate that nuance as well … Kathleen appreciates that nuance … and that’s part of the complication here.

We strongly differ on Kathleen’s abilities, because it doesn’t take much nuance to determine why Ms. Kanoute felt what she did. Just about any 15 year old who isn’t a hermit could have done that.

No, nuance means realizing that this situation occurred despite Smith’s employees following what in essence were Kathleen’s procedures. And therefore she is as responsible to supporting Smith employees as much as she is supporting the student. The buck stops with her.

But note it’s only the students that felt supported, whereas the staff employees did not. As has been described earlier, there were many times when she could have de-escalated this situation before this became a national issue. But that would required a tiny bit of competence … and nuance.

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I agree 100% with you. Except I don’t even blame the student for doxing the employee. Anyone who illogically/irrationally calls the police on me (or mine) will likely be doxed. All this talk about “poor guy has had his life ruined” ignores how the student was affected by having the police called on her while she was at “home” doing nothing wrong.

@mtmind , not everyone wants to understand. No need to continue beating this dead horse. No need to chase contiunally moving goalposts in this discussion. Some are being very disingenuous in making their points, trying to hide true feelings. Don’t fall for it. Go have a peaceful day.

She doxed an employee that wasn’t at the school at the time of the incident. That person was labeled a racist publicly having had no involvement.

I suspect you aren’t suggesting that is ok?

Being called the R word today is very hard to come back from. When deserved of course a person should be called out and vilified. Conversely those calling others racist have the responsibility to make sure it is justified or they devalue the meaning of the label and their personal credibility in my opinion.

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We strongly differ on Kathleen’s abilities, because it doesn’t take much nuance to determine why Ms. Kanoute felt what she did. Just about any 15 year old who isn’t a hermit could have done that.

There is where we part company. I think it’s easy for people to say, “yeah, I get her frustration,” and move on to parse all the other facts in an event like this and never really go back to this, in my view, the central point. I think @mtmind has done a good job of laying our his/her view, with which I agree: what is suspicious or “out of place” here? I don’t see it. As with contract provisions, whether it’s spelled out explicitly in the language or not, the judge is going to read “reasonableness” into everyone’s obligations. If the Smith policy is to call the police if you see something “out of place” or “suspicious” it is also implied that you are going to use reasonable judgment in the exercise of that policy. The reason the kid is so pissed off is how the Smith employee exercised his judgement relative to her sitting somewhere eating lunch. And I don’t blame her at all, and now it sounds like you don’t either. There is some historical loading here with which we must grapple as you know.

So this point of “following procedure”, on which you lean so heavily, is really the point. Did he really exercise the following of that procedure reasonably or not? We might need to read his mind to know if he was acting in good faith, but we don’t need to read his mind to judge his actions reasonable or unreasonable.

That’s the nuance I’m talking about. Reasonableness. Judgement. In being as impartial as I can, I cannot fathom interpreting the policy in a way that would compel me to call security because of seeing a black woman eating lunch on a bench in a closed spot on campus. I’d walk over and tell her she isn’t supposed to be there and this probably goes nowhere.

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Agreed with all that.

Where it gets more subtle and difficult to manage is in a case like this. I personally don’t like to draw and quarter people in the public square. OTOH, we have a problem in our culture and this is a small expression of it that blew up largely because it happened on a college campus. Is the Janitor a racist and should we tag him with that label? I don’t think so, though I don’t know that man. After this could he benefit from some diversity and sensitivity training? Absolutlely.

I’m suggesting that the greatest harm in this entire sequence of events was the harm done to the teenage student who was doing nothing wrong. We should, Instead of picking some random event in the middle of all the subsequent events to find fault, find the greatest fault with the fact that the police should never have been called. Start there. Don’t berate (not that “you” were) a teenage student for not showing perfect judgement when a 35-year employee showed much poorer judgement and started all this in the first place. Please!

The fact she doxed anyone is proof that she was strongly affected by the initial horribly misguided call. There is no defense for that initial lack of judgement. None.

Why are you so convinced that the janitor’s sole reason for reporting her as being out of place was her race? Even MT was willing to entertain the possibility that the same thing could have happened to a white student. And the report reached no conclusion that race played a part here. Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, sometimes a bad judgment is just a bad judgment. Unless, of course, what actually happened really doesn’t matter (including even the collateral damage dished out along the way to the far from privileged actors). Such cavalierness with the facts - and the resultant damage done to innocent people - is what some of us here are deploring. Say what you like about Smith College, but it is far from a hotbed of racism. Could it be that throwing the townspeople under the bus is a way to prove what doesn’t really need to be proved? In that way the episode does indeed resemble the Oberlin situation.

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Multiple lives ruined, including two that did were not involved in the call, and in your opinion the worst thing that happened is the student’s interaction with campus security?

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I was referring to the person who was doxed who had nothing to with it. That to me isn’t subtle it is reckless.

I previously highlighted the youth of the young lady as a mitigating factor but her actions had consequences on a completely innocent person.

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Agreed. I think the all of the doxing here was an overreaction and inappropriate and hurtful. There was nobody involved wearing a white pointy hat that needed to be put on blast for the safety of Northampton.

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Finally! You get it. I am humbled and greatly pleased that you agree.

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Why are you so convinced that the janitor’s sole reason for reporting her as being out of place was her race?

Because apparently that’s all he could tell about her from his vantage point. And actually, I didn’t say it was his sole reason. I really don’t know. But if it was one among other reasons, is that ok from your standpoint?

Or are you saying that any time the janitor sees any person setting foot in any
closed area on campus for any reason that a call to campus police is justified? It’s not a rhetorical question.

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Let me say something before I go do some more productive things with my afternoon:

This entire thread is one dump truck full of frustration. Let me try to briefly explain why.

There are many threads on CC from/about college students going through some great emotional strain regarding fitting in at college. From incompatible roommates, food allergies, harsh grading, misunderstood reasons for why admission was rejected, being homesick, etc. Every time, people rush to help the student and say that college can be stressful but blah-blah-good-advice-blah-blah. Everyone runs to help the student get over some minor stressors that seem major to the students.

In this instance, an employee called the police on a teenage student for no good reason. That’s worse than a roommate watching television after midnight. That’s more emotionally distressing than getting a D on an assignment. In this case, it is not a minor stressor, it is actually a MAJOR stressor. Yet, the focus on this thread seems to have been methodically shifted from the harm done to a teenage female student and shined brightly on the perceived harm done to the poor White adults involved with initiating this entire sequence of events.

It happens again and again here.

Sorry for venting. Go back to your regularly scheduled thread of recentering the harm to non-African-Americans.

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I think this is the crux of the matter. Who gets to decide what damage matters and how much and how to compare people’s damage?

There is a long long history of damage to African Americans that has been ignored - from micro aggressions on up. People are told, individually and collectively, that they aren’t the best judge of their own damage. That the damage is irrelevant. That history has to be included as part of this narrative. It plays into how she responded.

I have no idea what it feels like to walk in her shoes or how much damage this caused her. But I think it is best to believe someone when they tell me they hurt. I don’t have to understand it. She screamed loud and clear she was hurt. I disagree that the doxing was reasonable, but reasonable minds can differ.

There is a legal concept called “eggshell skull”. If someone with a pre-existing injury is harmed more than someone else would have been (eg brain damage from an accident because of a pre-existing injury), the person who inflicted the harm is also responsible for that additional harm, even though the vulnerability is not his fault. I think that concept has an application to this situation. Whether or not the police would be called on anyone else, they were called on her. It inflicted harm on her that it would not on others because of her history. Whose harm is worse, I don’t know. Don’t care.

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