Santa Clara Professor Alleges Harassment by Campus Safety

Story of racial profiling at Santa Clara receives nation-wide response

Danielle Morgan, assistant professor of English at Santa Clara University, spent the early hours of Saturday morning in her house. Singing and dancing to Broadway showtunes, she waited for her brother, who was attending a virtual meeting from one of the university’s open seating areas.

The mood was light as the two siblings were about to start their first weekend together in eight months. Shaking off quarantine blues, Carlos Fuentes, a classically trained pianist and composer, was looking forward to staying with his sister and her husband at their campus-adjacent house. They planned to fill their hours together watching movies, singing songs and reveling in one another’s company.

While still in his meeting, Fuentes was approached by a Campus Safety officer. He instructed him to grab his belongings and to exit the campus immediately. According to Morgan, the officer followed Fuentes closely and continued to badger him even as he reached his sister’s home. Within moments, the morning took a turn for the worse and ended with a standoff between the Fuentes Morgan family and a team of Campus Safety officers. 

“Campus security came up to my brother in the midst of his meeting and told him to move along,” said Dr. Morgan in a Twitter thread. “He's been Black his whole life so he said ok. They followed him.”

Unfamiliar with the boundaries of the campus, Fuentes then made his way to a second location he believed to be off of the university’s property. There, he settled down to finish his meeting. He was close to his sister’s home and figured he would be allowed to go about his business here.

Backed into a corner by the steadily approaching officer, he knocked on Morgan’s door and asked for her help. 

“One officer followed him to my house,” Morgan Tweeted. “I opened the door and my brother said, ‘I'm so sorry about this. They're demanding you come out and vouch for me.’ I, of course, knew exactly who ‘they’ were.”

From there, the scene erupted and every member of the Fuentes Morgan family became involved.

“When I came out,” Morgan continued in her Twitter thread. “The officer very aggressively demanded to see my campus ID ‘to prove you are who he says you are and that you actually live here.’ I went back inside to get my ID and get my husband. Probably important to note that my husband is white.”

As the three of them stood outside their home, the Campus Safety officer continued to encroach on their personal space. Ignoring the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, the officer came uncomfortably close. The Fuentes Morgan family then had to remind the officer of social distancing—a compulsory rule at the university.

The officer then called his supervisor after Morgan refused to show her ID. Tension rose as multiple officers and four Campus Safety cars congregated outside of the professor’s home.

“We were maintaining social distancing,” said Morgan in an interview with The Santa Clara. “So it was more challenging to identify what they had with them, which I think is why the officer felt compelled to say, 'Look, you're not in that kind of danger.' But I don't think that the officer understood that the rhetorical structure of that sentence indicated to me that, had he been armed, we could have been in danger.”

According to Morgan, Campus Safety retreated from the home after a handful of heated questions were volleyed back and forth. They did so without any admission of wrongdoing.

“There was no apology at all,” Morgan said. “The conversation sort of ended at the point where my husband said, 'What should my brother in law do? What should my wife do so that this doesn't happen again?' And the officer said, 'Stay in open spaces.' That was sort of the end. There was no explanation given, and there was certainly no apology.”

After the incident, Morgan logged into Twitter and typed out a thread of 21 Tweets which recounted the event in detail. The response was massive. At the time of writing this, the thread has been liked 118 thousand times and has been Retweeted over 42 thousand times. The thread picked up steam and Morgan’s story was picked up by CNN, the Washington Post and MSN among other publications.

The university’s response was swift. A series of communications from the Office of the President condemned the actions of the Campus Safety officers and assured the student body that an investigation would soon follow. Since their first message to the university community, the administration has opted for an independent, third-party investigation into the incident as well as an audit into all of Campus Safety’s practices. The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave.

Morgan noted that the hopes of a restful weekend were completely consumed by this event. Their dreams of singalongs and movie nights were pushed aside. In Morgan’s view, her brother was not harassed because he was standing in the bushes and she was not harassed because she would not present her ID. They were harassed because they are Black.

Morgan has never been confronted in such a way at Santa Clara specifically. At other universities however, she has received similar treatment.

“I have, as a student at other institutions, been in situations that many black and brown students have reported at Santa Clara,” said Dr. Morgan. “Being detained by campus police or campus safety, or being asked to show ID in situations where other students have not been asked to show ID, having my body sort of policed or patrolled in certain kinds of ways.”

As a Black woman on a college campus, Morgan notes that she has been forced to alter her behavior to avoid being harassed.

“I have made myself very scarce when campus security is around,” said Dr. Morgan. “I don't ever come to campus by myself when it's nighttime, if I can avoid it. If I've forgotten something in my office, I have my husband who is white, retrieve those belongings for me. No one has ever stopped him.”

Morgan believes that this racial double standard is underscored heavily by this incident.

I've seen students having picnics and things like that on campus, all of these behaviors that we're supposed to not be engaging in,” said Morgan. “If you're here, of course you're socializing, right? Nevertheless, I'm recognizing a difference between the treatment of my brother that day and how he was immediately viewed as a threat or someone who didn't belong. And the students who are actively breaking campus rules and regulations, but are seeming to have a sense of ownership or belonging on campus.”

After the response of overwhelming support from national media and students alike, Morgan is hopeful for what the future holds. She is eager to see how their plans play out. Her enthusiasm goes beyond herself, however.

“I hope that it becomes a call to action across the country, because this is not something that's specific to Santa Clara,” said Morgan. “I want to be really, really clear on that. It's not specific to Santa Clara. This is the experience of being Black on a college campus, period. This is the experience of what it means when you are seen to not belong on a college campus.”

“I'm hoping that this ultimately spurs academia writ large to action to protect Black and brown people on their campuses and make us feel like we belong,” continued Morgan. “Make us feel like the work we do matters enough, that they are not going to let us be traumatized when we are going about our business.”

With the recent spate of racial reckonings that have taken place in the wake of George Floyd’s murder this year, it is important to know that these calls to action are nothing new.

“What I will say is that black students and faculty have been advocating for the same changes on college campuses across the country since the sixties, when they first started advocating for black studies programs,” Morgan said. “Those requests and demands remain the same and have yet to be really effectively implemented everywhere.”

Morgan finished with a note to Santa Clara readership regarding what they should take from her experience.

“The only thing that I would want to make sure that the Santa Clara readers understand,” said Morgan. “Is how much I hope this moment serves to center and uplift the voices of Black students on campus, who have been making these arguments and stating this concern and this complaint for years before I even set foot on campus. So I want this to serve as a reminder of what our black students go through every day on this campus.”

Campus Safety declined to comment. At the time of publication, the Office of University Marketing and Communications has not responded to correspondence from The Santa Clara. 

08/25/2020 1:55 pm change made: Attribution of section reading “Carlos Fuentes was not harassed because he was standing in the bushes. Danielle Fuentes Morgan was not harassed because she would not present her ID. They were harassed because they are Black.” changed to “In Morgan’s view, her brother was not harassed because he was standing in the bushes and she was not harassed because she would not present her ID. They were harassed because they are Black.”