Santa Clara Students Protest Racial Profiling

Faculty, students advocate for racial justice on campus

While the sky’s orange hue from California wildfires conveyed a foreboding presence in the air, Santa Clara University community members returned to campus on Sept. 9 to march for racial justice in light of the recent racial incident between Professor Danielle Fuentes Morgan and Campus Safety.

Over 300 students, faculty, alumni and staff members attended the march which began at the Campus Safety office and proceeded to the Jesuit residence on campus. 

The march was organized a week before it took place. After several weeks had passed since Dr. Morgan experienced racial profiling from Campus Safety officers, Professors Michelle Burnham, Amy Randall and others, who have remained anonymous, thought the university did not give an appropriate and timely response. 

Concerned that the issue would be dropped, Burnham, Randall and their colleagues communicated with Black faculty and other members of the Racial Justice Coalition to bring up the possibility of a protest. 

“There was really just a growing sense of frustration at the silence—relative silence, at the inaction, and a worry that it would just be forgotten and dropped,” said Burnham. “And so I would say that the decision to hold the protest was an effort to make sure it didn’t get dropped, to repeat publicly, and with a collective voice, the request for action.”

The protest ended with a rally across from the Jesuit residence where Black students, facultyand alumni shared their personal experiences with the unsafe and unhealthy environment they witness firsthand at Santa Clara.

“There were students who shared their own experiences of having been harassed and profiled by Campus Safety,” said Burnham. “There were students who were alumni who shared the fact that for them, they did not feel safe now as alumni coming on to our campus and bringing their children. There were students who shared the pain and trauma of some of the elements of social life on campus for them as BIPOC students.”

Beyond the steps faculty have taken to look out for their colleagues, students have partaken in advocating for Dr. Morgan and their fellow Black students since the day the incident took place on Aug. 22. 

In less than 24 hours following the incident, a call script had already been created for students looking to express their outrage at Campus Safety, and an email template had been drafted for students wanting to show their frustrations to university administrators. 

In the coming days, students who have had Dr. Morgan as a professor were writing notes of encouragement through Instagram to show their support for her. And shortly after, an Instagram page known as @beingblackatscu was created to highlight the experiences of Black students at Santa Clara. 

Senior Hiwad Haider created call scripts for students wanting to express their frustration to Campus Safety and university administration.  

“My point was, please make [your thoughts] known,” said Haider. “Please literally say it to someone, and make sure that gets written down. Make sure that gets recorded. Make sure at the end of the day there’s an email on the administration side saying, this might be kind of a big deal, we have a bunch of students and other people calling us—that never happens.”

Two days later, a petition was created by Santa Clara alumni calling upon the university to decrease funding for Campus Safety and invest more money in campus resources, including Cowell Center.

The petition was only made available for less than 48 hours, but 1,043 alumni signed it before it was forwarded to university administration.

A Community Conversation hosted by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion was supposed to take place immediately following the incident on Aug. 25. Although due to second thoughts about the capacity of people that can be present on a Zoom call and how large the discussion must be, Associate Provost Margaret Russell canceled the discussion on Aug. 24, citing that future conversations would take place within the Faculty Senate, Staff Senate and student-focused organizations. 

Despite the reasons, Haider and other students expressed frustration at the decision made by the university to cancel the event. 

“Myself and other students expressed a lot of frustration because the reasons that were cited were to better facilitate smaller-scale conversations and some kind of vague notion of the inability to have a large Zoom [call],” said Haider. “Both of those in my mind don’t quite add up… I really was regretful and I remain upset that the event didn’t go forward.”