Groups divide on racial profiling claims

Campus minority groups are beginning to take sides on the two-week old controversy surrounding the alleged racial profiling of a black male College student.

Since the incident, UMOJA has spoken out against the way the issue was handled on campus by the United Minorities Council, whose alumni and past leaders have offered a mixed reaction to UMC Chairwoman and College sophomore Efe Johnson's efforts.

In a letter to the University community dated March 22, the UMC, Asian Pacific Student Coalition and Lambda Alliance cited the incident, in which the student was detained by police outside of Huntsman Hall, as a backdrop for the larger problem of bias-based profiling by campus police forces.

The letter further condemned the University for "insufficiently respond[ing] to the history of Penn Police using excessive force and bias-based profiling."

But UMOJA, the umbrella organization for black student groups on campus, has taken a different stance on the issue than the UMC and has openly criticized the UMC's handling of the situation.

Five days after the first letter was sent to the University community, UMOJA issued a statement "disagreeing" with that letter.

The organization called the groups' tactics "inappropriate and hasty," and UMOJA's statement asserted that all three groups should have attempted to communicate with the Division of Public Safety before taking the issue to the Provost's Office, the Undergraduate Assembly and the University Council.

UMOJA initially reacted more publicly to the incident, sending out an e-mail on March 22 with a separate statement written on behalf of the five minority coalitions: the UMC, the APSC, the Lambda Alliance, the Latino coalition and UMOJA. That statement criticized the University for the "institutional discrimination" that had persisted.

UMOJA retracted this statement a few hours later.

Both Johnson and UMOJA leaders refused to comment on the situation.

Nevertheless, though many involved campus leaders are remaining tight-lipped, alumni from some of those groups are speaking out.

"I think that UMOJA should refocus," said 2006 College alumna and 2004 UMC political chairwoman Fatimah Muhammad.

"I would like the entire campus to shed any particular annoyances or pet peeves they might have about this particular situation and move on and get to the bigger issue" of racial profiling at Penn, she said. "Think big."

Muhammad added that she is confident that all the groups concerned will "rise to the occasion to work together" to focus on larger issues, noting that "students on the whole don't believe" that racial profiling occurs on campus.

Other past leaders likewise support what's been done so far.

"I think they did a great job," said College senior Shakirah Simley, 2006's UMC chairwoman.

"Their energy is on how they can enact structural change, which I think is more important, . useful and constructive. I think this incident . is just a platform to talk about what's going on in the greater context," she said.

Penn alumna and 2005 UMC vice chairwoman Rocio Polanco added that the body did a "good" job of keeping the larger issue in focus.

"I think they're being strategic and logical and intelligent about the response in terms of pointing out the issue at large instead of continuing to beat people over the head with the incident," Polanco said.

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