Kamau Louis | Is Penn truly a home for all?

Will Black students ever be truly accepted at Penn? Earlier this semester, a video surfaced of a non-Black student going on a confusing and nonsensical racist rant about Black people. This incident inspired me to take a closer look at racist incidents at Penn. Last year there was the revelation that alleged members on the light-rowing team made racist remarks, and that one member who regularly used racial slurs allegedly said in reference to a fellow rower that she looked like she came off a “12 Years a Slave ship.” The alleged rower was suspended for just one month from the team and returned without further punishment. Then there’s University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor Amy Wax and her blatantly racist comments on Black students at Penn Carey Law. Along the same vein, there’s been accusations of racism in the Penn Chemistry department from a former student.

As a Graduate student, I am in a bubble of my own program, so I decided to go out and interview a handful of Black undergraduate students on their experience at Penn, attempting to get their perspectives on the racist video and racism at Penn in general.

One Black student from the Wharton School says when they were initially shown the video, they weren't shocked about the contents of the video until they were informed that it was a Penn student. He says they have seen similar incidents like this occur at their high school, so this wasn’t at all a novel experience.

Another Black student I interviewed, from the College, talks about the difficulty of being Black at Penn, like being confused for another Black student to whom she bears no resemblance to. When I mentioned the video and talked about the likelihood of the student not being expelled, she says she was slightly shocked, but overall not surprised that he would not have any serious consequences for his actions.

I spoke to another Black student from the College about the same topic: she was not surprised at all about the contents of the video. In her own words, “people like that exist at Penn,” and this was not a one-off event in her mind. She felt that the University didn’t keep students in the loop in terms of the investigation into the racist video and the punishment for the students involved. She continued on to say the University needs to take more accountability and actually try to protect its Black students.

I posed the question “does Penn really care about its Black students” to every student I interviewed for this article and they all replied “no.” All in all, Black Penn students don’t feel protected or cared about by University administration. The question is, what can the University do to try to regain that trust?

I believe the University can be transparent in the process of disciplinary action against the student. I believe to fully create change and curb behaviors, the University should take a zero tolerance approach. I believe the University should expel students in blatant cases where you simply cannot excuse that type of racism and behavior in any context. I believe the University should provide counseling and create an open forum for the affected students to discuss how the incident impacts them. I believe these are the necessary steps that the University can take to reaffirm it’s stance as an institution where hate is not tolerated.

In all of the previously mentioned incidents, the individuals responsible didn’t face long term consequences. The alleged crew member was not kicked off the team and Wax was only suspended for a year with half-pay but continues to hold tenure.

What the at-large student body can do is much more difficult to say, because this incident didn’t happen in the classroom or any University-affiliated event or activity. But sometimes the most complex problems have the simplest solution. If someone says something racist or offensive, call them out on it, or in the case of the racist video, report them to the University — sometimes severe consequences can make people behave and not act with impunity. Calling out racist behavior is not only the right thing to do but can protect you. In the case of the other student shown in the video who was found not to have said any racial slurs, he did not once try to confront the alleged student during the duration of the racist tirade which leads me to believe this was acceptable behavior in their social circle.

At the end of the day, these people don’t advance Penn’s name or make Penn a welcoming place. It’s the empathetic professor who lets you retake an exam you failed, the kind-hearted staff member who greets you every day and the stressed, sleep-deprived but nonetheless kind fellow student in the back of your 8:30 a.m. class who make Penn a better university.

KAMAU LOUIS is a first-year graduate student studying City Planning from Orlando, Fl. His email is louis3@upenn.edu.