"We keep us safe"

“We keep us safe.”

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The statement is the reasoning provided on the Black Student Union’s Instagram post listing one of their advocacy initiatives, which seeks to put “the community in direct control over campus safety.”

It’s a simple claim, but it presents a radical shift in the definition of what it means to stay safe. More changes like this one are brewing as the University of Washington reevaluates what safety means to different communities on campus. 

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Realigning values, reimagining systems 

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In her Dec. 2, 2021 statement introducing the Campus Community Safety Project, UW President Ana Mari Cauce referred to the effort as a reimagining of “how safety and well-being resources are organized and delivered.” The project aims to make final recommendations by the end of this academic year, according to the webpage that shares project updates.

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That kind of language is being used across the nation, said Sally Clark, director of the Office of Regional & Community Relations at UW. Clark has been appointed to lead the effort at UW. 

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“I think [the project] is meant to reimagine both how the university thinks about safety—who feels safe, where and why,” Clark said, “and what are the services that are intended to be that front line, that initial response regarding safety issues, and sometimes part of a crisis.” 

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Clark said the other main objective of the project is reorganization. The project aims to unify SafeCampus, Emergency Management, and the UW Police Department (UWPD) under a new vice-president level position, according to the project webpage. The goal is to get the new division up and running in September of this year. 

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Clark has been talking to people across all three UW campuses about logistics—such as human resources, finance systems, space planning—but also about the values and mission of the new division in relation to the university as a whole. 

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Centering student leaders and community members

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Clark reports that she has had fruitful conversations with the Alternative Emergency Services (AEmS) University District pilot program. 

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According to a draft proposal from the Evans Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC), which will administer the pilot, AEmS is a student-led initiative that began in fall 2021 that seeks to establish a system that will effectively and quickly respond to behavioral health crises in the University District. 

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Matthew Mitnick, a graduate student in the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance and one of the project leaders, emphasized the importance of centering community members and their familiarity with life on the ground, instead of policy makers in ivory towers.

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“We’re really looking for the community to help us understand, okay, what is the issue, and being very intentional … we need folks who are unhoused, who are experiencing homelessness, we need a diverse group of people who have experienced a disproportionate impact of police brutality to be the ones designing the pilot,” Mitnick said. 

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Meanwhile, Mitnick said he feels the police are not direct stakeholders in this project, particularly UWPD because of the off-campus nature of the pilot.

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“There’s been quite a lot of other engagement and demand and activity around police on campus over the years, and we’re not saying this is a replacement for those efforts,” Mitnick said. “This is an off-campus pilot that we’re trying to patent with the city to make happen and we want this to further support and aid … what activists have been calling for to see on campus.” 

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According to Clark, the Office of the President has approved initial funding for the first steps of this program. A draft budget proposal for the pilot program listed the estimated total cost as $794,796. 

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Agreeing on a timeline 

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“We are about to reach two years in about a month … and none of the demands [we made last year] have been met,” Mawahib Ismail, the current Black Student Union (BSU) vice president of community affairs, said at a BSU rally in May. 

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According to a video posted on the BSU Instagram account on May 20, 2022, students chanted statements including “The people united will never be divided” and “No cops, no prison, total abolition” while walking through campus.

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BSU’s decision to switch tactics to pursuing five “initiatives” rather than demands, centering their commitment to action in the absence of desired responses from the university, shows that the university’s timeline for change falls short of their expectations. 

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Their second demand, originally “Disarm and divest from UWPD,” has since changed to “abolish UWPD,” according to BSU’s Initiative Statement. 

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During the Q&A session of her Annual President’s Address on Oct. 19, 2021, Cauce said that while there is no question that reform is necessary in UW policing, the full abolition of armed police at UW is not an option on the table. While appreciating the issues raised by Decriminalize Seattle and the Black Student Union, Cauce said there needs to be a middle ground where the administration can meet them and their concerns. 

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In response, BSU decided to meet with the president and university administration less often and focus on meeting the internal needs of their community for the time being, according to the Initiative Statement. 

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One thing is clear – both university administration and student advocates from BSU and AEmS understand that the present moment is the culmination of years of history. Change is imminent, even as the different groups represented on campus come to terms with different views of what safety means to them. 

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President Cauce has “been clear that this [Campus Community Safety] project is the result of many years of her own observations of how the university’s public safety services are organized, and also a reflection of wanting to do things differently after the summer of 2020,” Clark said.

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Groups such as Decriminalize UW point to a history of Black student advocacy at UW as the forerunner of their present efforts. According to the Decriminalize UW website, the group traces dissatisfaction with UW administration back to BSU’s founding, and links a letter that BSU sent to then-president Charles Odegaard on May 6, 1968. The letter calls upon the university to focus attention on increased opportunities for Black students to enroll at UW, influence decisions affecting their community, learn about Black studies, and see Black teachers and administrators at UW, among other demands. 

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Clark said that this work is an ongoing process, even after the new division is established.

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“I would say that just figuring out how we recognize institutional racism and how racism has affected how we think about safety is … an ongoing challenge, right?” Clark said. “I mean, we're going to continue to unpack that over time. And that has to be part of the work of not just the division, [but] the whole campus.”