While Joshua Williams was walking in the Donald P. Jacobs Center on May 21, the Communication junior was stopped three times by administrators who asked why he was in the building.
After being asked to show his WildCARD and if he was there for an interview, Williams became “offended” and decided to leave.
As he left, he was stopped by a Northwestern police officer, who interrogated him and had his WildCARD called in.
Williams is black.
Following this episode, he sent an open letter to campus media to alert the NU community of the situation.
The controversy surrounding Williams’s experience featured prominently in a discussion on racial profiling at the Multicultural Center on Wednesday night.
“It’s obvious there are students at Northwestern who don’t share our concerns,” said Loren Balhorn, a Weinberg senior. “We need to let Northwestern students and police know that this kind of treatment is not okay and has no place in a humane progressive society.”
Williams retold his story to a crowd of over 100 students that packed the Multicultural Center to the point where students stood in the doorways and were sitting on the stairways to the second floor.
NU Chief of Police Bruce Lewis and Lieutenant Ronald Godby spoke at the forum on behalf of the NU Police Department. Lewis emphasized that racial profiling is “wrong” and vowed to “root out” the practice.
“We’re not a perfect police department no more than we’re a perfect community,” said Lewis. “Even when our intentions are good, we make mistakes. When we mess up, we mess up, but we step up.”
Audience members asked the police department representatives questions and shared their own experiences with the university police.
Communication junior Miles Drummond spoke about how during his first week as a transfer student last year, he was cornered by two police officers while talking on his cell phone outside his dorm.
The police said they approached Drummond because there was a recent search warrant sent out for a middle-aged, six-foot black man.
When they recognized their mistake, Drummond said they asked him if he was a football player, and said, “Well, you know these type of things happen.”
“Now I do not feel comfortable going to NUPD and turning in a complaint because that was my impression of the police department,” Drummond said.
Medill senior Delena Turman, who is black, spoke of three police officers who stayed at her apartment party for more than 40 minutes, making lewd comments and flirting with partygoers. Turman later discovered that the officers filed two reports 30 minutes apart to “make it seem like they left and came back later.”
With regard to Turman’s story, Lewis called the police officers’ behavior “unprofessional” and “surprising.”
The crowd asked Lewis to share his specific plans to end racial profiling within the police department. Lewis responded that he would “reiterate” the department’s racial profiling policy and “increase communication with the community.”
“I invite recommendations from you, that’s why I’m here,” Lewis said. “Training, policy, holding the officers accountable, engaging the community, that’s what I plan to do.”
