For some children, school is a refuge from pressures and complications in other parts of their lives. Others, however, are never given the opportunity to experience school as a safe haven for learning. Recently, a video of a white police officer at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina assaulting a young black girl and throwing her across the classroom went viral. The girl was allegedly treated so violently for disturbing the class. Though I was appalled and disgusted when I heard the news, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

Cops and security officers — who carry arms and weapons — are normal presences on school and university campuses. We even have them at Northwestern. Although their purpose is to keep the school safe, there are no national standards to train officers who work in schools, and arrests and punishment for minor offenses are more likely to occur with police presence than without it. This over-policing and zero-tolerance policy for children has resulted in a school-to-prison pipeline — school troubles are often students’ first interaction with the United States’ criminal justice system, resulting in more and more altercations. More often than not, these students are black.

Black students are three times more likely to be suspended than white students, and black girls are suspended at higher rates than most males. Children are suspended and arrested for vague offenses such as “profanity” and “willful defiance” (or essentially, talking back). The black population is criminalized from such a young age, and black children are made to understand nobody is going to help them when the state assaults and brutalizes them while pretending to “protect.”

At Spring Valley High, one of the girl’s classmates spoke up for her rights, and she, in turn, was arrested as well. The officer in question, Ben Fields, has subsequently been fired, but he is only one out of the thousands of police officers stationed in schools across the country. And firing Fields is not enough — he hasn’t been arrested, and the structure of police brutality in the United States has not changed. How many black students have been dragged off their chairs to the floor by cops with no video evidence? How many children are sent to the juvenile justice system for minor offenses? This cannot continue — this cannot be the way the United States treats people, much less our children.

One man, who murdered nine black people in a South Carolina church in cold blood, was given Burger King by police officers after they safely arrested him, but countless black folks are violently assaulted — or even killed — by police officers. There is undeniably a double standard when it comes to the criminal justice system. Black children must be treated with respect and understanding, just as their peers are. Children are vulnerable and still developing, so they need to understand they are worth something. Being suspended or arrested for minor offenses sends these children the opposite message.

Over-policing in schools harms students. Rather than learning how to effectively deal with children who talk back or have their cellphones out in class, teachers are now given the option to simply call school police officers who can deal with the problem as they see fit. School should be a place where children feel safe. Instead, so many feel constantly threatened and criminalized. This criminalization facilitates the culture of police brutality and over-imprisonment of black folks that exists throughout the United States, and we need to organize against it.

Sanjana Lakshmi is a Weinberg junior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.