After a summer of nationwide protests over systemic racism and police brutality, college students across the country have looked to implement calls for racial justice at a local level by demanding the abolition of university police departments. At Washington University, more than 100 students recently marched across campus demanding the abolition of the Washington University […]

Many have called for an increased police presence to patrol the neighborhoods to make students feel safe. But which students would actually feel safer?

I probably deserve to be in jail right now. This past weekend, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I was stopped and questioned by a police officer for trespassing in an abandoned building because I wanted to take some photographs. Was I in the wrong? Absolutely.

Three weeks ago, Trayvon Martin was walking to his father’s home in a gated community. The black 17-year-old was returning from an errand from a nearby convenience store, carrying only a cell phone, a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea.

The town halls on race relations continued Wednesday as students gathered for a forum at the Student Union Senate. Between 15 and 20 students showed up at the town hall, a product of an SU partnership with Connect 4, and addressed perceptions of race on campus and students’ interactions with the Washington University Police Department (WUPD).

Washington University has formed a fact-finding commission to review the specifics of a University police encounter with a social work student who says he was racially profiled by the police, as well as the results of an internal police investigation that found that a police officer gave the student inaccurate information about why he had been stopped.