As people across the country take to the streets to protest the police forces in their cities, Washington University students are doing the same right here on campus–calling on the University to abolish the Washington University Police Department. Hear from WashU Students for Abolition organizers and the reporters who covered the group’s recent protest in this week’s episode of Editor’s Note.

Editor’s Note Episode 4: “Students call for WUPD abolition” can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Soundcloud.

Graphic by Christine Watridge

Music by Copy Chief JJ Coley.

The transcript of the episode can be found below. It has been lightly edited for clarity:

JADEN SATENSTEIN (0:10-1:13) Across the nation, Black Lives Matter activists are calling to defund the police or even abolish the system as we know it completely. As people across the country take to the streets to protest the police forces in their cities, Washington University students are doing the same right here on campus––calling on the University to abolish the Washington University Police Department.

I’m Multimedia Editor Jaden Satenstein, and you’re listening to Editor’s Note, Student Life’s weekly podcast breaking down our biggest stories with the reporters and editors that covered them. This episode includes mention of sexual assault and police violence.

WashU Students for Abolition, a newly formed group dedicated to ending police presence on campus, held its first protest on Saturday, October 24. More than a hundred students marched from the East End Steps to WUPD headquarters on the South 40. Staff reporter Julia Robbins was on the scene talking to organizers and participants throughout the action.

JULIA ROBBINS (1:14-1:25) The main messaging of the protest was that students want to see the police abolished. They were really stressing that that was their goal.

JS (1:26-1:34): While some people argue for police reform, organizers such as junior Nana Kusi told Robbins that a system as broken as policing cannot be reformed.   

NANA KUSI (1:35-2:03) Abolition can be difficult to grapple with, right? Because our society, our culture, is so deeply carceral. The concepts of the prison system, of policing are so deeply ingrained with how we operate as a culture that it’s difficult to separate or see what life could be like without them. I would like to remind people that there was a time before the institution of policing and prisons, and there will be a time after.

JS (2:04-2:14): So what exactly does abolition mean? I asked Senior News Editor junior Em McPhie, who covered the protest with Robbins, what organizers have told her about what WUPD abolition would look like. 

EM MCPHIE (2:15-3:20) I don’t think that there’s a uniform vision of abolition within the organizers that were at the march Saturday and the students that were at the march Saturday, you know. And I think that that’s something that organizers emphasized was okay. Not everyone needs to have the same perfectly clear vision of what ends up happening. One of the messages that was really, really emphasized was this idea of imagination, imagining a system that works better than the one we currently have. And so, you know, on a very basic level students want to remove funding from WUPD, disarm, defund, disband WUPD and put that funding into other places on campus. One of the more moving moments at the protest on Saturday was a student getting up and talking about their experience with sexual assault and PTSD and how the University didn’t have the resources necessary to support them, but there are 66 full time paid staff that WUPD. They have vehicles, they have weapons.

JS (3:21-3:30): Kusi argued that, even with its abundant resources, WUPD has not reduced many of the common crimes on campus, such as illicit substance use and sexual assault.

NK (3:31-3:55) People do party drugs in the frat houses all the time, they’re known for it. People have dangerous relationships with alcohol. The University knows that this happens, but because they’re able to relegate liability to the fraternities, they would prefer to simply not look at it. If WUPD was hoping to reduce crime, why are we not pursuing or talking about the rates of sexual assault that happen inside of frat houses?

JS (3:56-4:07) Despite organizers’ arguments that policing does not lead to increased public safety, Robbins noted that some students she’s spoken with worry about how WUPD abolition would affect crime rates. 

JR (4:08-4:59): So, one of the big things that’s come up when I’ve spoken to people who are hesitant about abolition on campus and in general with policing is people are worried about upticks in violence that might occur should there no longer be a police presence. And so I’m curious to see if and how WashU for Abolition students plan on discussing ideas with those students and trying to find common ground, if there is any with those students, because I think it’ll be potentially important to try to convince some of those people that the fight for abolition is worth, you know, getting behind, and right now I don’t know how many people are being swayed in their views. So that’ll be an interesting thing to follow as this goes on.

JS (5:00-5:12): When Robbins asked freshman Shalah Russel, who attended Saturday’s protest, what she wants students who didn’t show up to know about the movement for police abolition, Russel emphasized the importance of going beyond social media activism.

SHALAH RUSSEL (5:13-5:41) I want people to know that we see what you’re doing, like we know what’s performative and we know what’s not. And I want them to know that there are actions happening, and though sometimes it can feel like we don’t know what we can do as teenagers, as young adults we feel like sometimes we don’t have enough power to do something, but this in itself, this protest, this march proves that we have the power, we’re driven, we’re organized and that we can start to come up with plans that actually achieve some of our goals. 

JS (5:42-6:06) So how might those plans come to fruition? The University recently formed a public safety committee, which has been tasked with examining the role of policing on and off Wash. U.’s campus.  However, McPhie said that students have criticized how the committee is largely composed of Wash. U. faculty, students and staff, even though people in the surrounding area are also affected by WUPD’s presence.

EM (6:07-6:45) The committee that’s working to make those decisions is primarily made up of Wash. U. students, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members. And I think that a lot of organizers feel that community members are not being represented enough in this conversation because the fact is, especially this year with so many extra upperclassmen being forced to live off campus in surrounding neighborhoods and be living further and further away from campus, there’s a lot of policing happening in these communities that are really not all Wash. U. students.

JS (6:46-7:09) Could this action affect the overall goals and direction of the committee? Executive Vice Chancellor Hank Webber, who oversees the committee, wrote in a statement to Student Life that the committee acknowledges “the concerns that have been raised” about policing. But McPhie’s unsure about the impact the protest will have on the University, especially since Black students have for long tried to make their voices heard about their discomfort with campus policing.

EM (7:10-7:46) To be honest, I have some doubts about the impact that this will have on the bureaucracy of how the University runs, because the fact is that this is not the first time that students have been asking for the role of WUPD to be reevaluated… So, you know, this action on its own, I don’t think that the committee is going to be overly influenced by it, but I also don’t think that this is the last action that’s going to happen calling for WUPD abolition this semester. And I think that this is going to continue to move forward and escalate.

JS (7:47-8:07) There’s no doubt that protests will continue at Wash. U. Just this Wednesday, students gathered outside the Danforth University Center to protest the killing of Walter Wallace Jr. by Philadelphia Police. While WUPD officers blocked off traffic at Saturday’s action, Robbins noted that Wednesday’s protest saw increased police presence. 

JR (8:08-8:55) I think what’s interesting is in the protests that we saw this Wednesday, which is today as I’m saying this, there was even more of a police presence than at last week’s demonstration. And so we’re not seeing as of now, at least a reduction in the amount of police showing up to these events. I think that today’s action might have had more police because it was a protest in the streets that weren’t directly inside, like contained within Wash. U.’s property. So I think they probably were… The goal was maybe to protect students outside of the property. Although Wash. U. students would say they don’t need that protection, so you sort of see both sides of the story in the conversation that’s going on.

JS (9:04-9:10) Editor’s Note will be back next week to break down another developing story. For Student Life Media, I’m Jaden Satenstein.