It Runs Deep and We Can’t Talk It Out: On Campus Racism and the Murder of Richard Collins III Daniel Greene Follow May 22, 2017 · 10 min read

This past weekend, Sean Urbanski, a white University of Maryland student and member of an ‘Alt-Reich’ Facebook group stabbed to death Richard Collins III, who was about to graduate from nearby Bowie State University. This occurred late at night, but on campus with witnesses. The murderer did nothing to hide his act. “Step left, step left if you know what’s best,” he said to Collins and his friends. And when Collins refused, he was attacked. The FBI is investigating whether the murder constitutes a hate crime. Today, Maryland students continued their graduation ceremonies.

I attended UMD as an undergraduate, worked as a social worker after graduating, and then returned to campus for my doctorate. The state and the school gave me quite a lot, and as both a student and employee I tried to return the favor. Maudlin though it may be, the place is a part of me.

But there is a deep rot on campus, and on many campuses across the country, that prevents so many members of the campus community from building the world they want. Students, staff, and faculty of color feel this racist climate cutting away at everything they do, sometimes slowly, sometimes quite suddenly. These same students and staff have demonstrated, organized, and petitioned administrators for years to change the way the university is run so that they can feel safe, so they can go to work or school without feeling hated or threatened. If they are not ignored outright, they are placated with roundtables, working groups, and ever more calls for ‘dialogue.’ This does not heal the rot or cut it out, it merely presents the rot as one possible path for growth in the marketplace of ideas — and surely we wouldn’t want to offend the rot, or those who embrace it. So the rot sits, deep within our institutions, left to fester, slowly cutting away at the staff and students of color who walk through it. Until it bursts out and consumes someone like 23-year-old Richard Collins III.

There is a pattern here. Let me trace out some pieces of it.

In 1999, a series of racist death threats were mailed to the African American Studies Department, the Black Student Union, and the president of SGA — then a Nigerian-American woman.

In 2007, a noose was found hanging outside the Nyumburu Cultural Center — a gathering place for UMD’s black community.

In 2011, UMD’s Black Faculty and Staff Association confronted the administration with a 56-page report documenting abusive, racist management practices throughout campus, particularly in Facilities Management. Austere fiscal conditions heightened an already repressive workplace, which some campus workers referred to as The Plantation. Some organizational changes resulted, but most administrative recommendations focused on better communication between employees and management, and better training for management.

In 2014, following Ferguson police officer’s Darren Wilson’s non-indictment for the killing of Michael Brown, students occupied the Stamp Student Union. They protested the contradiction between the campus’ avowed commitment to student safety and respect, and the University Police Department’s 16 12-gauge shotguns, 50 M16 rifles, two transport vehicles, and a $65,000 armored truck — all garnered through the Defense Department’s 1033 program. University President Wallace Loh praised students for “advanc[ing] the dialogue on race relations” but the guns remained at the school.

In 2015, a Kappa Sigma fraternity member’s racist, sexist email leaked to the broader public. After discussing planned sexual conquests, the signature line read “Fuck consent.” Students protested the email as a symptom of a racist and sexist campus culture and demanded greater funding for diversity studies (and the faculty who teach these classes). This coincided with demands to rename the football stadium, which then bore the name of former President and avowed segregationist Harry Byrd. It has since been renamed.

Later that year, as campus occupations broke out at the University of Missouri and elsewhere in protest of campus racism, Loh positioned his response to the fraternity email as a national model for resolving these conflicts: Not expelling the student, but reinvesting in the marketplace of ideas through dialogue and diversity trainings.

Almost exactly a year ago, campus police broke up an off-campus party of mostly black students with force, pepper-spraying several, following a fake 911 call. It is worth quoting from the students’ account at length:

“Arguments escalated between police, residents, and witnesses outside of the apartment when everyone was trying to clear the area. The police then proceeded to mace the entire crowd without warning. The first five people to get maced were walking away when it was released as they were told to do. After people were maced, more police officers began laughing and shaking their mace bottles to continue spraying even though people were on the ground screaming and crying. The party goers were scattered at this point. Two people who did not attend the party but were there to help control the situation proceeded with other witnesses to a grassy area away from the apartment in Courtyards. As they proceeded to leave the area back up officers then came from the same direction they were walking. It was then ordered by an officer to ‘Arrest those two’ while given a description of what they were wearing. The two witnesses were forcefully tackled to the ground, while the officers put their knees and elbows in their backs and necks to keep them down. They were then both taken away to cop cars.”

I certainly never heard of a majority-white off campus party, let alone a fraternity party, broken up with such force.

The administration and University Police reviewed the incident, finding that “use of pepper spray to break up a graduation party of predominately black students was justified, but could have been avoided had the officers used a less hostile approach.” Charges against the two arrested students were dropped. One officer was suspended for two weeks. University police mandated a new department-wide implicit bias training. Loh’s public reproach to the police department centered not on the imbalance of power, but the lack of positive dialogue: “There are a lot of people in their daily interactions that are a bit confrontational or raise their voices. And that’s not a crime; it’s just bad manners. But if you do that when you’re wearing a uniform, that has consequences.”

This spring, UMD saw the DC area riven by protests against the Trump administration’s xenophobia — including immigrant raids and the so-called ‘Muslim ban.’ One of the administration’s responses was to unilaterally levy a new fee for international students to pay for their support services, bypassing the usual shared governance structures for creating fees. Students were outraged and Loh responded by throwing the issue back into the marketplace of ideas, saying “If they don’t want to pay it, they don’t have to come to the University of Maryland.”

Since December, white nationalist posters have repeatedly been found hung all over campus.

In April, Terps for Trumps left chalk messages through campus that ranged from the typical “MAGA” to “Deport DREAMers.” Campus activists washed it or away or covered the attacks on their peers with welcoming messages. On Twitter, Loh glossed the event as “Students took to the sidewalk to exchange ideas and engage in debate today. Keep the conversation going #chalkUMD.”

Earlier this month, a noose was found inside the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity house. Loh condemned the incident and reaffirmed the university’s “commitment to core values of human dignity, diversity, inclusiveness, and intellectual freedom.”

And then, this past weekend, Sean Urbanski took out a knife and murdered a stranger from a nearby historically black university, a second lieutenant who had just obtained his airborne certification from the US Army.