The University of Minnesota announced Tuesday that it will no longer use racial descriptions to identify suspects in school-issued crime alerts.

The Minneapolis university said in a statement that the change “supports our public safety goals while recognizing the harm that the use of race in crime alerts causes for some members of our community,” The Daily Caller reported.

“Moving forward, the University will use descriptions only when there is sufficient detail that would reasonably help identify specific individual suspects or groups of suspects (e.g., some combination of gender, race, clothing, height, body type, build, accent, tattoos, hair color, facial hair),” the university said.

The goal of removing racial descriptors, the school said, is to “comply with federal law and provide timely, useful, actionable information that community members can use to keep themselves safe, while reflecting the University’s commitment to ensuring a welcoming and respectful campus.”

The announcement comes after an 18-month “campuswide conversation about public safety” in which members of the community “raised concerns about the use of racial descriptors as part of Crime Alerts,” the school said.

“For some, knowing they have all the information available about a crime, including the complete suspect description, makes them feel better informed and increases how safe they feel,” the statement said. “But others — particularly Black men — have shared that suspect descriptions that include race reinforce stereotypes of Black men, create a hostile campus climate, and negatively affect their sense of safety.”

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.