Citing danger to Black people, Cornell faculty approves resolution nixing race from crime alert system

The Faculty Senate at Cornell University passed a resolution to omit race from campus crime alerts.

The resolution — which passed on April 7 — alleges that crime alerts sent by the university put Black students at risk.

“The knowledge that a crime may have been committed by a Black man does not make CRIME ALERT recipients any safer,” it reads, “but instead endangers Black people in the community, reinforcing the common phenomenon of violence against Black people on the grounds that they look like suspected criminals.”

[RELATED: Student newspaper outraged after campus police include suspect’s race in crime alert]

The resolution invoked the Clery Act, which faculty said only “requires CRIME ALERT emails to be sent,” but “does not require raced descriptions of suspects, as evidenced by the legally successful transition away from the practice at Brown University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Michigan.”

The resolution stated that there is a “false association of Blackness with criminality” that “contributes to and justifies the disproportionate and disproportionately violent policing of Black people.”

[RELATED: University of Louisville apologizes for crime alert that failed to be ‘anti-racist’]

Campus Reform reached out to the Dean of the Faculty Senate and asked whether this resolution requires approval by the university president. This article will be updated accordingly. 

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @ashleyecarnahan