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Broken windows on campus: Policing and racism in higher education

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Broken windows on campus: Policing and racism in higher education

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BROKEN WINDOWS ON CAMPUS:
POLICING AND RACISM IN HIGHER EDUCATION

by

Jude Paul Matias Dizon

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(URBAN EDUCATION POLICY)

August 2022

Copyright 2022 Jude Paul Matias Dizon

ii

Dedication

To my mother for her unconditional love.
To my nephews for their unbridled joy.
To my family for their constant support.
To those who have lost their lives at the hands of the police, I hope that we who remain can
honor you and have the courage to make this world free from harm and violence.

iii

Acknowledgments

“Overqualified but underrepresented.”
—Senior Weekend 2005

“I was told ‘be bold’/whether platinum or gold/keep it solid/do the knowledge/til I reach my
goal…Say, ‘I am’ (‘I am’) ‘Somebody’ (‘Somebody’)”
—Jurassic 5

This journey has been in the making over the last 17 years. In the spring of my senior
year in high school, I was admitted to UC Berkeley and invited to attend an event called Senior
Weekend, hosted by the Pilipino Academic Student Services (PASS). PASS was a student
organization dedicated to the recruitment and retention of Filipinos in higher education, founded
to address the obstacles to educational attainment that arose in a post-Bakke and Prop 209
California. During the three-day visit, I was surrounded by high achieving, intellectually-driven
peers who looked like me and came from similar working-class backgrounds. In addition to
talking to us prospective students about their college experiences, I sat through my first political
education workshops. I learned that my acceptance to Berkeley was not just a result of mere luck
or hard work but rather the culmination of ancestors creating a pathway through unequal
conditions for me to have the privilege to attend college. I listened to older Filipino students
share that our identity, our families, and our community mean something more than just a check
box label, but come with a history of overcoming struggles and thriving despite them. These
were transformative lessons that I have put into praxis throughout my higher education and
student affairs career.
I had no idea that my subsequent involvement in PASS and the development of my
political consciousness would fundamentally set me on a life path committed to lifting up
students like myself. I cannot thank PASS and the bridges community enough for providing the
space for me to develop self-worth and values that I believed in enough to lead a life with the

iv

conviction of those values. They were my first teachers of educational injustice and the ones who
helped me find the power I had as an individual to make change, but more so, experience the
power we had as a community to demand changes that could have a lasting impact. PASS staff
2007-2008, I have yet to work in a collective as amazing as ours. Thank you for teaching me
how to lift as you climb through your example of how you lived your lives and did the work to
recruit and retain our community.
Specifically, for the dream that I could be somebody in academia, to represent my family
and community, I owe concrete thanks to Catherine Ceniza Choy, Eric Pido, Norene Ybarra, and
Trisha J. Tiamzon. Catherine was the first Filipina professor I encountered in my life and one of
my first teachers of Filipino American history and culture. As Filipino graduate students in
Ethnic Studies, Eric and Norene further made the idea that I could “ be smart” accessible to a
still-developing young Jude. I literally would not have pursued graduate school had it not been
for Trisha role modeling the path for how to do this academic thing and sharing resources,
whether she meant to or not. I wrote a senior thesis because Trisha wrote one. I earned a summer
undergraduate research fellowship after learning about this program from Trisha. I applied to the
Institute for Recruitment of Teachers (IRT), which paid for my graduate school applications
(twice!), because Trisha told me about this resource that she used to pursue a doctorate in
sociology. Trisha, thank you for accepting me as your ading and always being your authentic self
with me. Despite any distance and needed self-retreat, I’ll always be looking for you to share
company with me.
My official induction into the student affairs profession began at the University of
Vermont. Dr. Dorian L. McCoy helped me heal from my previous wounds in academia and
guided my first research project on student of color transition and retention in extremely white

v

institutions. Thank you, Dorian, for role modeling authenticity in academia and supporting my
Ph.D. application process. UVM staff and HESA alumni—Beverly Colston, Nick Negrete,
Patricia Nguyen, and more—your friendships and guidance helped me become a better student
affairs educator than I would have been without knowing you. To my cohort—Nicole Palmer,
Jesenia Gervacio, Jilliene Johnson, and Ray Mattila— I am incredibly grateful for the love we
had for one another during our UVM days and my continued friendship with each of you since.
My University of Maryland family was my rock during my first four years as a full-time
professional in my dream job. Janelle S. Wong and I began our UMD journey together, and I
could not have asked for a better partner in advancing the needs of Asian American and Pacific
Islander students. The friendship we developed sustained me, and I continue to be blessed with
our joyful, insightful, and honest conversations. To have worked alongside Grace Lee, Jessica
Lee, Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, Gem Daus, Shige Sakurai, the dream team of Katrina Dizon and
Kai Kai Mascarenas, the staff in the Office of Multicultural Involvement and Community
Advocacy and others involved in racial justice work at Maryland was a pure blessing through
and through. You have all taught me foundational lessons on how to show up for students and
champion justice.
My dissertation was inspired directly by the amazing students I was beyond blessed to
have worked alongside. Lamontre Randall, Johanna DeGuzman, and Andrew Mayton in
particular thank you for sharing your stories with me, for trusting me to care for your pain and
anger, and for inspiring me to consider the issues in campus policing. Because of you, I began a
journey that started with me calling out my complicity in campus policing and eventually writing
a dissertation on this racist practice. I hope that the work I have done and will do honors the lives
of those who have been hurt by policing and can contribute to a police-free world.

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For helping me begin the development of my academic identity and getting a head start
on academic writing/publishing, I must thank OiYan Poon, Julie J. Park, and Sam Museus. To
work with three highly esteemed Asian American scholars is a rare privilege. Sam, thank you for
including me on a project that eventually became my first peer-reviewed article. I appreciate
your time to meet with me when I visited Boston in 2011 and asked to collaborate with you.
Julie, I cannot thank you enough for the consistent mentorship, writing opportunities, and
recommendation letters. OiYan, my longest friend and co-conspirator. I would never have
thought that our meeting at the 2006 Students of Color Conference at UC Berkeley would have
led to a 16-year and counting friendship. There’s so much to say, but know that I treasure our
bond.
At the University of Southern California, the wonderfully smart, compassionate, and
supportive Ph.D. student community sustained me and helped me become the scholar I am today.
To the best teaching assistants—Drs. Adrian Trinidad, David Velasquez, Liane Hypolite, and
Theresa Hernandez—thank you for bringing your full selves and consistently encouraging me to
believe in myself. Dr. Román Liera—ever a role model and solid friend; I can’t wait to hang out
in New Jersey! Dr. Cheryl Ching—thanks for that first walk and talk on campus. I appreciate our
continued friendship and food adventures. Dr. Cynthia Villareal—I could not have been more
blessed to have you as a peer mentor. You are family. I’m here for you as we go through the
tenure-track together. Dr. Tasminda Dhaliwal—I will always treasure being part of the dream
team of the policy class in Spring 2019. I am grateful for our friendship and our check-ins during
the pandemic. Dr. Marissiko Wheaton—simply put, you are goals. Dr. Elizabeth Park—a friend
through and through. Thank you for your constant support. Marissiko and Elizabeth, there’s no
one else I would work with to start an affinity group with, even though I felt that I needed a

vii

break from being a diversity worker. I am so proud of the growth of the AAPI Ph.D. student
collective. Dr. Clare Baek, thank you for leading this group with me for two years! Kaylan
Baxter: <3 I am fortunate to have met many at the Pullias Center for Higher Education. Thank
you to Dr. Adrian Huerta, Dr. Maria Romero-Morales, Jordan Harper, soon-to-be Dr. Carlos
Galan, Dr. Suneal Kolluri, Dr. Antar Tichavakunda, Maritza Salazar, Christine Rocha, and Elif
Yucel for our work together and conversations that made life fun along the way.
Many individuals with the Rossier School of Education have contributed significantly to
my doctoral journey. Dr. William Tierney, thank you for taking me on and pushing me to write
and research. Dr. Julie Marsh, co-teaching with you was one of my top highlights. Thank you for
hooding me. Laura Romero—your guidance throughout the last five years was critical for my
retention. Paloma Saenz—we just get each other, and I love that about our friendship. Thank you
for being the realest. Dr. Estela Bensimon, thank you for being receptive to my interest to learn
from you and the progressive work done at the Center for Urban Education.
Dr. Mariko Pegs—I will never forget your daily encouragement texts during my
qualifying exam and inviting me into the family academic motto. I will always strive to be a boss
and have you to look at as a role model.
Completing the dissertation was required to earn the doctorate. Dr. Adrianna Kezar,
thank you for taking me on as your student. I treasure the meals and retreats at your house and
will do my best to remember all the lessons you have taught me. If I can work as well as you, I
know I will be successful in academia. Thank you for believing in my work and supporting me
wholeheartedly. Dr. Shaun Harper, thank you for your encouragement and for seeing the broader
applications of my work. Dr. Ben Carrington—hands down one of the most brilliant professors I
have ever had in my life. I value the opportunity I had to learn with you on everything from the

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lessons of Stuart Hall to the Black radical tradition. My research benefitted from the wisdom and
intellect of this committee.
Drs. Eupha Jeanne Daramola, Deborah Southern, and Nicole Yates—my cohort and
support from day one. I am so glad we had one another to rely on throughout the last five years. I
could not have gotten through this degree without each of you. I look forward to our future
conference meetups and seeing Nikki’s rise to stardom.
Over the years, living in different countries and coasts, I have learned how important
friends are to survive and thrive. My constants in the Bay Area- Stephen Downey, Vaughn
Villaverde, Camille Guiriba, Diana Halog, and Cristal Fiel—I always have you all to come home
to and I love you very much for the years of friendship. To have friends from Cal here in Los
Angeles has been a blessing: Thank you Mary Ann Chua for our adventures, Ate MaAn Roque
for constant paamilya love, and Casey Gin for enduring brotherhood.
Completing a doctorate during the COVID-19 pandemic was no easy task. With all the
hardships and losses in the world, I am grateful that I had the resources and blessings to thrive.
Most of all, I am thankful for meeting Kristine Jan Espinoza. My life became bigger and better
because of Kristine. Amidst the world’s tragedies, Kristine brought love, joy, and adventure,
always selflessly and always genuinely. I love you, Kristine.
I would not be a doctor, a professor, or anything for that matter without my family. Gigi
Villanueva and Maria Calpe—I aspired to go to college because of you, and I strive to be a better
human being because of the love I see you practice with others, including me. Thank you for
always being there for me. Thank you to Randy Villanueva, Cruz Villanueva, Lucas Villanueva,
Maynard Patacsil, Gabriella Grace Patacsil, Jessica May Patacsil, Sheila and Lucy Wang, Erlinda
Etcubañas, Janelle Dizon and family, Michael Brandon Dizon, Alexander Jade Dizon and family,

ix

Vanessa Dizon, Elaine Dizon, Helen and Jun Flake, Rodney Flake, Melanie Macaspac, Fe and
Johnny Delfin, Ian Delfin and family, Virma Dizon, Micael Dizon, and Pie Comandante for
everything life-giving that kept me motivated and feeling loved during the last five years. Our
family has had tremendous losses and incredible joys during this time, and I am glad we have
supported one another through it all. I love you.
My brother, Justin Arieus Dizon—I love you beyond measure, and although you may not
believe me, you are my role model. I am grateful for the growth in our brotherhood during the
last five years. I have learned so much from you about how to get business done and hold it
down for family. I hope to be as talented as you someday. Monique Bunagan, thank you for
always welcoming me and role modeling how to be a fantastic parent. Arieus Rook—I love you
and will always be there for you, my sweet angel godson. Miles Chance—the best blessing in our
family to date! I am doing my best to help make this world safe for both of you.
To my mom, Paula Matias Dizon. There are not enough words to express my gratitude
for a lifetime of love and support. Mom, you have always loved me unconditionally. I am glad
that we have grown closer during the last five years. From our trips to your visits to LA, life is
always better with you around, mom. My degree is your achievement. I will always make sure
you are taken care of and loved, just as you have done for me and our family.
I owe so much to many as I completed this dissertation and degree. I have forgotten some
names here, but this only reflects a temporary loss of memory. With what I do in the future, I
hope to make all of you proud and that my work does good for the world. I am thankful to God
for blessing me with all of you and for always reminding me that I am loved and have a purpose.
To Him, all the glory.

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Table of Contents

Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ iii
List of Tables .............................................................................................................................. xiv
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. xiv
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ xv
Preface: Uneasy Recollections .................................................................................................. xvi
Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
Research Focus and Question ......................................................................................................... 3
Literature Review............................................................................................................................ 6
Policing in Higher Education ...................................................................................................... 6
Policing in K-12 Schools............................................................................................................. 9
Engaging the Limitations in Research ...................................................................................... 12
Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................................. 13
Campus Policing as a Racial Project ......................................................................................... 14
Designing a Critical Case Study ................................................................................................... 17
Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 18
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 20
Overview of Dissertation .............................................................................................................. 21
Chapter 2: Beyond Crime Control: Exploring the Racial and Disciplinary Power of
Campus Policing.......................................................................................................................... 23
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................... 26
Campus Police, Safety, and Institutional Priorities ................................................................... 26
Social Consequences of Campus Police.................................................................................... 28
Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................................. 31
Methods......................................................................................................................................... 34
Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 35
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 37
Trustworthiness ......................................................................................................................... 38
Findings......................................................................................................................................... 39
Policing Effects ......................................................................................................................... 40
Normalizing the Police .......................................................................................................... 41

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Creating a Criminalized Class ............................................................................................... 43
Protecting Privilege ............................................................................................................... 46
Policed Relations ....................................................................................................................... 48
Policing Care ......................................................................................................................... 49
Contradictions in Community Engagement .......................................................................... 53
Disciplining Race and Resistance .......................................................................................... 55
Discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 58
Recommendations for Research ................................................................................................... 62
Recommendations for Practice ..................................................................................................... 63
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 64
Chapter 3: Black Undergraduate Men and the Racial Boundaries of Campus Policing ..... 65
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................... 67
Campus Policing ....................................................................................................................... 67
Racism in Higher Education ..................................................................................................... 69
Policing, Racism, and Higher Education .................................................................................. 70
Conceptual Framework ................................................................................................................. 73
Research Design............................................................................................................................ 76
Participants ................................................................................................................................ 78
Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 80
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 81
Trustworthiness ......................................................................................................................... 82
Case Context ................................................................................................................................. 84
Major Themes ............................................................................................................................... 87
Criminalizing the Local Community......................................................................................... 87
Navigating the Dangerous Black Male Stereotype ................................................................... 90
Self-Presentation as Threat Avoidance ..................................................................................... 92
Safety in Community ................................................................................................................ 94
Campus Policing as a Racial Boundary Project ............................................................................ 96
Research and Practice Implications ............................................................................................ 100
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 102
Chapter 4: Campus Police Responses to Racism: A Materialist Examination of Racial
Ideologies ................................................................................................................................... 104
Literature Review........................................................................................................................ 107

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Officer Perspectives on Campus Policing ............................................................................... 108
Police Officers’ Racial Beliefs ................................................................................................ 110
Conceptual Framework: Racial Ideology and Racial Frames..................................................... 114
Research Design.......................................................................................................................... 117
Study Site and Sample............................................................................................................. 118
Data Collection ........................................................................................................................ 121
Data Analysis .......................................................................................................................... 122
Trustworthiness ....................................................................................................................... 124
Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 125
Findings....................................................................................................................................... 126
From Disbelief to Recognizing Inequality: Responses to Allegations of Racism .................. 127
Individual Experience and Intent ............................................................................................ 132
Organizational Commitments to Diversity and Equality ........................................................ 135
Community Constraints........................................................................................................... 138
Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 142
Interacting Racial Ideologies ................................................................................................... 143
Material Foundations of Racial Ideology ................................................................................ 145
Implications for Research ........................................................................................................... 149
Implications for Policy and Practice ........................................................................................... 150
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 154
Chapter 5: Discussion ............................................................................................................... 155
Revisiting Methods ..................................................................................................................... 157
Revisiting Theory........................................................................................................................ 161
Synthesis of Findings .................................................................................................................. 164
An Abolitionist Reflection on Implications ................................................................................ 168
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 171
References .................................................................................................................................. 172
Appendix A. Officer Interview Protocol .................................................................................... 198
Appendix B. Threat Officer/Crisis Support Protocol ................................................................. 200
Appendix C. Student affairs protocol ......................................................................................... 202
Appendix D. Faculty protocol..................................................................................................... 204
Appendix E. Student Protocol..................................................................................................... 205

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Appendix F. Descriptive Codes .................................................................................................. 206
Appendix G. First-level Analytic Questions ............................................................................... 209
Appendix H. Racial Frame Coding Scheme ............................................................................... 212

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List of Tables

Table 2.1. Participant Sample by Role, Gender, and Race………………………………………36
Table 2.2. Analytic Questions……………………………………………………………………38
Table 3.1. Participant Demographics…………………………………………………………….79
Table 4.1. DPS Personnel by Racial Identity, Gender, and Role……………………………….120
Table 4.2. Interview Sample Members by Racial Identity, Gender, and Role…………………120

List of Figures

Figure 1.1. Racist Disciplinary Power Framework………………………………………………16
Figure 4.1. Percentage of students reporting personal experience of racism…………………...121

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Abstract

Campus police are ubiquitous: 95% of postsecondary institutions operate their own
campus police department (Reaves, 2015). The rapid growth of campus policing in the last 50
years has coincided with rising enrollments of students from racially diverse and immigrant
communities. Campus policing is generally framed as an instrument of crime control, yet this
may overshadow how underrepresented students are surveilled and punished in ways similar to
the policing of communities of color in broader society. In three empirical papers, I applied
concepts from critical race theory, sociology, and ethnic studies to examine interview data from
campus police officers, staff, administrators, faculty, and students. The first study compares all
four groups’ perceptions of campus policing. The findings illustrate how campus constituents
perceived policing was justified through exploiting fear of victimization and constructing
racialized meanings of who was a criminal and who was to be protected—what I call policing
effects. The findings also described how campus police were embedded into structures of the
university that expanded their power and authority to determine how campus constituents related
to one another and the institution, what I refer to as policed relations. In the second study, I
examine the effects of campus policing further through the experiences of Black undergraduate
men. I found that campus policing operates as a racial boundary project by shaping Black
student social life to remain safe from police violence. In the third study, I examine how campus
police officers respond to allegations of racism, finding that their racial beliefs are the product of
a dialectical interaction between social location and structure, shaping how campus police
negotiate reform efforts within an unequal social structure. Ultimately, I argue that campus
policing functions as a race-making process that employs institutionally sanctioned force and
violence to shape structural positions and social identities according to a racial hierarchy.

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Preface: Uneasy Recollections

I.
On May 26, 2020, I woke up in anticipation of my dissertation proposal defense. The sun
was rising into a clear blue sky. To reduce the feelings of isolation after two months of social
distancing and get ahead of the nerves that would eventually come, I set off to Griffith Park for a
hike around 7:30 am. The only route I was familiar with would take two hours to complete, an
even five-mile loop that culminated at Dante’s View.
The defense went off without a hitch, and I was a doctoral candidate by mid-afternoon. I
celebrated first with a run, an activity I have never had to fear doing. My brother sent over Thai
food for dinner, which I paired with a bottle of Barolo from Trader Joe’s (a recommendation
from fellow doctoral student Tom DePaola). A zoom session with my brother and cousins ended
the day with laughter, and the best connection wi-fi had to offer.
It was not until May 27
th
that I had the time and space to catch up on world events. I
learned that George Floyd had been murdered the night of May 25
th
at the knee of a Minneapolis
police officer. Within the limits of shelter-in-place orders, I sat alone in my apartment, shaking
with anger while scrolling through social media feeds. The next day, Charles Davis, a friend and
colleague, e-mailed a link to a google document to join him in penning an op-ed, “More Colleges
Should Divest from the Institution of Policing,” published on Insider Higher Ed the following
week. My subsequent response was to join a rally that began at Pan Pacific Park on May 30
th
.
After a couple of hours, I headed back to my apartment and took a nap. I woke up in the late
afternoon to sirens and a live news stream informing me that the protest had escalated, LAPD
cars were on fire, and the city was under curfew.

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II.
The above entry was the first time I recollected the context in which this dissertation
study officially began. The first couple of months into the COVID-19 pandemic were unsettling.
Before George Floyd’s murder, I reflected on the lives of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery,
both killed mercilessly by a system and culture founded on anti-Blackness. Beginning a
dissertation study focused on policing and racism within twenty-four hours of yet another death
of an innocent, one that would solidly assert the question of police abolition at the center of
public discourse, had a perverse kind of auspiciousness. Conducting this study in the last two
years and hearing people tell me variations of “your work is so important right now!” has
consistently made me wince. Even worse, I have had to convey that my interest in policing and
racism in higher education was in the making before 2020, before another wave of Black death
circulated and recirculated through the media, a Charybdis for our society.
III.
This study has its starting point at an earlier wave of Black death. Michael Brown’s
murder and the uprisings in Ferguson that followed reached the University of Maryland, College
Park, where I was a coordinator in the multicultural center. Students of color were activated and
beginning to examine the violence of policing in their immediate context, the university’s
Department of Public Safety (DPS). Johanna DeGuzman, a Filipina undergraduate and Director
of Diversity Initiatives in the Student Government Association, sought me out for advice as she
began an effort to establish a student advisory board for the DPS. Andrew Mayton, a leader with
the Asian American Student Union (AASU), was the first person to educate me about the federal
1033 program, which loaned out military-grade weapons to police departments across the nation,

xviii

including DPS. The AASU had joined a coalition of student organizations committed to
“demilitarizing UMD.”
These students I had come to know as their advisor and teacher had begun a critical
learning moment for me. As a student affairs educator, I was always socialized to be familiar
with the campus police department and call them whenever needed for any kind of emergency
and crisis—including non-crime-related incidents. I had never questioned this directive even as I,
for years, had an implicit understanding that the general policing apparatus was not for my
community and me. I never questioned the police violence that occurred on any of the college
grounds I spent time on or ever pondered what might be the low-level trauma that comes from
just seeing a uniformed officer on the way to class or an event. Indeed, my own racial identity
and specific lived experiences have a part, as I did not grow up fearing a likely police encounter.
However, I have always kept a distance due to distrust. Perhaps I conflated all police as the same
but somehow came to see campus police as different due to my professional socialization in the
student affairs profession.
I became more disturbed with my ignorance and complicity in policing when Lamontre
Randall showed up at my office door in late January 2015. Lamontre was a senior and a Black
man from Baltimore. For as long as I knew Lamontre, he always wore a blazer. The previous
week, Lamontre was on campus during winter break and wore a hoodie rather than his usual
“smart casual” look. He was stopped by an officer and questioned about his presence on campus.
Even after showing his campus ID and stating that he was enrolled in a winter intersession
course, the officer continued to detain him and eventually arrested Lamontre. He was kept at the
jail for several hours without much of a reason being given to him. Eventually, he was let go and
told that a student, a white woman, had lied to DPS and accused Lamontre of stealing her phone.

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Lamontre shared his experience with me in a low, even voice. Throughout, I could hear
the suffering he experienced, which was coupled with my pain at thinking about the possibility
of a worse outcome for Lamontre, who was a few months shy of graduation. The incident made
clear to me that I could no longer passively accept a standard that required me to think of the
campus police as colleagues who shared my commitment to support students of color to succeed
in higher education. I could no longer continue working for racial justice without looking at my
complicity in structures of violence that constitute the university.
IV.
As an immigrant and first-generation college student from a working-class family, I was
raised to be the best student I could be in hopes that education would lead to a good job and
financial stability—a better life than the one my parents chose to leave in the Philippines. I
adopted this dream for myself. At UC Berkeley, ethnic studies courses and activism in student of
color organizations exposed me to the histories and issues facing communities of color. My
organizing throughout college was focused on increasing access to higher education for students
of color. I continued this effort as a student affairs educator committed to retaining students of
color, helping them develop a critical consciousness, and pushing against exclusionary
institutional policies and practices. I did the work believing that higher education could be better,
could be “culturally validating” and “culturally engaging.”
In Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader, Long Bui (2016) asks: “How do the life-affirming
and value-added privileges of getting an education loop back into the political economy of
death?” (p. 163). The question is important for higher education scholars because I see that much
of our work is predicated on how we can improve colleges and universities. This work involves
identifying promising interventions and documenting harmful behaviors and policies. I think that

xx

the guiding premise of change is “how can we take what we do and change it to make it better
for marginalized populations?” How can curriculum, advising, programs, and leadership all be
more inclusive, more culturally responsive, and done in a way that welcomes all students? Bui’s
question has led me to ask: What should we stop doing altogether? What harm are we doing and
why? How are colleges and universities also sites for violence? Rather than fixing, what should
be eliminated and never replaced?
V.
Researching policing and racism in higher education has been uneasy. Doing a
dissertation during the COVID-19 pandemic has been, in many ways, painful and horrible—
especially when living alone and listening to stories of trauma with policing. I think my unease
comes from the challenge to theorize and academically justify pain. I have told many colleagues
and friends of color, several of who identify as Black, that I research campus policing and race, a
topic that is curiously “understudied,” and so there’s a need. I have felt uncomfortable conveying
this to people who understand on a visceral level the harms of policing and do not need an
academic explanation to justify its interrogation. I am extremely uncomfortable that people think
my research is now a hot topic because of the current political moment.
In the pages that follow, I have tried my best to synthesize research, current politics, and
the lives of folks who have been impacted by campus police. I have tried my best to be a good
researcher and produce something that can benefit the many students who navigate college
campuses in which they can be detained, shot, and arrested.

1

Chapter 1: Introduction
On August 9, 2014, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael
Brown. Brown was 18 years old, a high school graduate, and set to attend the for-profit Vatterott
College. The incident galvanized several months of community protests against police violence
in St. Louis County. Allies from all over the country supported the activists, including organizers
with the rapidly growing Black Lives Matter movement (Chang, 2016). The act of police
violence drew federal attention and resulted in a Department of Justice (DOJ; 2015)
investigation, which revealed a systematic pattern of unconstitutional stops, arrests, and other
practices that disproportionately harmed Black residents. Policing in Ferguson, like in New York
City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and similar racially diverse urban metro areas, takes after the broken
windows approach (Howell, 2016).
The broken windows thesis asserts that crime prevention results from disorder: one
broken window will result in more broken windows and encourage minor crimes (Kelling &
Wilson, 1982). While broken windows policing has been positioned as an alternative to mass
incarceration, it has instead resulted in decades of “intense regulation of low-income
communities of color as prisonlike spaces themselves” (Vitale & Jefferson, 2016, p. 158; see
also Harcourt, 2001). Moreover, for communities of color, the death resulting from broken
windows policing reaffirms that “instances of police violence reveal the underlying relationship
between marginalized communities and the state… a relationship where violence is used by the
police to silence, isolate, control, and repress low-income people and young people of color”
(We Charge Genocide, 2014, p. 1). Rather than asking for reforms, critical voices have called out
the very existence of the police as a form of state-sanctioned violence undergirded by anti-Black
racism and capitalism (Black Lives Matter, n.d.; Black Youth Project 100, n.d.; Vitale, 2018).

2

In a parallel fashion, universities have come under scrutiny for deploying campus police
to protect institutional capital and exclude marginalized populations. Universities have protected
profits through armed responses to protests for tuition affordability and fair compensation for
graduate student employees (Campbell, 2015; Ibarra, 2020). Scholars have documented campus
policing as a tool in university expansion and urban development (Baldwin, 2021; Diner, 2017).
Such actions are unsurprising as the neoliberal logic of private capital in higher education
requires the criminalization of dissent and the legitimized use of violence (Godrej, 2014).
Policing and institutional preservation also have a racialized dimension. Following student of
color protests in the 1960s for Ethnic Studies and greater access, universities responded by
establishing full-fledged police forces (Ferguson, 2017). The criminalization of racial difference
persists through the policing of everyday campus life. In 2018, Scott Jaschik (2018) penned a
summary of incidents in which campus police were called to remove people who allegedly did
not belong—all people of color, current and prospective students, and staff. In these instances,
non-white bodies signaled an imminent threat to the safety of white bodies, whose voices were,
by all accounts, taken seriously by campus police. Perhaps these alleged outsiders had broken a
window to enter the campus.
With such issues in mind, college students have joined the national discourse on police
misconduct and violence, demanding safe and inclusive campuses. In 2015, students of color
from 76 universities and colleges issued a list of demands, which included required diversity
training for police officers, ending the over-surveillance of Black students, accountability for
racist behavior, and the creation of police oversight boards composed of campus constituents
(The Demands, 2015). In this first wave of activism, campus police-focused demands were
generally reformist. Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, the level of critical

3

consciousness regarding policing and racism pushed movements, on- and off-campus, to call for
police divestment and abolition (Sainato, 2020). Rather than reform existing structures, students
began to recognize the need for fundamental transformation to address institutionalized racial
violence. The demands have forced campus leaders to consider the degree of sanctioned
surveillance and violence disproportionately imposed on Black students and marginalized
populations.
The prevalence of policing across college and university campuses today is justified by a
discourse of campus crime, safety, and mass violence (Rasmussen & Johnson, 2009). These are
undoubtedly relevant issues. However, higher education research lacks substantial evidence to
link police to increased safety and student success. For a related example, scholarship on k-12
schools demonstrates that policing and zero-tolerance disciplinary practices facilitate
disproportionate exposure to the carceral state among Black and Latinx youth (Skiba et al., 2014)
and detrimentally impact experiences in school and educational outcomes (Legewie & Fagan,
2019; Peguero et al., 2015). Higher education scholars have yet to investigate the social
consequences of campus police, especially on issues of racism and racial inequity. Perhaps this is
because police presence has the “same familiarity and easy intelligibility as other elements of our
everyday world” on campus (Garland, 2001, p. 1). Rather than accepting the status quo, scholars
can contend with the unexplored area of campus police to help ensure campus environments do
not replicate the over-policing and surveillance of communities of color.
Research Focus and Question
My dissertation investigates the connection between campus police and institutional
racism in higher education. Campus police departments are, by their name, police units
employed by a university or college, staffed by a combination of sworn and nonsworn officers to

4

protect campus property, adjacent areas, and the students, staff, and faculty who live and work at
the campus. For this dissertation, campus policing refers to policies and practices used to
“enforce various types of rule and customs that promoted a defined order” in a university setting
(Brodeur, 2010, p. 130). Campus policing is, in part, the responsibility of uniformed officers,
who are the focus of chapter four. However, I also consider campus policing to be a “plural
enterprise in which many agents can be involved,” such as staff who collaborate with the
formally designated police (Brodeur, 2010, p. 21).
Studies of policing and higher education document racial inequities in various outcomes
(e.g., arrests, graduation rates) and are consequences of institutional racism (Carter et al., 2019;
Kovera, 2019). I refer to institutional racism as “standard operating procedures (intentional and
unintentional) that hurt members of one or more races in relation to members of the dominant
race” (Scheurich & Young, 2002, p. 224). Scholars link racist ideologies to the formation and
ongoing development of institutions, such as higher education and policing, which in turn shape
individual actions and interpersonal dynamics (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Feagin, 2006; Haney Lόpez,
2000). My approach to studying policing and institutional racism in higher education focused on
the interplay between policing practices and campus constituents’ perceptions of campus life.
This dissertation is composed of three academic papers to investigate the perspectives of
campus constituents—students, faculty, staff, administrators, and campus police officers— who
enacted campus policing and those at the receiving end. For each paper, I used a combination of
critical theories and concepts drawn from sociology, ethnic studies, and cultural studies to
investigate racialized dynamics in campus policing. Scholars note the lack of theorizing on the
general policing apparatus (Correia & Wall, 2021; Ristroph, 2018), which may be attributed to
the taken-for-granted understanding of policing as a crime control tool and more interest in

5

criminal law and incarceration (Alexander, 2012; Murakawa, 2014). This dissertation
conceptualizes campus policing as a racialized system of control that reflects its specific context
and larger racial ideologies that constitute U.S. society. This dissertation is well-positioned to
inform higher education policymakers, leaders, practitioners, and researchers about the social
consequences of campus policing that have been neglected for the sake of avoiding legal
liability. The study is premised on this overarching question:
How does policing (actions of the campus officers and partnering staff/administration)
shape individual experiences (among campus constituents: faculty, students) and
relationships between groups (campus constituents and police/staff/administration) along
racial lines on a college campus?
I conducted a critical case study (Patton, 2015) of one historically white, private research-
intensive university with one of the largest campus police departments in the U.S. Interview and
documentary data were analyzed to understand how campus constituents perceived campus
policing reinforced racial difference and unequal power dynamics (paper 1) and student life
(paper 2). I also focused on the variation among campus police officer perspectives and
experiences in serving a racially diverse campus community (paper 3).
In the remainder of this introduction to the three empirical papers reporting my findings, I
provide an overview of policing in education to argue for the need to examine campus policing
(a higher education phenomenon) as a racialized practice rather than a neutral tool limited to
crime control. This is a necessary direction for future research to advance how racist ideologies
continue to permeate the development policies, procedures, and practices in higher education. It
is also important to build upon the school/prison nexus literature (Annamma, 2017; Nolan, 2011)
and identify the links between higher education and the carceral state, a broader research

6

imperative that has been neglected (Johnson & Dizon, 2021). I then summarize the main
elements of the conceptual framework that guided the analysis of campus policing as a racialized
phenomenon. This is followed by an overview of the case study research design, and I conclude
with an overview of each resulting study.
Literature Review
Policing in Higher Education
In less than 100 years, the campus police officer role evolved from part-time custodian to
professional law enforcement official. Police scholars typically regard 1894 as the first time law
enforcement had a presence in higher education (Bordner & Petersen, 1983; Falcone & Gehrand,
2003; Gelber, 1972; Sloan, 1992). That year, Yale University hired two New Haven police
officers to patrol the campus, forming the oldest organized university police unit in the United
States.
1
Over the years, campus police developed along with the increasing organizational
complexity and student enrollment in higher education (Sloan, 1992). Beginning in the late
1960s, to better respond to mass student protests, colleges and universities instituted modern
campus police departments, staffed with sworn officers and individuals with previous law
enforcement experience (Scott, 1976; Sloan, 1992).
At present, national statistics paint a rough picture of the ubiquity and power of campus
police. As of the 2011–12 academic year, 861 out of 905 institutions (95%) reported operating
their own campus police department (Reaves, 2015). Among these, public institutions employed
sworn officers at nearly twice the rate of their private counterparts, with an average of 24 full-
time sworn officers on campus. Sworn officers are police academy-trained, authorized to carry
firearms, and have full arrest powers granted by a state or local authority. Most sworn officers

1
https://your.yale.edu/community/public-safety/police/history-ypd

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have arrest and parole jurisdiction off-campus (Reaves, 2015). In terms of growth, campuses
boosted their use of sworn and armed police officers between 2004 and 2012 (75% to 77%
and 68% to 75%, respectively). During the same period, the increase in full-time campus police
department employees (16%) outpaced student enrollment (11%; Reaves, 2015). It is important
to note that these are trends generated by the Survey of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies,
conducted by the Department of Justice (2013). Campuses vary widely as police staff may be
composed of non-sworn officers, private security, and partnerships with public police agencies.
For instance, Los Angeles Trade Tech College houses a branch of the Los Angeles County
Sheriff. In contrast, the University of Southern California describes its Department of Public
Safety as one of the largest university police departments nationally, with 306 full-time
personnel, including sworn and non-sworn officers.
Campus constituents, particularly students, may not know what campus officers do
(Patton & Gregory, 2014) and may even judge them not to be “real police” (Jacobsen, 2017).
However, research demonstrates a strong resemblance between campus and municipal police.
The DOJ survey data reveal that many officers on college campuses are as trained and authorized
to enforce the law as equally as municipal officers (Reaves, 2015). Research comparing campus
and city law enforcement agency data indicates many similarities between the two types of
police. White and male police officers overwhelmingly staff both: campus police officers are
68.5% white and 82.5% male, whereas city police officers are 72.8% white and 87.8% male
(Perez & Bromley, 2015). Paoline and Sloan (2003) found that campus police agencies
resembled the organizational structure of a municipal department, such as having specialized
assignments and a vertical staff hierarchy governed by a high degree of formalized written
policies. Interestingly, Paoline and Sloan (2003) did not find any significant relationship between

8

campus-related variables and the campus police organizational structure. The study suggests
campus police agencies mimic municipal police departments rather than reflect the campus
context they are situated in.
Although campus police departments tend to mimic municipal police departments, police
scholars regard campus police as more service-oriented (Falcone & Gehrand, 2003). Beyond
strict law enforcement-related responsibilities, campus police agencies implement physical
security measures, maintain order, help ensure public safety, and are involved in emergency
response (Bromley & Reaves, 1998; Reaves, 2015; Schafer et al., 2010). Relatedly, scholars
have been tracking the adoption of community policing in higher education (Bromley, 2003;
Perez & Bromley, 2015). Despite stated community policing efforts, there is a lack of evidence
suggesting that campus police agencies have substantially shifted organizational hierarchy and
practices to be considered campus community-oriented (Hancock, 2016).
The discrepancy between stated claims of community policing and actual practice in
higher education may have consequences found in larger U.S. society. The introduction of
community policing in low-income communities of color was touted as a humane reform
compared to the broken windows approach (Camp & Heatherton, 2016). However, as critical
observers have noted, in a community policing model, the police continue to maintain authority,
albeit with better-publicized efforts to obtain public consent. Broken windows tactics, such as
stop-and-frisk, become acceptable through the guise of integrating the police into the community
(Hansford, 2016). That campus law enforcement agencies have a paramilitaristic hierarchy
(Sloan, 1992) brings to mind the metaphor of the “iron fist and velvet glove” ascribed to the
community policing approach (Centre for Research on Criminal Justice, 1977). In higher

9

education, the rhetoric of service and community engagement, which evoke a kinder, gentler
image, are not substantiated by empirical findings.
In practice, campus police are increasing. The DOJ reports that between 2004 and 2012,
there was a 16% rise in the number of full-time campus police personnel (Reaves, 2015). News
coverage describes newly created agencies and the expansion of police powers at two- and four-
year institutions. For instance, Mt. San Antonio College, a two-year institution, created its police
department, while Johns Hopkins University pursued a legislative campaign to establish a police
department (Baylon et al., 2017; Richman, 2019). Portland State University recently permitted its
officers to carry firearms, and several universities have obtained military-grade weapons
(Bauman, 2014; Read, 2015). Expanded policing measures are justified with the rationale that
the police need to be better equipped to respond to crime and student safety. Similarly, scholars
of campus police accept its current institutional status, evidenced by research to understand its
work solely as a technical response to crime (Heaton et al., 2016; MacDonald et al., 2012).
Consequently, there is a shortage of scholarship on the social ramifications of policing on the
higher education environment.
Policing in K-12 Schools
Research in the k-12 sector provides a useful role model for theoretical and empirical
approaches to identifying the relationship between policing and education. Political mandates
have tied investments in the criminal justice system to education. The Clery Act and the 1994
Gun Free Schools Act are among the driving factors that have led to increased police presence,
securitization, and harsh disciplinary practices in schools, colleges, and universities (Nolan,
2011). The school-to-prison pipeline problematic best captures how scholars have examined the
integration of criminal justice logic in education (Christle et al., 2005; Noguera, 2003; Skiba et

10

al., 2014). Police and zero-tolerance discipline have not had positive outcomes among youth of
color due to the criminalization of trivial offenses and shifting disciplinary responsibilities from
educators to police (Brown, 2003; Nolan, 2011).
The “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” is facilitated in multiple ways. Peguero, Portillos,
and González (2015) found that Latinx students who receive a disciplinary sanction are two
times more likely to drop out. Several scholars have also observed how racially minoritized
students in under-resourced schools are caught in a double bind, dealing with police harassment
at school and in their community (Huerta & Rios-Aguilar, 2018; Nolan, 2011; Rios, 2011;
Sojoyner, 2016). Encounters with police have been linked to lower test scores and a lower
likelihood of matriculation to college among Black male youth (Legewie & Fagan, 2019;
Johnson, 2015). Annamma (2017) contributed an intersectional perspective in her study of
incarcerated girls of color who are multiply marginalized by disability and financial hardship,
traits which further contribute to labeling students as problems and deserving of punishment.
Recent scholarship amended the pipeline metaphor and raised issues tied to a more
nuanced view of how students are experiencing schools as punitive rather than educational
systems. Nolan’s (2011) study of New York City’s Impact Schools Initiative revealed how Black
and Latinx high school students were constantly “subjected to low-level forms of penal
management without ever doing serious time behind bars” (p. 15). These interactions resulted in
the loss of class time and missing entire school days. The linearity implied by the school-to-
prison pipeline fails to capture how vulnerable populations are “managed by a complex
interpenetration of systems” (Nolan, 2011, p. 72). As an alternative to the pipeline metaphor,
scholars proposed that the linkages between schools and prisons resembled a nexus, a web of

11

touchpoints, pathways, and incursions of the criminal justice system into schools (Annamma,
2010; Krueger, 2010; Meiners, 2007).
The interconnections between education and the criminal justice system make visible
what Murakawa (2014) terms the carceral state. Carcerality refers to the “social and political
systems that formally and informally promote the discipline, punishment, and incarceration of
individuals” (Buenavista, 2018, p. 81). The carceral state describes how systems of punishment,
discipline, and incarceration have extended beyond typical settings (e.g., the courts, prisons) and
into institutions, such as colleges and universities. These spaces become sites of possibility for
the criminalization of individuals and their entry into carceral systems. Buenavista’s (2018)
application of carcerality to a study of undocumented Asian American college students
demonstrated how their higher education journeys were shaped by punitive policies and the
threat of deportation. Carceral systems shape the racialized experiences of students of color.
In the current climate of mass incarceration and police violence in Black and other
communities of color, higher education researchers need to examine the social impact of
policing, particularly as campus policing expands and more students of color enroll in college.
Like the k-12 system (Annamma, 2017), campus police and university disciplinary processes
may contribute to the production of a racialized criminality, adding to the numerous ways
college students of color are already excluded. At the same time, communities of color are
criminalized in several spaces—from schools to walking on the street, to the courts and prisons
(Gelman et al., 2012; Goel et al., 2016; Kochel et al., 2011; The Sentencing Project, 2017). The
college campus is not exempt from these realities (Dache-Gerbino & White, 2016; Smith et al.,
2007), which warrants further examination of pervasive policing in a higher education context.

12

Engaging the Limitations in Research
In light of the background discussed, a few conclusions can be made about what remains
to be known about campus police. First, and at a broad level, work is needed to uncover the
social impact of campus police on racial dynamics in a university community. Rather than
neutral, higher education practices can be expressions of racist power that result in inequality
between racialized groups, particularly students. The predominant practical and scholarly view
of campus police is as an objective “technical institutional solution” to crime, safety, and
disorder (Garland, 1990, p. 7). These social problems themselves are racialized, as well as
gendered and classed. Still, the literature on campus police is silent on the role of race in efforts
to reduce crime and promote safety. There is a need to document the impact of campus police
practices on how campus constituents navigate and perceive the campus environment on a daily
basis.
Second, and related, racialized campus policing practices should be studied at the
convergence of the general policing apparatus and the higher education setting. This means
combining analyses of racialized policing practices and racial dynamics in higher education.
Studying campus police provides an opportunity to examine the influence of general police
culture and how it interacts with the particularities of a university’s legacy of racism and current
racial climate. For instance, racial inequality and social stratification in graduate education can
be examined through common exclusionary mechanisms that exist across the higher education
sector (Posselt & Grodsky, 2017) as well as at the level of discipline, which can be further
examined through how faculty in a particular department conceptualize race and other factors of
diversity to admit graduate students (Posselt, 2015). Similarly, campus- and profession-specific
factors contributing to racialized campus policing practices should be identified.

13

Third is the need to expand analysis beyond the campus police department and uniformed
officers. While this appears to be commonsense, Brodeur (2010) offers the term “policing
assemblage” to signal how public police departments coordinate with non-police entities to make
society secure and orderly (p. 4). Likewise, on a college campus, various actors are involved in
maintaining order and security alongside campus police. Security policies and conduct codes are
subsequently enforced by campus police officers, faculty, staff, and administration. One growing
practice in higher education is the behavioral intervention team, which typically consists of
campus police officers, student affairs staff, and mental health practitioners (Pollard, Nolan, &
Deisinger, 2012). Campus policing involves many actors who create and reinforce a controlled
campus environment. How do these actors collaborate to police the campus?
Finally, literature is primarily based on single groups, such as campus police officers
(Sloan, 1992; Wilson & Wilson, 2015) or students (Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007). While
researchers have given some attention to racial identity in studies of Black college students
(Allen & Jacques, 2018), there have yet to be studies that examine racial identity and campus
police officers. Other perspectives, such as faculty, staff, and administration are mainly absent.
Comparing perspectives across structural location (e.g., role) and racial identity provides an
opportunity to examine complex, often competing, and conflicting social realities regarding
attending a policed college campus. The three studies presented in chapters two, three, and four
address the above limitations in the literature through the guiding analytical concepts and
research design, which I discuss next.
Conceptual Framework
I examined the racialized consequences of campus policing with theories and concepts
drawn from sociology, ethnic studies, and cultural studies. These conceptual tools address the

14

limitations of the current literature and provide a lens to explore campus policing’s racialized
impact on individuals and group relationships.
Campus Policing as a Racial Project.
I used critical race theory (CRT; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Ladson-Billings & Tate,
1995) and racial formation theory (Omi & Winant, 2015) to establish the ontological assumption
that race and racism are social constructions that are endemic in all aspects of life in the U.S.,
including higher education. CRT and racial formation theory challenge the assumed neutrality of
institutions, such as policing. Omi and Winant’s (2015) concept of racial projects describes how
cultural meanings of race become interwoven into social structures. Racial projects are
“simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and
meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural) along
particular racial lines” (p. 125). Campus policing can be read as a racial project that reinforces or
disrupts the prevailing racialized identities, norms, and relationships on college campuses.
Higher Education as a Disciplinary Institution
This study explored disciplinary power in campus police as a force that structures campus
life above and beyond addressing legal infractions. At face value, the police, by virtue of
enforcing the law, ensure discipline in a campus community. According to Foucault (1977),
disciplinary power is a “relationship of force” and one that aims to repress (Foucault, 1977, p.
15). Rather than solely a mode of punishment, the general policing apparatus produces obedience
and arranges individuals and groups into their correct places according to the established social
order. Foucault’s concept of discipline provides a lens into how power and inequality are
reproduced through campus policing practices and can also be read as a mechanism of
racialization. For instance, the disciplinary tool of surveillance has a historical and ongoing

15

relationship to the policing and regulation of racialized bodies. Maira’s (2016) work on Muslim,
Arab, and South Asian youth activists led her to conclude that “surveillance is fundamentally a
technology of disciplining and managing racialized populations” (p. 195). For this project, I
theorized disciplinary power as a driving force in maintaining racial hierarchies within a campus
community, shaping individual and group experiences.
Racist Disciplinary Power
I synthesize the above theories into the racist disciplinary power framework. These
conceptual tools permit analysis on multiple levels: individual decision-making and interpersonal
interactions on the micro-level; the formalized meso-level organizational practices and policies
enforced by campus policing; and how the racial dynamics that result from campus policing
mirror macro-level racial ideology. The theoretical synthesis accounts for racism as the outcome
of controlling, or disciplinary, actions that target racialized bodies. Racial projects link
organizational power to cultural representations of race in ways that are fatal for some and
beneficial for others. Disciplinary techniques produce racial meanings laden onto a system of
control within a social context. The system of control contributes to a racial hierarchy, which
ultimately structures power relations between racialized groups (see Figure 1.1).
A college campus serves as the bounded context in which disciplinary techniques and
focal concerns are enacted to produce a racialized system of control over students as well as
staff, faculty, and visitors. How these constituents are treated and processed by campus policing
(e.g., sanctioned, forced removal, no police encounter) may, in turn, reinforce the campus’
internal racial hierarchy and mirror larger societal racial dynamics. Disciplinary techniques are
the formal policies, systems, and decision-making created by campus police and their partners in
other campus units. Surveillance practices in higher education include physical surveillance

16

technologies (e.g., cameras, biometric scanning, identification card tracking); police patrols on
foot, bike, and car; and the encouragement to call campus police to report people and behavior
perceived as suspicious. Normalization is evident through rules that dictate proper behavior and
informal rules that delineate acceptable versus unacceptable actions, appearance, and means of
communication. The student conduct code and individual faculty expectations are mechanisms
that establish a norm. Admissions and hiring practices contribute to the racial demographics of
the campus, which may create unspoken, but visible, assumptions about the proper behavior of
differently racialized groups. Closely related is how membership in the campus community is
defined. The requirement of carrying a campus identification card, the differential use of rules on
outsiders versus insiders, and the formal exclusion of groups to the campus are means of defining
membership. I applied this framework to guide the research methodology, a critical case study.
Figure 1.1
Racist Disciplinary Power Framework

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Designing a Critical Case Study

The study site was Adamson University (AU; pseudonym), a historically white, private,
research-intensive, four-year institution. AU was chosen as a “critical case” (Patton, 2015) due to
institutional and contextual characteristics that I believed would yield the most information to
study the social consequences of campus policing and be of instrumental benefit to understand
the implications of policing for higher education broadly (Stake, 2005). The study was concerned
with two larger social patterns. The first is the documented racialized discrimination experienced
by students of color during interactions with peers and faculty. Students of color may also feel
isolated and unwelcome due to the lack of peers who share a similar racial or cultural identity,
feelings that may be compounded in social spaces dominated by white interests. Second, the
study was meant to expand scholarly understanding of the racialized criminalization of Black,
Latinx, immigrant, and low-income communities of color. Racial disparities in areas such as
traffic stops and arrests are tied to the extension of carceral practices beyond the formal criminal
justice system into communities, including settings such as educational institutions (Murakawa,
2014).
The Department of Public Safety (DPS) is the AU campus police department. According
to its website, the AU DPS is one of the nation’s largest campus police departments, with 306
full-time personnel and 30 part-time student workers. For perspective, four-year institutions
serving 2,500 or more students employ an average of 37 full-time campus law enforcement
personnel (Reaves, 2015). In addition, the university also maintains a contract with the
Contemporary Services Corporation, a private security company that provides auxiliary
personnel who collaborate with DPS. Recently, AU hired an associate vice provost for threat
assessment and management. To my knowledge, this may be the first hire of its kind in U.S.

18

higher education. AU also has various security policies and technologies in place. Examples
include the closed campus policy, surveillance cameras, and biometric scanning.
Student demographics were important contextual factors in selecting the case and
subsequent data analysis. At the time of the study, the campus was 29% white, 5% Black, 15%
Latinx, 17% Asian American, and 25% international students. Domestic students of color,
particularly Black and Latinx students, are in the numerical minority of the campus population.
In contrast, AU is situated within a neighborhood that is predominantly Black (27%) and Latinx
(63%), and low-income. The community is also historically associated with crime. These details
may bear upon who is readily seen and accepted as an AU campus member and who is not. AU
provided a concentrated site to study the relationship between policing and race and how those
intersections shape individual experiences and group dynamics on campus.
Data Collection
Data were collected from Summer 2020 to Fall 2021. In the proposal, two primary
sources of data were discussed: documents and interviews (individual and group). Documents
were collected to frame the context of the case. I collected the text of campus safety policies,
DPS policies and examples of training curriculum, campus crime alerts, annual AU crime
reports, news stories, university reports related to policing and campus safety, and the
memorandum of understanding between AU and the municipal police department. Collectively,
these documents depicted the present state of campus policing at AU. I also analyzed AU student
responses to the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates (NACCC). The NACCC is
a quantitative racial climate survey that has been administered at AU. Students completed the
survey, which contains items about perceptions of campus police interactions. See Figure 4.1 for
a histogram showing descriptive frequencies of disaggregated responses to the question: “In this

19

school year, how often have you personally experienced racism happening in each of the
following: Campus police or security.” During interviews, I showed this graph to campus police
officers to elicit their reactions.
At the heart of this case study were the perspectives of those who enacted campus
policing and those at the receiving end. Interviews with campus constituents and the contextual
data described above together provided insight into the state of the relationship between campus
policing and the campus racial climate. Interviews provided an opportunity for respondents to
articulate the meaning they ascribed to situations they have lived through. Regarding the actors
involved in policing, I interviewed DPS officers and the administrators and staff who partnered
with campus safety efforts and collaborated with DPS. Their interviews pertained to the concerns
that inform their decision-making when on the job, discipline-related responsibilities, and their
presumed impact on the campus racial climate. The second group consisted of the intended
beneficiaries, faculty, and students of color. The questions posed to this group aimed to ascertain
what they perceived to be institutional security concerns, experiences as the objects of discipline,
and the role of race and racism in their encounters with DPS (See Appendices A-E for interview
protocols).
All interviews were conducted individually with DPS officers. Some staff, faculty, and
one student were interviewed individually because they either worked alone or had scheduling
issues and wanted to participate. Focus groups were conducted with the remaining staff, faculty,
and students. Individual interviews were approximately 60-minutes, and focus groups were 90-
minutes. All interviews and focus groups were conducted through Zoom, a video conference
platform. In total, I interviewed 135 individuals (see Table 2.1 on page 36 for details).

20

Participant-observation emerged as a supplemental form of data collection. Due to
change efforts and protest at AU, the university administration created a community advisory
board to lead reform efforts in DPS. The board held 10 listening sessions in Spring 2021 to
gather campus feedback on DPS. I attended all the sessions, which were held online and were
two hours each. These sessions provided an opportunity to learn more about how campus
constituents experienced DPS, including pro-police views and complaints.
Data Analysis
Data analysis was on-going, extensive, and difficult to manage due to the amount of data.
I employed the following techniques to drive the analysis: memoing (Charmaz, 2014), coding
and constant comparison (Charmaz, 2014; Fram, 2013), and analytic questions (Neumann &
Pallas, 2015). I wrote memos following each individual and group interview to summarize main
impressions and potentially significant responses. As I conducted more interviews, I noted
similarities between newer and older data. Upon completing all the interviews, I reviewed each
transcript and conducted descriptive coding. I continued to memo during this stage. As I describe
in chapters two and four, I used theory and analytic questions to further reduce and cluster
together coded data. Constant comparison occurred on several levels: comparing participants
within a group to one another, comparing between groups, and comparing between emergent
findings from the data and the conceptual framework. This data analysis process aligned a goal
to uplift and make visible “knowledges and forms of meaning making traditionally dismissed by
dominant culture and mainstream academics” (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 4).

21

Overview of Dissertation
This dissertation is composed of three empirical papers that collectively examined the
racialized dimensions of campus policing from the perspectives of multiple campus constituents.
The theoretical frameworks in each chapter complement one another, with some overlap and
differences (more information below) to highlight the unique perspectives afforded by a
comparative analysis of campus constituents and looking at particular groups. Taken together,
chapters two, three, and four illustrate the complexity of how to understand campus policing as a
racialized practice and the importance of situating policing as an institutional function. Campus
policing and the campus racial climate are mutually constitutive, implicating seemingly innocent
policies, practices, and actions justified through an uninterrogated notion of safety and security.
In the first study, presented in chapter two, I use critical race theory, racial formation
theory, and Foucault’s (1977) theory of disciplinary power to examine the perspectives of
students, faculty, staff, administrators, and campus police. The study directly answered the
guiding research question. The findings described the social and cultural effects of campus
policing on everyday campus life, including racialized ideas of who belonged and deserved
protection and who did not. Additionally, I documented how campus policing defined the
relationship between campus constituents and the university. Ultimately, I argued that campus
policing does more than crime control. Campus policing is a race-making process that disciplines
campus constituents onto the tiers of a racial hierarchy.
The second study, presented in chapter three, presented findings from a study conducted
in 2018-2019 with 31 Black undergraduate men at the same study site. In addition to racial
formation theory, I also used sociological theories of social and symbolic boundaries to explore
how Black student life was shaped by the racialized boundaries enforced by campus police. Two

22

findings in this study (Criminalizing the local community; Navigating the dangerous Black male
stereotype) aligned with findings in the previous chapter. However, given the different timelines
of data collection (two years apart, pre- and post- George Floyd’s tragic death), the similarity in
findings attests to the consistency in racialized experiences of campus policing. Additionally, this
study presents two findings that illustrate how Black college students’ daily lives are shaped by
the threat of campus police violence.
In the final study, presented in chapter four, I applied a racial ideology paradigm to
understand how campus police officers perceive racial dynamics in their line of work. The
findings demonstrated that campus police officers are not a monolithic group due to the variation
in racial beliefs and views towards change in policing. Importantly, participants’ views on racism
in campus policing were shaped by individual, organizational, and community factors. Rather
than suggesting that racist campus policing is a foregone conclusion due to officer bias, I argued
that racial dynamics relating to campus policing are produced by a contested set of relationships.
The data indicate that competing racial ideologies, emotions, racial climate, and institutional
priorities converged to prevent campus police from enacting an equal, inclusive approach to its
role and function on college campuses.
All three papers were derived from the same study site and project. Consequently, there is
some repetition in the conceptual framework and research design sections in chapters two, three,
and four. Each study is presented in the form of a journal article. In chapter five, which
concludes this dissertation, I synthesize what the overall dissertation contributes to the literature.

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Chapter 2: Beyond Crime Control: Exploring the Racial and Disciplinary Power of
Campus Policing
In March 2018, leaders of Johns Hopkins University announced plans to pursue state
legislation that would authorize the private institution to establish a full-fledged university police
department. An administrative message to the Hopkins community cited safety and the
“challenges of urban crime” as the primary motivations (Hub Staff Report, 2018). In response to
the university’s announcement, Black students and allies protested, citing a history of racial
discrimination perpetrated by “Hop Cops,” referencing the then-unarmed campus security force
(Took, 2018). The legislation would position Johns Hopkins among the 68% of higher education
institutions employing armed and sworn police officers with full arrest powers (Reaves, 2015).
Given the timing, the university’s initiative could be seen as surprising. The University of
Cincinnati and University of Chicago police departments had recently been under the spotlight
for the death of an unarmed Black civilian and a pattern of racially profiling Black residents,
respectively (Newman, 2016; Pérez-Peña, 2015). The call for Black lives to matter was spurring
community activists and college students to question the legitimacy of policing (Foran, 2015;
Taylor, 2016). But despite visible issues in policing, Johns Hopkins leaders capitalized on the
moral panic of crime to expand campus police (Garland, 2008).
Since the 1960s, higher education leaders and policymakers have elevated campus police
as the primary solution to crime and disorder (Peak et al., 2008; Perez & Bromley, 2015; Reaves,
2015). Legal mandates, campus shootings, and student deaths have heightened the liability of
colleges and universities to ensure campus safety (Sloan, 2020). Safety and security should be
addressed with research-based evidence. However, higher education scholarship has prioritized
campus police efficacy in terms of crime reduction (Heaton et al., 2016; MacDonald et al., 2016)

24

and conceptual arguments without accompanying evidence (Dunkle et al., 2008; Perotti, 2007).
Save a few studies (Kelly & Torres, 2008; Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007), scholars and
practitioners have not examined the social consequences of campus police apart from crime and
victimization. As a result, the field has been ill-equipped to address criticisms of campus policing
as a critical driver of institutional racism and harm against communities of color (The Demands,
2015). Following the racial justice uprisings of 2020, the crime control rationale has become an
insufficient response to campus constituents demanding campus police divestment and the
reallocation of resources to better address student wellbeing, racial equity, and inclusion
(Sainato, 2020).
Higher education research must begin to examine the alleged benefits of campus police
and take seriously the reports of harm among communities of color to cultivate an inclusive
framework of campus safety. Due to the lack of existing research, universities have spent
resources on consultants to review campus police policies and assess constituents’ experiences.
2

These external reports evoke a “how can we fix this” tone rather than a critical reflection on the
nature and purpose of campus police (Goff, 2021, p. 678). External audits conserve the
legitimacy and power of campus police through reforms that have not proven effective in the
general policing institution (Engel et al., 2020). It is also myopic to focus on the campus police
department alone without considering the broader university structures that sustain policing and
contribute to a hostile campus racial climate.
The study of campus police should investigate its nature as an institution that draws
together the racist legacies of policing and higher education in the U.S. Rather than a top-down
approach that centers on the campus police department, higher education scholarship can benefit

2
University of Minnesota, University of Cincinnati, Ohio State University, and Syracuse University are among the
institutions who have conducted eternal audits of campus police agencies in the last six years.

25

from discerning how multiple campus constituents cooperate with, or resist, racialized policing
practices, thereby getting at how daily campus life is shaped by institutional racism (Ahmed,
2012; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). With these concerns in mind, I conducted a critical case study
(Patton, 2015) of campus police in a private, research-intensive university with one of the
nation’s largest campus police departments. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with
campus police officers, students, faculty, staff, and administrators. I drew upon critical theories
of race and society (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017; Foucault, 1977; Omi & Winant, 2015) to
examine policing as a mode of racialized social control that disciplines campus constituents into
their institutionally approved place and requires their compliance and cooperation with campus
police.
The main research question that guided this study was: How does policing shape
individual experiences and relationships between groups along racial lines on a college campus?
Campus policing relies on surveillance technologies (e.g., closed-circuit cameras) and governing
practices (e.g., stop-and-question policing, arrests, welfare checks) that secure the campus and its
population. I explore policing as the formal responsibility of uniformed officers and their
partners among the staff and administration charged with campus safety. The findings describe
the social and cultural effects of campus policing on everyday campus life, including racialized
ideas of who belonged, who deserved protection, and who did not. Additionally, I document how
campus policing defined the relationship between campus constituents and the university.
Ultimately, I argue that campus policing does more than crime control. Campus policing is a
race-making process that employs institutionally sanctioned force and violence to shape
structural positions and social identities according to a racial hierarchy.

26

By exploring how multiple campus constituents comply with and challenge power
through the reference point of the campus police department, this study adds to the literature on
racial equity in higher education, which typically focuses on one group (e.g., faculty or students)
and only minimally on relationships and structures. The study concludes with guidance for
higher education leaders who seek to enact institutional change for racial equity. The practical
implications of this study can also inform the design of inclusive and equitable campus safety
structures.
Literature Review
To set the context for this study, I review scholarship regarding the official role of
campus police as the providers of safety alongside critical perspectives on the consequences of
containing political dissent and racial difference. The limitations of existing work demonstrate
the need to consider how the purpose of campus policing extends beyond crime control to enact
“attritional, dispersed, and hidden” racialized harm in the interest of institutional preservation
(Ward, 2015, p. 300). But more than just a repressive force against overt disorder and mass
mobilization, campus policing must also be studied as a generative power that produces a
racialized campus environment through delimiting physical space, access and engagement on
campus, and the resources of protection along racial lines (Foucault, 1977).
Campus Police, Safety, and Institutional Priorities
Criminological and practical understandings of campus policing frame its emergence in
response to evolving institutional priorities. Since the first known campus police presence in
1894, the institutional purposes of campus policing have included the protection of campus
property, crowd and traffic management, safety policy development, and law enforcement
(Gelber, 1972; Scott, 1976; Sloan, 1992). Campus police departments in the form that exists

27

today began to develop in the late 1960s in response to the disorder and violence associated with
mass student protests. Prior, campus police officers were essentially more like security guards
and custodians with police training or law enforcement experience. The move to establish police
departments staffed by police academy-trained officers with full law enforcement authority
allowed campuses more autonomy to maintain order and rely less on external police agencies
(Sloan, 1992).
Campus crime became a recognized problem that required responses from lawmakers,
scholars, and higher education leaders in the early 1990s. The passage of the federal Student
Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act of 1990—now known as the Clery Act—mandated the
annual reporting of crime statistics and security policies from all postsecondary institutions
participating in federal financial aid programs (Sloan, 2020). The federal mandate came out of
the momentum building since the 1980s to hold colleges and universities liable for on-campus
victimization. Increased legal liability also led to the build-up of campus police and related
security technologies (Fisher & Sloan, 2013). Growing concerns over mass violence and mental
health have further expanded the responsibilities of campus police to include crisis response
(Penven & Janosik, 2012; Schafer et al., 2010). While crime, violence, and student safety are real
problems for institutions to manage, the build-up of campus policing appears to be a
commonsense response rather than an evidence-based solution.
Only two studies demonstrate campus police efficacy in crime reduction. MacDonald et
al.’s (2016) study of the University of Philadelphia police department found that increased police
activity within the university jurisdiction was associated with a 60% reduction in crime.
Similarly, Heaton et al.’s (2016) evaluation of the University of Chicago police department
found that 63% fewer violent crimes occurred in the university police jurisdiction.

28

The findings align with research that shows municipal police presence decreases crime (Chalfin
& McCrary, 2018; Kaplan & Chaflin, 2019). However, it is unknown whether the cost of campus
police is commensurate to the benefits it may provide, of which there has been little evaluation.
Instead, research on campus police has focused on describing practices (Pelfrey & Keener, 2016;
Perez & Bromley, 2015; Schafer et al., 2010; Sloan et al., 2000; Wolf et al., 2009) and issues of
legitimacy and satisfaction (Aiello, 2019; Aiello & Lawton, 2018; Griffith et al., 2004; Jacobsen,
2017; Wada et al., 2010). The result of such inquiries is to improve campus police, despite not
knowing how well it achieves its intended goals. Prioritizing institutional protection and legal
mandates has allowed leaders and policymakers to overlook the social consequences of enforcing
order with an armed police force.
Social Consequences of Campus Police
Critical scholarship situates policing within an analysis of state power and hegemonic
norms that uphold oppression, inequality, and violence (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014; Ferguson,
2017; Giroux, 2007). Rather than assume innocence in practices that are stated to be in the
interests of campus constituents, Oparah (2014) calls out higher education’s “dangerous
complicities” with militarism and incarceration, evidenced by military-oriented research funding,
portfolio investments in bail bond companies, the use of prison labor, and contracts with law
enforcement (p. 101). Through its links with systems and industries of punishment and war,
higher education institutions can be understood as extensions of the state and its legitimate use of
violence (Giroux, 2007). The conceptual shift expands how policing is understood from merely
the activities of uniformed officers to instead as an institutional practice deployed to restrict and
contain activism against the institution (Nocella & Gabbard, 2013; Rodriguez, 2012). The
punishment of dissent for viewpoints that threaten institutional stability and reputation constructs

29

free speech and academic freedom as “the exclusive privilege of some…but not others”
(Barghouti, 2006, p. 44).
Roderick Ferguson’s (2017) study of university responses to social movements in the
1960s suggests that students of color are among the “others” not afforded the privilege of
political expression. In the wake of unrest and police violence that marked protests, such as the
anti-war demonstration at Kent State and Jackson State, President Nixon established the
Commission on Campus Unrest in 1970. The commission produced a report, which, Ferguson
argues, frames the U.S. as a “system of government which protects our diversity” (p. 4). In
asserting diversity as a value embodied by the U.S. government, the report then labels student of
color activists as intolerant due to their “insistence that their own views must govern” (p. 5).
Having accomplished the task of constructing student of color activists as threats within the
campus, the report recommends the build-up of campus policing: “The university’s police or
security force is its ultimate internal resource for preventing and coping with campus disorder”
(p. 131). Ferguson’s analysis offers a way to think about the joint criminalization of racial
difference and dissent, or in other words, criminalizing non-white identity and constitutionally
protected actions. The argument put forth in the 1970 commission report is the foundation of the
discourse of campus crime and university leaders’ “entitlement to exercise violence more or less
at will” (Rodriguez, 2012, p. 309).
Although campus crime is framed as a problem that equally besets all campus
constituents, the build-up of campus policing has followed in parallel to the growing numbers of
Black, Asian, Latinx, Native, immigrant, and low-income populations in higher education.
Campus policing is emerging as a site of concern for scholars interested in racial discrimination
in higher education. Black college students have discussed racial microaggressions perpetrated

30

by campus police officers, contributing to the overall marginalization and exclusion of Black
students in historically white institutions (Jenkins et al., 2021; Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007).
Dache-Gerbino and White (2016) employed Hargrove’s (2009) notion of the “social field of
Whiteness) to observe how visible police presence supports the construction of students of color
attending an urban community college as “criminal” in contrast to the lack of police at a
suburban majority white campus, in which students are seen as “normal.” Less attention has been
given to other campus constituents, such as faculty and staff. One study of Black housing
professionals (Watson, 2020) documented that although there were some perceived benefits of
working with campus police, officers sometimes were dismissive of Black housing professionals
and also treated Black residents negatively. These studies illustrate how campus policing is a
component of a “racial strategy of management of an increasingly diverse student population” in
higher education (Chatterjee & Maira, 2014, p. 25).
Synthesis
The preceding review of the leading scholarly perspectives on campus policing suggests
the need to examine campus policing as an institutional practice in higher education that has
purposes beyond the official charge of campus safety. The focus on crime control glosses over
the racialized harm that results from campus policing. Due to the ways in which campus police
officers address non-crime incidents, the power of officers to punish campus constituents for
deviating from established norms must be examined. There is also much to learn from those who
are constructed as worthy of protection and who are likely to be punished. Moreover, beyond
overt instances of racial profiling and police use of force, the power of the campus police to
discipline behavior and communities of color must have consequences for everyday campus life

31

that remain to be explored. I drew upon these considerations to develop a conceptual framework
and design the research study, which are described in the following sections.
Conceptual Framework
I drew upon concepts from critical race theory, sociology, and ethnic studies to examine
campus policing as an institutional practice that reinforces racial meanings through disciplining
behavior considered threatening to the institution. Critical race theory challenges the assumption
of neutrality in the legal system, which includes the law enforcement function of policing
(Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). The general institution of policing in the
U.S. has been deployed to legally manage racial difference, from the capture of runaway slaves
(Reichel, 1988; Vitale, 2017) to efforts to suppress the Civil Rights movement (Hohle, 20009).
For the present study, I consider how racial difference is produced due to campus police power.
Omi and Winant (2015) define race as “a concept that signifies and symbolizes social conflicts
and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (p. 110). In the struggle over
resources, race is activated to structure society through racial projects, which are
“simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and
meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural) along
particular racial lines” (p. 125). Campus police officers are charged with managing access to the
campus, removing outsiders, and punishing misconduct. Similarly, staff, administrators, faculty,
and students can call upon the campus police to deal with crime and threats perpetrated by
others. I examine campus policing as a racial project to understand how race factors into the
management of campus access and the distribution of protection as a resource.
I integrate the process of racial formation in campus policing with Foucault’s (1977)
work on discipline. The result of classifying groups according to racial meanings is a “death-

32

dealing displacement of difference…into a hierarchy of human and inhuman persons that in sum
from the category of ‘human being’” (Gilmore, 2002, p. 16). The production of rank and
hierarchy is at the core of a self-sustaining mode of discipline that reinforces unequal power
relations. Foucault was concerned with the subjection of individuals within a society to
maximize productivity. Disciplinary power “‘makes’ individuals’” (Foucault, 1977, p. 170) and
establishes “relationships of constraint between individuals” according to Hoffman (2011, p. 33).
Discipline, like racialization, is generative. The present study is concerned with how discipline
makes racialized groups and meanings, rather than only individuals as Foucault initially
proposed. Discipline can be thought of as enforcing official laws and rules, but discipline also
establishes social relationships by “introducing insuperable asymmetries and excluding
reciprocities” (Foucault, 1977, p. 222). Although racial discrimination is now illegal, racial
difference continues to inform how institutions, such as policing, “discipline humanity into full
humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans” (Weheliye, 2014, p. 4).
Foucault (1977) discussed surveillance and normalization as two tools through which
disciplinary power is exercised. Both operate to reinforce hierarchy and conformity to a set of
acceptable behavior. Surveillance as an act of watching is also an exercise of power. Institutional
agents are authorized to monitor campus constituents deemed to be under supervision. Campus
constituents also engage in surveilling one another and can deploy campus police resources when
they feel threatened. For the present study, surveillance refers to the technologies and practices
used by the campus police to monitor campus property and constituents. Normalization is a tool
to impose homogeneity and assess individuals against that standard; it is key to identifying
outsiders, deviant behavior, and threats. Governance practices in campus policing and safety—

33

stop and question policing, identification checks, welfare checks, arrest, detention—can be read
as normalizing practices.
Surveillance has a historical and ongoing relationship to the policing and regulation of
racially marked bodies. Surveillance as a “technology of discipline and managing racialized
populations within neoliberal capitalism” can result in disparate treatment and influence
communal life and identity (Maira, 2016, p. 195). In her study of the surveillance of Black life
from slavery to airport security checks of Black women’s hair, Browne (2015) proposed the
concept of racializing surveillance to describe the reification of “boundaries, borders, and bodies
along racial lines, and where the outcome is often discriminatory treatment” (p. 16). Maira
(2016) explored how, for Muslim American communities, living under constant surveillance
shaped “political culture and also ideas of selfhood, producing objects of surveillance and
subjects of surveillance as well as of self-surveillance,” which she terms “surveillance effects”
(p. 197).
Normalization also coincides with racialization and racism. Foucault (1977) describes the
enforcement of norms as “infra-penality” and “micro-penality,” or the punishment of behaviors
not addressed by the law (or a student conduct code), but violate unwritten rules (p. 178). Higher
education institutions are replete with micro-penalties: being told one does not look like a student
and administrators talking down to student protestors are examples of small-scale punishments
for not conforming to unspoken standards of appearance and respectable behavior—incidents
that can also be considered racial microaggressions (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000). Thus,
normalization further highlights the ways in which racial difference is reinforced through
discipline because it can be read as a process of establishing whiteness as the norm.

34

I applied these concepts to understand participants’ experiences with campus police
surveillance and governance, comparing and contrasting the actors who enact policing and those
who are its intended beneficiaries. How participants discussed racial dynamics they observed and
experienced was of central importance to frame campus policing as a system of racialized social
control. Through my analysis, I illustrate how disciplinary practices shape the campus culture
and how individuals understand themselves as racialized objects and subjects of campus
policing, what I term policing effects. I also illustrate how power was exercised through policed
relations to maintain racial differences and power inequalities between campus constituents.
Methods
Existing studies have focused on campus police agencies and uniformed officers, even
when centering on student perspectives. However, the policing of colleges and universities
involves several actors that have not yet been studied, such as residential life staff and threat
assessment professionals. Moreover, the social consequences of policing remain to be fully
explored, particularly regarding campus racial dynamics. A case study design that focuses on
multiple voices was ideal to fill this gap in research. I adopted elements of interpretivist (Stake,
1995) and process-oriented (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) case study approaches to focus on socially
constructed understandings of reality that consider systems of power and oppression. The study
was designed to be instrumental, which means its purpose was to understand the implications of
policing beyond the study site and generate theoretical insights to inform the higher education
sector broadly (Stake, 2005).
Data was collected at Adamson University (AU), a historically white, private, research-
intensive, four-year institution. AU has one of the largest campus police departments in the
nation, referred to as the Department of Public Safety (DPS). The university is racially and

35

socioeconomically stratified. Given the context of AU and the extensive campus policing
structure, AU was chosen as a critical case, one which can “yield the most information” on the
effects of policing on a diverse college campus and could produce transferable insights to other
campus contexts (Patton, 2015, p. 416). The campus is 29% white, 5% Black, 15% Latinx, 17%
Asian American, and 25% international students. Domestic students of color, particularly Black
and Latinx students, are in the numerical minority of the campus population. In contrast, AU is
situated within a neighborhood that is predominantly Black (27%) and Latinx (63%) and low-
income. The community is also historically associated with crime. These details may bear upon
who is readily seen and accepted as an AU campus member and who is not. How racialization is
enacted through policing at AU may be emblematic of how features of campus policing shape
racial differences in higher education, particularly individual experiences and racial group
dynamics.
Data Collection
Documents, observations, and interviews were the primary sources of data for this study.
Documents included campus security policies, internal campus police department policies, news
stories, campus crime alerts, and publicly available documents from student and local
organizations. The documents were read to gain context of the study site and significant factors
that have shaped the development of campus policing at AU. They also informed the interview
protocol's development and were triangulated with the interview data during the analysis stage.
Due to the political climate nationally and at AU, the university held 10 listening sessions to
understand campus constituents’ experiences with DPS. I attended these online sessions and used
my fieldnotes as secondary data to contextualize and triangulate the interview data.

36

The findings were primarily analyzed from qualitative data gathered from campus
constituents. From Fall 2020 to Fall 2021, I conducted semi-structured individual and focus
group interviews with students (n= 50), staff and administrators (n=22), faculty (n=31), and
campus police officers (n=32) for a total of 135 participants (Table 2.1). Students were recruited
through e-mail and recommended by peers. I recruited student leaders associated with cultural
organizations, social justice organizations, and who worked in university departments that
interfaced with campus policing, such as residential life. Staff and administrators were recruited
due to having collaboration with the campus police department. These participants worked in
areas that included threat assessment, crisis support and intervention, residential life, student
conduct, and campus cultural centers. I recruited faculty who served on the academic senate and
who were signatories to a letter sent to the university president, calling for police reform and
more support for Black students. Campus police officers were recruited via e-mails that were
sent throughout the department. I also used the university directory to e-mail officers
individually with an invitation to participate.
Table 2.1
Participant Sample by Role, Gender, and Race
DPS Officers Staff/Administration Faculty Students
Total 32 22 31 50

Women 6 10 18 36

Black 7 4 8 15
Latinx 14 4 3 7
white 6 9 14 4
Asian 1 3 5 22
Multiracial 3 2 1 2
Declined to state 1 0 0 0

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Data Analysis
My analytical plan aimed to derive themes grounded in the data and informed by the
conceptual framework. I analyzed the data in several steps and through three specific methods of
analysis: constant comparison (Charmaz, 2014; Fram, 2013), memoing (Charmaz, 2014), and
analytic questions (Neumann & Pallas, 2015). I wrote memos following each individual and
group interview to summarize main impressions and potentially significant responses. As I
conducted more interviews, I noted similarities between newer and older data. Upon completing
all the interviews, I reviewed each transcript and conducted descriptive coding. Codes covered a
wide range of topics based on participants’ perceptions of campus policing, as well as direct and
indirect experiences with officers (e.g., “belonging,” “crime alert,” “DPS presence,” “selective
policing,” “racialized interaction,” “role of DPS,” “sense of safety”; see Appendix F). I used
Dedoose, a cloud-based qualitative data analysis software, to facilitate the coding process.
To better understand how the data answered the research question, I used analytic
questions, a technique developed by Neumann and Pallas (2015) to achieve this purpose (Table
2.2). Analytic questions function like “a small shovel, shaped (and iteratively reshaped) to enable
the researcher to ‘scoop’ out of the data a subset that can respond to a question of interest” (p.
166). I created first-level analytic questions to examine how, at the participant level, the data
answered the main research question. I applied the coded data to the analytical questions to
further data reduction and re-organization (Appendix G). I noted the source of each data point as
a way to compare across groups. In the next step, I created second-level analytic questions,
which, according to Neumann and Pallas (2015), are posed to all the cases in the sample to
develop categories and patterns. I turned to the conceptual framework to inform how I created
second-level analytic questions (Fram, 2013) and answered the questions through analytic

38

memos I wrote for each group (students, faculty, staff/administration, and officers). Through
these steps—identifying emergent codes from the data and discerning relationships between data
through theory and comparison—I arrived at themes that illustrated racialized dynamics and
power inequalities in campus policing.
Table 2.2
Analytic Questions
First-level analytic questions
• How does [participant] describe their experiences with campus policing?
• According to [participant], who benefits from campus policing?
• According to [participant], what is the impact of campus policing on the university
community?
• According to [participant], what racial dynamics are at play in campus policing?

Second-level analytic questions
• What do [group] participating in this study suggest about racial dynamics in campus
policing?
• What do [group] participating in this study suggest about unequal power structures in
campus policing?
• What do [group] participating in this study suggest about the role of campus policing
in the university?

Trustworthiness
To ensure trustworthiness, I engaged in strategies aligned with Lincoln and Guba’s
(1985) four criteria to assess qualitative research: credibility, dependability, confirmability, and
transferability. According to Firestone (1987), the trustworthiness of a qualitative study is based
on providing “enough detail to show that the author’s conclusion ‘makes sense’” (p. 19). This is
echoed in Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) criterion of credibility. To explore how campus policing is
a racialized practice, I was careful to delineate the different ways in which racial meanings were
reinforced as noted by participants. I contextualized the findings by acknowledging the
limitations in representativeness and the influence of the political climate during the time of data
collection. I also sought out two experts in higher education and criminology to review the

39

findings as a form of peer expert review to assess credibility. Lincoln and Guba (1985) also
discussed the need for dependability in the quality of data. As described above, I interviewed
numerous campus constituents who varied in their role, racial and gender identity, and political
views. The agreement across differences suggests that the findings are grounded in dependable
data. I also engaged in data triangulation between the interviews and documents that were
collected, which included campus assessment data that indicate racial disparities in campus
police interactions. Given that the goal of the study was not to prove if racial inequity existed,
but to understand how campus policing is a racialized practice, I focused on reporting themes
from the interview data. I presented the coding tables for the reader to assess my analytical
process according to the confirmability criterion (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Finally, the
transferability of the findings rests on the reader to extend the insights provided below to other
settings and populations. Through the literature framing this study and the subsequent discussion,
I pointed out how the findings are similar to, extend, or challenge other scholarly insights and
results derived from other contexts. The data ultimately should be understood within the context
of the present study and its aims.
Findings
Focus groups provided faculty, staff, and students opportunities to collectively reflect
upon and articulate the role of DPS regarding and beyond its stated law enforcement and public
safety mission. Interviews with campus police officers offered a similar purpose. Examining
perspectives comparatively across structural positions (e.g., student, staff, faculty, etc.) and racial
identities allowed me to pay attention to the different ways that campus policing operates as a
relationship of racialized disciplinary power that encompasses and circulates through all
members of the campus community, not just those in the DPS uniforms. Thinking about the

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relational nature of racism and disciplinary power allowed me to identify how formal policing is
maintained and legitimated by institutional structures that reproduce white supremacy and
oppression along racial and class lines. At the same time, the findings demonstrate that policing a
college campus is a “plural enterprise in which many agents can be involved,” and reveals how
campus constituents are positioned to deploy police power (Brodeur, 2010, p. 21). As I will
describe, staff and student leaders were required to work with campus police officers to address
crises and emergencies. The bounded setting of a university illuminates how campus policing
maintains its environment’s dominant racial and class social order.
I organized the findings into two sections to illustrate how students, staff/administration,
faculty, and campus police officers experienced and engaged in policing as a racializing force.
First, I described the individual and collective dimensions through which policing shapes lived
experience as policing effects. The effects of policing included the narratives about campus
policing, crime, and safety among campus constituents. Second, I detailed how participants
understood the governance of the campus through policed relations. These relations pertained to
the institutional structures that empowered campus police beyond their stated law enforcement
role to define how campus constituents relate to one another and the institution.
Policing Effects
Participants across structural location and racial identities collectively identified familiar
narratives about campus policing, crime, and safety that circulated throughout AU. These
narratives intended to produce and reinforce an assumption that DPS was necessary for social
order while also fostering feelings of insecurity among students, staff, and faculty. I first report
on two connected narratives related to fear of crime and a criminalized class of people. A third
narrative described perceptions of police protection for the privileged classes of the university.

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Normalizing the Police
One of the ways in which policing effects shaped collective notions of safety and the
experience of campus space was the normalization of campus police among students, staff, and
faculty. Campus tours and orientation provided the first introductions to DPS for prospective and
new students. According to one Black undergraduate male student’s memory of orientation,
“They definitely stressed that we live in a highly, highly surveillanced situation.” Similarly,
faculty and staff were introduced to DPS as the primary resource for critical incidents, such as
active shooter training and potentially concerning situations. The number of officers and robust
security protocols were noticed and felt by students, staff, and faculty as they went about their
regular campus activities. Compared to her previous institution, an Asian American faculty
member commented, “At [previous university], I didn’t see that many security cameras. The
police presence was still there, but I do notice that it’s felt much more at AU.” While the amount
of campus police officers may have been shocking to new members of AU, policing was
normalized as a necessary protection.
The justification for extensive policing was predicated on exploiting fear of victimization.
Students and faculty variously described the campus as a “bubble,” “fortress,” and “golden egg
in a nest of thorns” due to the security in place. Visible DPS presence and security protocols
reinforced the idea that AU was in a dangerous neighborhood (a “nest of thorns” as described by
one participant). The prestige of AU’s reputation signaled a population that required protection
(a “golden egg”). Accordingly, the amount of policing and security was necessary to ensure as
much of a barrier as possible between AU members and the outsider threat of the community
(hence AU as a “bubble” or “fortress”).

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As I conducted my research, I became aware of widely held stereotypes about the local
community, including the use of “ghetto” and “the ‘hood” to describe the poor, Black, and
Latinx residents. Consequently, an effect of DPS presence was to communicate to campus
constituents to be vigilant in a crime-ridden area yet be assured by policing and security efforts.
One Latino male faculty member reflected on his sense of safety
I don’t fear bodily harm, but at the same time, I have this unnatural anxiety…At every
corner, there’s somebody with a yellow and red jacket and the sense was that they’re here
because it’s dangerous. But in my experience, the only reason I feel that is because the
people who are supposed to be keeping me safe imported that anxiety.
The professor’s comment illustrates how traversing through the AU vicinity could be a
disorienting experience as DPS presence simultaneously instilled fear and comfort. A Latina
professor commented that the circulated narrative of a dangerous and crime-ridden
neighborhood, paired with a large campus police force, sent the message that she was “supposed
to feel unsafe.” Similarly, for students unaccustomed to living in a densely populated urban
environment, the image of campus police officers on patrol conveyed that they “should stay on
campus, in this little bubble, and not go out…and be kept safe.” Fear of victimization outside the
contained boundaries of the university was a necessary component of normalizing campus police
officers and security guards posted throughout the campus and in adjacent off-campus streets. A
related effect was the implication that the campus was a safe space due to police protection.
Students, staff, and faculty experienced a contradictory message that they should feel
unsafe because of the local community but also feel reassured by the campus police. A comment
from an Asian American woman faculty member concisely expresses the intended effect: “I do
see more security and police around here. It legitimizes its presence. Like, yeah, we’re here

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because it’s dangerous because we’re here.” The circular logic describes how the number of
campus police was justified by crimes that occurred and crimes that had yet to be committed.
The understanding expressed by faculty and students mirrored how campus police officers
asserted the value of their role. One officer shared that without campus police, criminals will “go
out there and commit more crime.” Others referenced that the areas used to be “so much worse”
in the past. The build-up of DPS over the years has led to perceptions of a safer neighborhood,
yet officers operated with the anticipation of “people that want to cause trouble.” The sentiment
shared among DPS officers echoes the “thin blue line” ideal espoused in the law enforcement
profession, which tends to naturalize the police as the primary protection against criminals who
prey on civilized society (Wall, 2021, p. 13).
Creating a Criminalized Class
The second effect of campus policing concerned the production of a social hierarchy
based on race, class, and gender. Foucault (1977) argued that disciplinary power is directed
toward individuals who fall out of line. In their maintenance of law and order, DPS officers
discussed incidents in terms of individual suspects or known criminals. Similarly, students, staff,
and faculty recounted incidents where they observed DPS officers questioning, detaining, and
removing someone from campus space. Yet across responses, it was clear that at AU,
disciplinary power, when exercised by campus police officers, functioned along social identity
categories and exploited the conflict inherent in the social construction of race (Omi & Winant,
2015). Among campus constituents, the cumulative effect of observing DPS officers in action
and narratives circulated from peers and crime alerts resulted in a perception that Black and
Latinx men, poor, and unhoused people constituted a criminalized class that threatened the safety
of AU community members.

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When I asked participants about the state of campus crime, there was a consensus about
who was reported as criminal suspects to the AU community. A white male professor
commented on the suspect descriptions in campus crime alerts, “Yeah, I mean, it’s almost all
Black and Brown or heavily Black and Brown when it’s noted. It doesn’t feel like it’s students
who are perpetrating the crimes.” Other faculty noted that the campus crime alerts effectively
created a “catalog of men of color doing bad things” to “our poor students.” Participants
understood the frequency of alerts as a signal that DPS proactively resolved crime, or as one
faculty member stated: “[the alerts] make DPS a hero, perpetuating the notion that it’s a very
scary neighborhood,” populated by Black and Latinx criminals. While the campus crime alerts
provided helpful information, at times, they exploited the fear of a racialized and gendered threat
towards the predominantly affluent and white AU members.
Poverty also informed who was criminalized. The majority of residents were significantly
less wealthy compared to the average family income of an AU undergraduate. Linking the
amplification of fear with poverty, a Latina female professor commented on the effect of campus
policing: “I’m supposed to feel unsafe around unhoused people, people who don’t look like they
belong on campus. People who are just minding their business, riding the bus.” The remark
illustrates the class divide between the university and the local community. Similar to how Black
and Latinx racial identities were treated as a default threat, so too was being in a lower
socioeconomic class. Students and faculty recounted instances in which they observed residents
questioned and removed from campus. A white female undergraduate who held a part-time job
in the library shared that DPS officers routinely treated students in a friendly manner, including
letting them access the facility without a university ID despite the policy. In contrast, the student
noted that “we had so many local community members coming into our library just to hang out.

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[DPS officers] knew they were not students and treated them like, ‘why are you trying to come in
here.’ Just very aggressive.” The student noticed a clear difference in how DPS officers
interacted with residents negatively (“very aggressive”) compared to students once the policy
shifted. Although participants discussed the policing of people of color and residents as separate
identities, race, class, and organizational affiliation intersected in constructing a criminalized
class. A poor Black resident was portrayed as the typical criminal threatening white, affluent
college students.
Campus constituents with racially minoritized identities uniquely felt the consequences of
criminalizing non-white racial identities at AU. A second-year Black male undergraduate
remarked,
Consider what happens when you send out notifications like that again and again. People
begin to paint a picture in their minds. It’s a mental thing, your mind builds patterns. If
every day you get a text saying a Black person committed a crime, naturally you’re going
to believe that all Black people are criminals.
The quote illustrates how racist stereotypes of the Black/Latino male criminal affected not only
residents but Black and Latinx male AU campus members. Black undergraduate AU men
especially relayed experiences of being questioned by DPS officers for “fitting the description”
of a crime suspect (Smith et al., 2007, p. 562). A Black male professor similarly expressed: “I
expect to feel watched, to be challenged, or at least questioned as to why I’m on campus.” While
not all Black and Latinx participants had a negative campus police encounter, they could relay a
friend’s interaction or share a story of witnessing DPS officers detain and remove Black and
Latinx individuals.

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The fear of being targeted by DPS was not abstract and took on a personal, intimate
dimension. One Latina female student shared that her friends, mostly racially minoritized
women, were from the city and wondered if DPS officers might be “targeting someone’s father,
are they targeting someone’s brother?” For a Latina professor, her cousin, a Black male with a
disability who was on campus to access a free community health service, was wrongfully
questioned by DPS officers, a severely distressing event. Although DPS aimed to serve all
members of AU, the criminalization of Black, Latinx, and poor populations also ensnared AU
faculty and students with these identities.
Protecting Privilege
The criminalization of race and poverty was co-constructed alongside its converse:
whiteness and affluence characterized the class to be protected. White participants shared having
no significant interactions with campus policing and were aware that their experiences differed
from students, staff, and faculty of color. A white female professor reflected on the privilege she
possessed in the heavily policed campus environment:
[Officers] barely check my card or don’t check it. It’s a clear feeling that I am who
they’re here to protect. I’m not who they’re here to keep out. They’ll tend to look at me
like, we’re here to protect you. It’s a really sickening feeling.
This particular faculty member’s experience named the emotions that arose when she bypassed
usual security protocols (e.g., identification checkpoints), emotions that indicated that she was a
member of a protected class, someone for whom access to the campus was automatically
granted. The meaning of her emotions was confirmed by the non-verbal message from DPS
officers that their presence was to protect her. The feeling was “sickening” as she then recounted

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speaking with “loved ones” who were targets for DPS given their membership in racially
minoritized populations.
In addition to protecting whiteness, participants commented on the amount of wealth
represented by full tuition-paying students. Several agreed with the perspective that DPS “serves
the kids who pay full freight.” Affluent students did not come from neighborhoods like the one
surrounding AU; DPS was viewed as a force that ensured their comfort and freedom to walk
around the vicinity unharmed. A Black undergraduate male student recounted a night out and the
difference in how he and his white friends perceived DPS:
We were going somewhere in the car and the police officer pulled up next to us and they
rolled down the window, they were yelling at them. They were just being themselves, and
I was in the front seat and I was like, “What are you guys doing?” They pulled us over.
The driver was Black, I was Black, and in the back, they were white. They couldn’t
grasp, they couldn’t understand it because they’ve never felt, or had to feel bad about the
police. To them the police are like uncles, or friends or whatever, they’re not afraid and if
they do get fined at least at AU, the kids here are generally affluent or can afford it if they
get a ticket. They’re out here to have fun.
The example highlights the convergence of affluence and whiteness that was perceived to afford
protection against a negative campus police encounter. The student participant contrasted the
trauma and fear that arose for him to how his white friends “were just being themselves,” and
engaging in behavior that could be perceived as disrespectful towards the DPS officers (“yelling
at them”). The intersection of wealth and whiteness reflects AU’s history as a private,
historically white institution. Participants perceived white, wealthy students were less restricted
in their behavior because of their protected status. In the example above, not only did whiteness

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shape a positive view of campus police, the wealth of the white students also prevented them
from being concerned with their behavior as a ticket posed no major burden. A professor
described the relationship between white, wealthy students and campus police as a “system there
to protect them and their lives.”
Policing effects, identified through the views of and racially minoritized AU members,
provide insight into the affective dimension of teaching and learning in a policed environment. In
the AU context, race, gender, and class shaped how members of the campus felt as they saw
themselves through the eyes and words of the police. Policing effects, and their psychological
and emotional impacts, reveal the constant vulnerability of communities of color to police
violence. They also hide problems. An Asian American woman faculty expressed that the
purpose of campus police is to “gaslight from underlying violence that occurs every day.” In the
effort to exclude and remove racialized and poor outsiders, participants mentioned how DPS
officers seemed unable to limit and did not report sexual assault and threatening behavior
exhibited by fellow students, staff, and faculty. Given the additional context of AU’s growth and
urban development efforts over recent years, university expansion created more boundaries for
residents to “trespass” and justify the expansion of policing over resources to address systemic
issues, such as mental health and food and housing insecurity.
Policed Relations
In this section, I describe how campus police were granted expansive powers through
institutional structures. The embeddedness and authority of campus police shaped how
constituents related to one another and the university. The findings detail three dimensions of
policed relations and the centrality of DPS in campus life. First, I describe how campus police
were woven throughout the university organization and framed as a form of institutional care.

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This draws upon Silver’s (1967) definition of a policed society as one in which police power is
“widely diffused throughout civil society in small and discretionary operations (p. 8). Included in
this theme is a subsection that discusses racial equity concerns among staff who collaborate with
DPS. Due to the authority of DPS, the final two themes discuss how campus police determine the
relationship with the campus community and their authority to discipline race and resistance.
Policing Care
At AU, the campus police were organized as the Department of Public Safety. Although
staffed by police academy-trained officers with the power to arrest and use firearms, it was not a
“police department” per se. The public safety name implied a broader mission that includes “law
enforcement, security, safety, crime prevention, emergency medical, and other services and
functions” (Peak et al., 2008, p. 243). The notion of “public safety” positioned DPS as providers
of care, which aligned with university structures dedicated to student retention and wellbeing.
The difference in name also steered away from assumptions associated with traditional policing
and shifted how DPS officers understood their role. In addition to standard police duties,
protecting the AU community required DPS officers to adapt to the needs of varying situations.
As one officer described, “We are social workers. At times we are counselors or medical
professionals. At times we are law enforcement. Sometimes we’re parents.” The quote highlights
the variety of non-crime situations campus police officers are called to intervene in. Although
trained in law enforcement, a single officer must “wear different hats and, you have to be ready
to switch those buttons.” As the only campus department available around the clock every day of
the year, DPS was set up to be a catch-all, generalist responder. Additionally, several officers
referenced the department’s policy “to do something about everything.” The policy reflected the

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legal obligation of following up with caller requests and the department’s philosophy to be of
service to the campus community.
The role of campus police as care providers was solidified through the integration of DPS
with the divisions of Campus Wellness and Crisis Intervention and Student Affairs. DPS officers
were members of multi-disciplinary efforts to address imminent threats and mental health crises
among students, staff, and faculty. I interviewed members of this division who described the
collaboration with DPS as essential to campus safety. As non-law enforcement agents, the Threat
Assessment (TA) and Campus Support and Intervention (CSI) staff members relied upon DPS
for information sharing, such as obtaining criminal history and gun ownership records. Staff
members met regularly with DPS officers to discuss specific cases and talk through possible
solutions. Due to the danger posed by life-threatening situations and concerning individuals, DPS
officers were deployed to conduct wellness checks. One TA staff member said she would be
uncomfortable addressing a situation by herself and appreciated having an armed DPS escort.
Since DPS officers were available around the clock to travel through university property and off-
campus, a CSI staff member described DPS as “ideally an extension for us” in the need for an
immediate response. The role of campus police in ensuring student safety and wellbeing outside
of crime situations was mutually reinforced by institutional structures (e.g., partnerships with
campus units) and the subjective understanding among DPS officers that they were more than
law enforcement.
Racial Equity Concerns. Despite the use and perceived utility of DPS in student care,
staff members did communicate issues related to racial inclusion. In the focus group with
Residential Education staff, participants discussed observing adverse incidents between DPS
officers and Black students. Staff discussed the considerations they were mindful of when

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working with students of color in crisis. One Black woman staff member shared, “When I had a
Black student with a mental health issue, I tried to wait until the final moment to see if I really
needed to call DPS. Maybe I could walk the student over [to the counseling center].” She was
attuned to her residents’ negative experiences and perceptions of police, which shaped how she
carefully navigated a situation that could have escalated to a mandated involvement of DPS. CSI
staff similarly recounted working with students of color who had expressed fear of the police,
which motivated them to find other resources other than DPS that could help the student out of a
crisis, although this was not always possible.
Relatedly, cultural center staff at AU discussed how DPS outreach efforts were not well-
received by their student populations. A center director reported that following the 2021 Atlanta
spa shooting in which Asian American women were the majority of victims, DPS reached out
with condolences and an offer to provide a safety education workshop for Asian American
undergraduates. The director shared, “What they would rather have is knowing DPS isn’t
profiling Black and Brown students, creating a culture and climate that is detrimental to our
efforts to try to promote inclusion and safety and sense of belonging.” For student of color
populations at AU, police, including DPS, represented harm and violence rather than safety. The
comment highlights the issue of conflating police with safety. Rather, negative police treatment
towards communities of color may contribute to exclusion and insecurity.
Staff members reported challenges when working with DPS officers to ensure
appropriate service. A cultural center staff member recalled the conflict in arranging security for
a campus event:
I was working with the DPS representative who manages security and he immediately
was, ‘We need to have an armed officer there for this event. We need to make sure folks

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are protected.’ And I was like, ‘Hmm, no. We don’t need an armed officer. Because this
is a cultural event, you think we need to have more security?’ And so we definitely had a
lot of butting heads over armed officers versus unarmed officers and how many officers.
From the staff member’s perspective, the DPS officer conveyed an assumption that the event
posed a high level of security risk because of the minoritized population who would be in
attendance. The officer rationalized his desire for security as a protective measure and referenced
recent national events of targeted violence toward minoritized communities. However, the staff
member was aware that police presence could be detrimental to the students’ psychological
wellbeing given a historically negative relationship with police. The officer could only imagine
one approach to preventing harm, which was not attuned to the broader dynamics between
policing, violence, and systematic oppression. The staff member discussed the need for an
expansive notion of safety that took into account students’ identities: “I often think about
emotional and mental safety in addition to physical safety. He [the DPS officer] was very bent on
physical safety and that’s it.” Eventually, the cultural center staff member had to bring in a senior
leader in the division of student affairs to intervene and mediate the situation.
The policed nature of care and student support at the university exposes students of color
to campus police in non-crime situations. The use of officers as care providers—an image they
also held of themselves—was not attuned to racial climate concerns and led to an investment in
policing, such as creating the crisis intervention unit in DPS. When mandated by policy and
protocol, such as with Residential Education and Campus Wellness and Crisis Intervention, staff
members may have no choice but to have police interface with racially minoritized students,
even when such contact may induce fear and trauma. DPS is the only available resource in other
situations, such as theft, lock-outs, and medical emergencies. Students, staff, and faculty either

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have to resort to DPS for help or attempt to resolve a situation independently. As one Black male
undergraduate shared, “I just wouldn’t ever call DPS for anything. If my friend is blacking out, I
would rather take care of them myself or drive them to the hospital myself if I think they needed
to go.” The policed nature of care at AU, while legitimized, produced tensions and exposed
differences in how to ensure the safety and wellbeing of students of color.
Contradictions in Community Engagement
Central to this study was ascertaining how campus constituents perceived the style of
policing practiced by DPS. Students, staff, faculty, and officers differed in describing DPS-
community relations despite a stated movement towards community engagement within DPS.
All officers discussed the significance of community engagement, a priority of the then-chief at
the time of this study, who was promoted from assistant chief to chief in 2013. Within the last
ten years, community engagement within DPS began first as a specialized officer assignment and
evolved to its current designation as the Community Affairs and Strategic Communications
Bureau, staffed by a director who sits on DPS senior leadership directly below the chief. The
bureau staff included personnel charged with obtaining community feedback, liaising with social
services, and conducting community and youth programming.
Officers described community engagement through the tenets of community policing, or
community-oriented policing. They also referenced President Obama’s Task Force (2015), which
produced a report on 21st Century Policing, and defined community policing as “the active
building of positive relationships with members of the community” (p. 41). The shift to
community engagement was described by an officer, “[The chief] put more of a get out of your
car, walk up and down the main avenue, talk to the business owners there. Get to know the
community on a foot beat.” The officers contrasted engagement with the model of police as

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professional crime fighters, driving from scene to scene with few constituent interactions (Green,
2000). Officers also used the language of problem-solving, another tenet of community policing,
which refers to collaborating with community members to identify and solve problems. An
officer overseeing DPS’ youth diversion program described the problem-solving approach:
You look at the needs of the community. We want arrest to be the last on the chain and
we need to address the problem that’s happening. If I got a kid stealing, right, and I sit
down and talk them and say, ‘hey, why are you stealing?’ ‘I don’t have food at home. My
mom is poor. We can’t afford to eat, so I need to eat.’ Or they’re stealing shoes. We can
solve the problem of theft within the community by addressing it. Let’s do a shoe
giveaway so now these kids have what they need. We’re fulfilling their basic needs.
In this example, the officer articulated how problem-solving policing includes community
member feedback, shifting away from the police officer as the sole authority. As the DPS officer
shared, problem-solving introduces options for responses other than arrest that meet the
community’s needs. Regular communication with the local neighborhood was facilitated through
DPS’ youth program, officers assigned to attend neighborhood council meetings, outreach events
(e.g., “Coffee with a Cop”), and engagement while on patrol.
Despite the overt move to community engagement within the department, students, staff,
and faculty reported perceiving DPS officers as disconnected and not integrated with the campus
community. The Orientation Director, who attended AU as an undergraduate, shared her
observations of DPS officers: “What I find is that they go somewhere and congregate together.
They’re not out on campus to talk to students. They’re usually pretty close together, so it’s a
little more intimidating to talk to them.” The Orientation Director’s description of how she
typically sees officers on campus does not reflect the community engagement approach reported

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by officers. She went on to describe the initiative she takes to have informal interactions with
DPS officers, as well as the feedback she’s given to officers who give presentations at orientation
sessions. Moreover, few students and faculty in the study discussed having any interactions with
DPS officers that would contribute to positive relationship-building. A Black undergraduate
student critically assessed the DPS policing practice he observed:
I feel like there’s no way to get in touch with the community when you’re rolling across
campus in a car. You’re not talking to anybody. You can’t dialogue with anyone from
inside of a car when you’re driving. That seems to be the main mode of transportation,
and it seems like they have their own social groups, and you’ll see several DPS officers
standing and talking to each other.
Both comments bring to mind the separation that characterizes police-constituent relations in the
U.S. While there are constituents at AU who frequently interact with DPS and who have had
positive experiences, these are fewer compared to the segments of the population who have little
contact with DPS and for whom, the image of officers clustered together amplifies police power.
Disciplining Race and Resistance
Although community welfare and feedback were stated priorities in DPS, participants
relayed examples in which DPS exercised its power to discipline racialized bodies and resistance
to DPS authority. In the previous section, the disagreement between the cultural center staff and
DPS was due to the officer’s assertion of his concept of safety and order. A white male faculty
member shared an incident in which an unhoused man of color was charging his phone in the
lobby of the faculty member’s department. The faculty member had noted the person as he
entered his office early that morning. He soon heard a commotion and went back to the lobby

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where he saw a group of DPS officers talking to the unhoused person. The faculty member
attempted to intervene:
They said this guy isn’t a student here and accusing him of criminal trespassing. I was
like, he wasn’t doing anything, he’s just charging his hone. And they just kept going after
him. I said, calm down, he’s not doing anything. Then it was at that point that they got
aggressive with me and they’re like, get back in your office. It was intimidating. By this
time they have him up against the wall and putting him in handcuffs.
The faculty recalled that the unhoused person was calm and compliant in light of the aggressive
approach by DPS officers. The faculty member’s experience exemplifies how unhoused people
of color were criminalized by DPS. Although the faculty member felt no danger from this person
charging his phone, several DPS officers entered the situation and asserted their authority to
remove the person from the campus and disregard feedback from a faculty member. The faculty
member further reflected on the power dynamics in the situation: “I’m faculty. I’m a middle-
aged white guy and I felt scared.” He understood that if he felt powerless vis-à-vis DPS, how
much more so for individuals with minoritized identities.
In one final example, an Asian American woman faculty member shared an incident in
which she observed two students, two men of color, being stopped and questioned by a DPS
officer. The faculty member stepped in on behalf of her students:
I just told the student of their legal rights and I told them to walk away and I told the DPS
that they didn’t have any cause or whatever. I just had to do a lot of talking at them with
certain words and so that they understood to like back off. Subsequently I was spoken to
about interfering with law enforcement and interfering with arrest, but they’re not law

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enforcement, in my opinion. So, but anyway. I was told that I was interfering with an
arrest.
In this situation, DPS officers stopped the two students because they fit the description of a
reported crime. The faculty member, who was trained as a lawyer, attempted to assert her
understanding of the law against the private institutional power of DPS, which permits officers to
stop and question students. Although the officers ended up leaving the encounter, DPS later
followed up with the faculty member’s department chair who, along with the DPS chief,
reprimanded the faculty member. The incident was illustrative of the opaqueness of DPS
authority at AU, which exploited the lack of knowledge of DPS’ role and scope of authority. The
private nature of DPS did not comport with the limitations of public police officers and the rights
of citizens as noted by this faculty member. Moreover, the incident reinforced how DPS
authority is central at AU. The faculty member shared, “I felt like they [DPS] were just hassling
students and that it was actually them who were violating university standards and that I would
be violating university faculty handbook standards by not intervening on behalf of my students.”
Although the faculty member was acting in the best interest of her students, she was sanctioned
because her actions went against DPS authority.
Although only a few participants discussed examples in which they felt threatened by the
police despite having a level of authority themselves, I share these to illustrate how DPS power
has primary importance for the institution. In this regard, participants situated DPS as in service
to protecting AU as an institution. This was reflected in a couple of officers’ comments. One
shared that DPS is an “investment that the university is making because all it takes is one event
and lawsuits are going to come in. I look at [DPS] as an insurance package.” When officers
assert their authority to ask for a student’s ID it may be because the “university wants it because

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they want to be able to hold somebody accountable,” as one senior officer expressed. As
institutional agents, DPS officers are charged with not only representing the university but acting
in its best interests. Consequently, in some instances, DPS authority may supersede the views or
interests of campus constituents, even in less severe situations.
Discussion
This study aimed to understand how policing shapes individual experiences and group
relations across racial lines in a college community. I analyzed individual and focus group
interviews conducted with students, staff, faculty, and campus police officers through a lens of
disciplinary and racial power. The findings presented here highlight the racialized consequences
of campus policing that have been mainly unexplored in research and neglected by institutional
leaders in campus safety management. Participants expressed common narratives that depicted
how campus policing practices produced racialized meanings of criminality, belonging, and
order. Campus policing practices were upheld through the institutional authority vested in the
uniformed police officers, policies and procedures related to student safety and wellbeing, and
coordination between campus police and other units. As a result of direct and indirect
experiences shared by campus constituents, campus policing produced a system of social control
that reinforced a racial and class hierarchy, positioning Black, Brown, and poor bodies at the
lower rungs while elevating whiteness and affluence.
In addition to a purported crime control function, surveillance and governance practices
explicitly reinforced stereotypes of racialized criminality (Bell, 2017) and associated poverty
with deviance (Welsh & Abdel-Samad, 2018). Participants reported observing campus police
interact with Black, Latinx, and poorer individuals, suggesting that policing was a racially
targeted practice. This was supported through the stories that participants heard from students of

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color as well. These narratives extend prior research on the impact of negative vicarious police
experiences on citizens’ attitudes towards the police (Brunson, 2007; Rosenbaum et al., 2005).
The findings also demonstrate that vicarious racism affects multiple campus constituents
(Truong et al., 2015). The converse of how campus policing practices created a criminalized
class was the perception of who was privileged to receive protection. The study findings align
with what scholars refer to as the cultural construction of “white innocence,” which normalizes
whiteness as an identity that should be afforded protection by the police while also downplaying
the severity of misconduct to avoid excessive punishment by the criminal legal system (Cacho,
2014; Rodriguez, 2012). White participants shared minimal experiences with campus police
officers, and some expressed an awareness that the police were installed to protect them in
contrast to observing the criminalization of Blackness, Brownness, and poverty. The implied
assumption that criminal suspects were residents minimized crime and other misconduct
perpetrated against members of the AU community by one another, associating the historically
white campus space and its affiliates with innocence.
The findings illuminated the significance of the institution in empowering the campus
police. The institution accords DPS officers a wide latitude of power by relying on officers to
address any potential threat or risky incident that could lead to legal and financial liability for the
university. For instance, the integration of campus policing into multidisciplinary crisis response
teams is a common practice. However, research on mixed police-mental health team responses
has not found strong evidence for reducing crisis escalation and injury (Shapiro et al., 2015).
Similarly, reviews of police response to k-12 school mental health crises demonstrate a lack of
studies that evaluate police effectiveness in reducing psychological distress and promoting safety
(Choi et al., 2021; Muller et al., 2020). No studies to date have been conducted on the

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effectiveness of mixed police-mental health team responses in higher education settings. The
integration of campus policing into non-crime-related procedures that pertain to health and
wellbeing exposes minoritized individuals to unnecessary police contact.
Institutional structure and officer discretion converge to make campus policing a
“meaning-making” practice that centers on the subjectivity and agency of campus police officers.
While a practice such as community engagement is meant to prioritize community members’
concerns, campus police are empowered to determine who constitutes the “community,” the
degree to which campus police will work with the community, and the weight given to
constituent feedback. Hansford (2016) and others have suggested that community policing
results in “police-centered communities” (p. 219). From this point of view, campus police
officers can also ignore and punish community members they do not work to collaborate with
and who disagree with their authority, such as in the stories of faculty members who spoke up
against DPS officers.
The study points to the need to examine the relationship between organizational structure,
policy, and campus police. Critiques of campus police as a racist institution appear to rely on
what happens due to an officer interaction with a student, staff, or faculty. The study points to
important factors that position campus police officers at the front end, before any interaction, to
engage in racialized practices. The university-wide messaging of crime and safety most likely
reflects leadership concerns that shape the directives given to DPS. The deployment policy of
responding to non-crime situations and the integration of DPS into threat and crisis response are
institutional decisions made on behalf of DPS. The findings thus point to the benefit of studying
policing within a contained organizational setting, such as a university, to better identify how
racial power is institutionalized.

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There are some limitations and considerations to this study that are important to note.
First, the sample is not representative of all views and experiences at the study site. The majority
of faculty participants were signatories to a letter sent to university leadership, which advocated
for more transparency in campus police spending and resources for diversity and inclusion.
Students were leaders of cultural and social justice-focused campus organizations, some of
which were engaged in police abolition activism. Second, and related, as I analyzed and
organized the data into themes to answer the research question, I focused on data that pertained
to a racial analysis of campus policing and its perceived significance for the campus. Third, the
period of data collection (Fall 2020 to Fall 2021) occurred during a time in which police
abolition entered the mainstream discourse. At AU, students and faculty raised concerns about
racism and campus policing, which prompted the university to initiate a community advisory
board to collect feedback and develop reforms. The timing of the study and the political context
most likely shaped how participants discussed their direct and vicarious experiences with campus
policing at AU. Lastly, due to COVID-19, I could not observe interactions between campus
police officers and campus constituents as I initially planned. Through interacting in real-time
and in the natural setting of the study site, I would have been able to triangulate participants’
behavior and their perceptions of incidents with my observations. I also would have been able to
gather more of a sense of campus viewpoints through in-person events and demonstrations that
most likely would have occurred and drawn many attendees, including perspectives that differed
from the participants I interviewed. These limitations notwithstanding, the findings indicate that
some students, faculty, and staff experienced the campus as a racially ordered space and set of
relations defined by campus police.

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Recommendations for Research
In light of the current political climate, the findings and discussion offer
recommendations for research and practice that can inform an inclusive approach to campus
safety. Understanding the social consequences of campus police can be advanced through
employing critical social theories and questioning the fundamental assumption of police as only
a solution to crime, and, moreover, as the only possible response. The present study illustrates
the race-making and social discipline function of campus policing, which have been largely
neglected in scholarship. Critical gender theories and racial capitalism are promising frameworks
to examine the role of campus police in sexual assault, gender-based violence, and neoliberal
privatization in higher education. Qualitative methods can further explore the social meaning and
impact of campus police on students, staff, and faculty from minoritized backgrounds.
Comparative work has the potential to illustrate similarities across role and identity as well as
highlight salient particulars of group differences.
Future research should explore the role of campus administrators and staff who
collaborate with campus police and develop safety policies. The present study provided some
insights into how policing was a shared activity across roles, but more knowledge on how
campuses choose to integrate policing with other offices, such as student affairs units, will be
beneficial. It is also important to understand how campus administrators perceive risk and
liability, and what influences their reliance on campus policing to mitigate related anxieties
(Dizon et al., 2022). This extends to the development of safety policy and related budget
allocations. Researchers should give special attention to how campus administrators regard
issues of race, class, gender, and citizenship in campus safety planning.

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Recommendations for Practice
Campus leaders must begin to critically assess their assumptions of safety, danger, and
policing. Why do they believe their campus is safe or unsafe? What do they understand about
campus policing and how it affects students? Student, staff, and faculty demands to divest and
abolish campus policing should be given serious consideration regarding the merits of their
concerns. Rather than prioritize what will keep the institution safe, leaders have an opportunity to
genuinely listen to constituent feedback and assess what changes might be possible. For a real-
life example, Los Angeles Unified School district recently divested $25 million in school
policing and invested those funds and an additional $11.5 million towards an achievement plan
for Black students (Gomez, 2021). Rather than cutting policing completely, the plan reduces the
number of officers to hire more school climate coaches, nurses, and counselors. Relatedly,
institutional policies and procedures that mandate police involvement must be reviewed. For
colleges and universities employing sworn officers, administrators, faculty, and staff must
consider the implications of involving an armed officer to address a non-crime situation,
particularly for mental health crises and when involving minoritized individuals.
It is essential for staff, faculty, and administrators to initiate cultural change regarding
who is seen as belonging on campus. Efforts must be made to eliminate racist and exclusionary
language in the discussion of campus safety and security, such as in campus crime alerts (Pelfrey
et al., 2019) and the discourse used by staff, faculty, and leadership. Equitable admissions and
hiring policies can shift the demographic landscape, particularly at historically and majority-
white institutions. But along with compositional diversity, resources must be allocated to student
and employee retention and the development of an inclusive campus climate. A critical mass of
support is a necessary complement to numerical diversity (Park & Liu, 2014).

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Finally, the limits of campus police power should be reviewed and defined with clear
boundaries. The opacity of policing contributes to distrust, as evidenced by reforms based on
procedural justice. But beyond the actions of individual officers to ensure respect during
interactions, delimiting the use of campus police should also include when university personnel,
including leadership, can deploy officers. Guidelines for campus police action and scope of
authority should be written and provided to all campus community members. Such a tool can
enhance accountability and also empower students, staff, and faculty to assert their rights and
responsibilities to ensure the care of fellow campus members.
Conclusion
Campus policing can no longer be treated as a neutral practice in higher education nor
can higher education exempt itself from the national discussion on institutional racism in
policing. Through a study of racial and disciplinary power, the findings revealed how campus
policing was experienced as a racialized system of control that differentially impacted campus
constituents. However, even individuals with high social status, such as white male faculty, are
ultimately subordinate to the power of campus police officers. The institutionalization of
policing into roles beyond law enforcement and crime control normalizes police presence and
expose racially minoritized populations to further risk of police contact. As campuses diversify,
it behooves leaders to consider how investments in policing are commensurate with racial equity
and student success goals. Learning more about how the campus community is affected by the
police may suggest better safety measures that are inclusive of, rather than harmful to,
communities of color.

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Chapter 3: Black Undergraduate Men and the Racial Boundaries of Campus Policing
3

On a winter afternoon in January 2015, a Yale police officer followed Tahj Blow, a third-
year Yale undergraduate, as he walked back to his residence hall from the university library. The
officer called out for Blow, a young Black man, to turn around and when he did, the student
faced down the barrel of a gun. Blow allegedly matched the description of a burglary suspect, a
different person who was later apprehended (Blow, 2015). The violent and traumatizing
altercation described is not unique among Black college students on historically white campuses.
The media has documented several instances campus police have questioned the university
affiliation of Black students and investigated them as potential criminal suspects (Jaschik, 2018,
2019). News stories and emerging research (Jenkins et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2007) suggest that
Black students in higher education spaces are not free from the dynamics of aggressive, violent
policing and surveillance that have been documented in Black communities for decades
(Alexander, 2012; Baldwin, 1966; Blauner, 1972; Dei, 2017). Just as “driving while Black”
(Harris, 1999) can have negative consequences, so too does “walking while Black” on the
college quad (Jaschik, 2018).
The power of campus police in racialized encounters adds to the renewed attention on
police violence in racially minoritized communities. The spillover of the Black Lives Matter
movement onto college campuses has galvanized Black students and their allies to critically
appraise campus police departments. Student demands in 2015 from 86 institutions called for
reform, such as bias trainings and oversight boards (Chessman & Wayt, 2016). Although at the
time only students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill demanded the abolition of the
campus police department, these calls have been widely taken up by college students five years

3
Published on October 7, 2021 in Journal of Diversity in Higher Education with the title, “Protecting the
University, Policing Race: A Case Study of Campus Policing.”

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later, following George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers (Sainato, 2020). The surge
of student activism in response to campus policing has been viewed as a new avenue through
which “the widespread racism in U.S. universities is once more being challenged” (White, 2016,
p. 86). As students continue to mobilize, it is imperative to examine how campus police
departments contribute to institutional racism in higher education. Relatedly, the political shift
from reform to divestment and abolition calls for understanding how racially minoritized
students experience campus policing.
An emergent line of research illustrates the psychosocial impact of racial
microaggressions perpetuated by campus police officers toward Black students (Jenkins et al.,
2021; Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007). However, when racial identities are invoked in such
encounters, the impact extends beyond the interaction and implicates how racism shapes
belonging and access to university re- sources. The present study takes an institutional
perspective and conceptualizes campus policing as a racial project. Sociologists Omi and Winant
(2015) define a racial project as “simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation
of racial identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic,
political, cultural) along particular racial lines” (p. 125). The racial project concept explains how
cultural meanings of race (e.g., popular representations, stereotypes) are linked to social
structures and institutions, including an organization such as a university (Ray, 2019). While the
general institutions of policing and higher education have been separately examined as sites that
perpetuate racism (Patton, 2016; Rice & White, 2010), this study explores how they overlap to
produce and maintain racial boundaries within a campus community. To accomplish this broad
goal, the study examines the experiences and perceptions of campus policing with one group,
Black undergraduate men. In U.S. society, Black men are systematically vulnerable to the

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criminal justice system. They are disproportionately stopped, questioned, and arrested by police
officers (Gelman et al., 2007; Goel et al., 2016; Taylor et al., 2018). Black male youth report
frequent harassment by police, disrespectful treatment, physical and verbal harm (Brunson, 2007;
Brunson & Miller, 2006). The study focuses on Black undergraduate men to explore the
following questions: (a) How does campus policing shape how Black undergraduate men
experience the campus community? and (b) What do these experiences reveal about campus
policing as a racial project?
Literature Review
The following literature review begins with an overview of policing on college campuses.
Campus policing research is largely color-evasive due to the use of frameworks that avoid a
thorough engagement with race and racism (Annamma et al., 2017), even going so far as to
minimize significant findings correlated with race (Aiello & Lawton, 2018). I address the pitfalls
of color-evasive research by contextualizing the study within the body of scholarship on racism
in higher education.
Campus Policing
Policing is prevalent among colleges and universities. Approximately 95% of 4-year
institutions enrolling 2,500 or more students operate a campus police department. In addition,
70% of institutions partner with external law enforcement agencies and approximately 24%
contract private security companies (Reaves, 2015). As an example, California State University,
Fresno employs police officers and partners with the local police department. The university is
also within the jurisdiction of the California Highway Patrol and the neighboring municipal
police agency (Casey, 2019). Campus police personnel are both sworn and nonsworn officers.
About 68% of institutions employ sworn officers who are police academy-trained, authorized to

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carry firearms, and have full arrest powers granted by a state or local authority. Additionally,
most sworn officers have arrest (86%) and patrol (81%) jurisdiction off-campus. Only 32% of
institutions exclusively employ nonsworn officers, or unarmed security guards (Reaves, 2015).
While campus police officers are not always perceived as true law enforcement officials,
particularly by students (Jacobsen, 2015; Wada et al., 2010), campus police officers are trained
and exercise many of the same powers as municipal police officers.
Scholars have legitimized campus policing by framing it as a solution to mass violence
and campus crime (Asmussen & Creswell, 1995; Sloan & Fisher, 2010; Sulkowski & Lazarus,
2011). Campus stakeholders generally approve of campus policing as a needed crime deterrent
(Allen, 2016, 2017; Griffith et al., 2004; Johnson & Bromley, 1999). Likewise, the majority of
research starts from the assumption that campus policing is an objective, neutral instrument of
crime control, and aims to generate research-based improvements. Accordingly, studies have
examined campus policing in order to better understand campus police practices (Bromley, 2003;
Perez & Bromley, 2015), organizational structure (Hancock, 2016; Paoline & Sloan, 2003), and
officer outlook and discretion (Allen, 2014, 2015, 2016; Wilson & Wilson, 2015). Existing
research is limited in providing an analysis of how social context and racial identity interact with
campus policing. For instance, Paoline and Sloan’s (2003) study of campus law enforcement
organizational structure did not take into account factors such as campus racial demographics
and urbanicity. In municipal police research, Black racial composition and geography have been
positively associated with police expenditures, department size, and the use of excessive force
(Jackson & Carroll, 1981; Smith & Holmes, 2014; Stults & Baumer, 2007). Although campus
policing derives its legitimacy and current organizational form by mimicking municipal law
enforcement agencies (Perez & Bromley, 2015; Paoline & Sloan, 2003), it is presented as a race-

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neutral practice appropriate for diverse college campuses (Sloan et al., 2000; Wolf et al., 2010).
The research largely evades a discussion of race and racism by decontextualizing campus
policing and crime, despite extensive evidence of racial inequities in the general U.S. policing
apparatus (Alexander, 2012; Kochel et al., 2011; Walker et al., 2012). Furthermore, the objective
portrayal of campus policing detaches it from the various ways that racism manifests in higher
education.
Racism in Higher Education
Colleges and universities are intimately tied to the endemic problem of racism in the
United States. Through examining its past and present, higher education is a racist institution,
characterized by “white-controlled normative structures and social networks and routinely
perpetuate internal racial hierarchies and inequalities” (Feagin, 2006, p. 36). The colonial
colleges, which served only white men, were constructed with slave labor on expropriated Native
lands (Wilder, 2013; Wright, 1988). Despite Civil Rights gains, attacks on race-conscious
policies and racial bias in the admissions process continue to restrict college access (Blume &
Long, 2014; Cortes, 2010; Kidder, 2006; Thornhill, 2019). The result is that white students
continue to make up the majority (56%) of undergraduate enrollment nationally compared to the
shares of Black (14%), Hispanic (19%), Asian (6%), and Native (1%) students (de Brey et al.,
2019). Additionally, faculty and senior leadership are predominantly white males (Fradella,
2018; Gasman et al., 2015). For racially minoritized students who matriculate, they attend
institutions that cater to socially privileged groups.
The underrepresentation of racially minoritized groups is exacerbated by harmful campus
racial climates. On any given campus, “community members’ attitudes, perceptions, behaviors,
and expectations around issues of race, ethnicity, and diversity” shape the racial climate students

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navigate (Hurtado et al., 2008, p. 205). The literature on racial attitudes (Cabrera, 2012, 2014;
McCoy et al., 2015) and racial microaggressions (Harwood et al., 2012; Solorzano et al., 2000)
has shed light on the various ways racially minoritized students encounter racism in
predominantly white institutions. Reported experiences include hostile interactions, racial
isolation, the pressure to conform and segregate, and feeling silenced (Jones et al., 2002; Lewis
et al., 2000; Museus & Park, 2015). The psychological harm and interpersonal impact of racism
are accompanied by racialized institutional practices that shape the campus environment, such as
space and resource allocation (Alcantar et al., 2020), leadership (Kezar et al., 2018), university
communications (Andrade & Lundberg, 2020; Cole & Harper, 2017), admissions (Cortes, 2010;
Posselt, 2015), and hiring (Liera & Ching, 2019; Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017). Although race-
related privileges and oppression can be reproduced through institutional structures and
processes (Milem et al., 2005), there is limited research that views individual and group
experiences with racism through an institutional lens (Hurtado et al., 2012).
Policing, Racism, and Higher Education
The objective, neutral framing of campus policing differs from other bodies of research
that have generated robust sets of findings regarding the racist institutional nature of policing.
The larger field of municipal policing research has demonstrated the prevalence of systematic
racial inequities and differences in experience patterned along race (Harris, 1999; Lamberth,
1998; Rice & White, 2010; Walker et al., 2012). In education, research in the k-12 sector has
explored the detrimental impacts of zero-tolerance discipline and school-based police officers on
racially minoritized youth (Crosse et al., 2021; Nolan, 2011; Skiba et al., 2018; Welch & Payne,
2018). The use of police in k-12 schools has resulted in the displacement of educators as the
primary disciplinarians and the criminalization of student behavior (Browne, 2003). Moreover,

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school-based police officers are an additional presence in low-income and racially minoritized
communities that are already heavily policed. Youth are thus subject to policing in and outside of
school (Huerta et al., 2017; Nolan, 2011; Rios, 2011), which can have a negative impact on
academic performance and postsecondary enrollment (Johnson, 2015; Legewie & Fagan, 2019).
Scholars have discussed how policing in schools attended by racially minoritized youth
contributes to a school-prison nexus (Meiners, 2007) and universal carceral apparatus (Shedd,
2015) that encapsulates and touches all students, resulting in systemic inequities along racial and
class lines. In contrast, studies set in a higher education context, conclusions on the relationship
between race and campus policing do not offer a consistent analysis due to an emphasis on
individual experiences and differences in theoretical approach.
Driven by the frame of legitimacy, criminal justice scholars have found that Black
college students endorse the actions of campus police officers (Allen, 2016, 2017). For instance,
Allen (2016) reported strong support of stop-and-question policing from an interview sample that
had a majority of Black students. Although such a practice has been identified as inequitable in
the general U.S. policing apparatus, racial discrimination was not brought up as a concern by
student participants. The author concluded that the students either did not perceive racial
discrimination from campus police officers or that racism is so salient that it has become “taken
for granted and, thus, left unmentioned” (Allen, 2016, p. 517). Without a full appraisal of how
race and racism might factor into stop-and-question policing, the study endorses the practice and
suggests campus policing is more procedurally fair compared to municipal policing. In another
study, Black college students interviewed by Allen and Jacques (2020) reported severe
mistreatment by municipal and campus police, but only attributed racial discrimination to the
former. The authors were unable to explain this difference but reinforced a view that campus

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policing is a friendlier and less aggressive practice. While municipal police may engage in more
egregious behavior, the comparative approach prevents a full accounting of the racial dynamics
at play in campus policing. In contrast, higher education scholars have examined campus
policing by employing race-conscious concepts such as racial microaggressions and campus
racial climate (Jenkins et al., 2021). In a multi-campus interview study at elite historically white
institutions (Smith et al., 2007), Black college male respondents shared experiences in which
they were consistently “defined as being ‘out of place’ and ‘fitting the description’ of illegitimate
members of the campus community” by the campus police, whether on or near campus (p. 562).
The campus police–student encounters were framed as psychologically harmful acts of racial
microaggressions that contributed to on-going mental stress for Black undergraduate men and a
negative campus racial climate. In contrast to an individual focus, Mills (2020) categorized
campus responses to criminality as a type of environmental microaggression to highlight how
indignities are produced through campus procedures. While studies on racial microaggressions
provide evidence of hostile racial climates, such findings are overly reliant on individual
perceptions of race. In the aggregate, research on racism in campus policing, whether through a
criminal justice or race-conscious approach, has tended to emphasize individual perceptions and
direct encounters without full consideration of how campus policing shapes collective
experiences and institutionalizes racial inequities.
The present study aims to better account for the relationship between campus policing
and racism in higher education. First, although the literature presents a not-racist/racist binary of
how students view campus policing, I suspect there is a spectrum of racialized experiences. By
focusing on the social context in which students encounter campus police, rather than a hyper-
focus on individual experience alone, research can uncover how institutional structures limit or

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promote full participation among members of racially minoritized groups (Annamma et al.,
2017). Recall that the 2015 and 2020 waves of student demands differed in their approaches—
reform compared to divestment and abolition—but activist efforts were similarly motivated by
critiques of racist campus policing (Chessman & Wayt, 2016; Sainato, 2020). The differences in
demands reflect that perceptions of an institution can be varied but rooted in a common problem.
Second, to better capture the range of student experiences with racism, campus policing has to be
framed as an institutional phenomenon that transcends direct, interpersonal encounters. As
institutional agents, campus police officers constitute part of the campus environment that then
shapes student experiences. A goal of this study is to explore how the relationship between race
and policing in higher education informs a racialized social structure and order.
Conceptual Framework
The following sections combine two key theories that undergirded the research questions
and subsequent data analysis for this research study. Racial formation theory provides an
intervention to color-evasive research by centering race as a central analytical construct to
understand how racial categories are produced and reinforced by campus police. In tandem,
sociological theory on boundaries articulates how racial projects harden racial differences
symbolically and institutionally, thereby shaping student life in inequitable ways.
Racial Formation Theory
Omi and Winant’s (2015) theory of racial formation centers on race as an independent
social construct that organizes people’s lives, social practices, distribution of resources, and
institutions. Racial formation challenges biological notions of race and refers to “the
sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and
destroyed” (Omi & Winant, 2015, p. 109). This sociohistorical process is tied to contestations

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over power unique to historical periods. Accordingly, race “signifies and symbolizes social
conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi & Winant, 2015, p.
110). Racial formation takes context into consideration and does not assume a racial category is
static. Thus, Black racial identity, for example, can take on varied cultural meanings and social
positions, such as being associated with criminality or athleticism (Smith et al., 2016). Racial
formation is the accumulated outcome of racial projects. The racial project concept links the
meaning and value ascribed to racial identities with the development of social institutions, which
organize and distribute resources. A racial project is racist if it “creates or reproduces structures
of domination based on racial significations and identities” (Omi & Winant, 2015, p. 128). In
short, race is a social construct that, while not biologically inherent, is related to material
inequities and unequal power dynamics.
In the context of this study, racial formation theory addresses the color-evasiveness of
campus policing research as it seeks to explain how, not if, race shapes a social institution such
as policing. Similar to the history of U.S. higher education, the general policing apparatus also
descends from overtly racist origins, notably the colonial slave patrol (Reichel, 1988; Turner et
al., 2006; Vitale, 2017). While policing and higher education have shifted along with liberal
reforms, racial inequities and violence continue to persist in these institutions. Racial projects
conceptualize how, despite changes over time, race continues to inform social structures and at
multiple scales. At an individual level, a racial project can be the decision of a campus police
officer to stop and question a Black undergraduate student for “fitting a description” (Smith et
al., 2007). From an institutional view, a racial project may be evident in observations of more
police patrols on campuses with higher enrollments of racially minoritized, low-income students
compared to those with white and affluent student bodies (Dache-Gerbino & White, 2016). As

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seen in both examples, campus policing can be read as a racial project that links meanings of
race with institutional access, actions, and resources.
Symbolic and Social Boundaries
Sociological work on boundaries has investigated how people form distinctions to
categorize others. Similar to how racial projects combine cultural meanings of race with social
structures, sociologists have conceptualized how symbolic and social boundaries shape societies.
Symbolic boundaries refer to the “conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize
objects, people, practices, and even time and space” (Lamont & Molnár, 2002, p. 168).
Conceptual demarcations situate people in their “right place” which comes with expectations of
behavior in accordance with their position (Wuthnow, 1987). Pertinent to campus policing is the
discretion officers exercise to address what they judge to be disorderliness, suspicious behavior,
and potential criminal activity. Due to their legal authority, the symbolic distinctions police
officers create inform their ability to enforce social boundaries or legally codified social
categories. For example, university affiliation is one kind of social boundary as campus police
officers surveil the property boundaries of the campus and restrict access based on campus
membership. This boundary seamlessly intersects with race as previous studies have
demonstrated (Jenkins et al., 2021; Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007).
Campus policing can thus be thought of as racial boundary work. Social boundaries, such
as race, are relevant because patterns of inequality can be observed along group lines and can
powerfully shape social life. Sociologist Charles Tilly (2004) suggests that “social boundaries
interrupt, divide, circumscribe, or segregate distributions of population or activity within social
fields” (p. 214). Tilly argues that in the operation of a social boundary, distinctive social relations
form on either side of the boundary. There are also unique relations across the boundary zone

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between those on either side. An application of how boundaries shape social practices and
relations is the socialization of students to comply with campus police officers and internalize
campus safety procedures. The present study considers how Black student life is shaped within a
policed historically white campus.
In sum, the conceptual framework informs the current research in three specific ways.
First, racial formation and boundary theories provide the lens to examine how racial inequity
manifests and structures campus life through the mechanism of policing. The framework
addresses the need to further study how institutional policies and practices filter access to
resources and privileges within a specific context, such as a university. Second, the analysis
responds to color-evasive depictions of campus policing. Cultural meanings of race involve
symbolic boundaries (e.g., insider/outsider, order/disorder), which in turn contributes to the
enforcement of race as a social boundary. While campus policing may be thought of as neutral,
race is an inescapable principle that organizes social life in the U.S. Finally, the framework can
be used to study how groups navigate the boundaries enforced by campus police, their resulting
social practices, and relationship to the institution, including the nuanced ways that race shapes
inclusion and exclusion.
Research Design
Methodological choices were anchored in the critical constructivist paradigm, which
assumes that knowledge is socially constructed through human interaction and that the social
world is shaped by systems of power, privilege, and oppression (Kincheloe, 2005; Perez, 2019).
Moreover, critical constructivism values “knowledges and forms of meaning making
traditionally dismissed by dominant culture and mainstream academics” (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 4).
In line with this paradigm, the research design was an exploratory instrumental case study of

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how racism manifests at an institutional level through campus policing (Stake, 2005).
Instrumental case studies “provide insight into an issue or redraw generalizations” by focusing
on how the particularities learned about the case may have theoretical import (Stake, 2005, p.
445). Prior research has presented campus policing as neutral and objective or as having
individual impacts. An instrumental case study design was chosen for its potential to offer
insight into how campus policing operates as a case of a racial project in higher education that
draws boundaries of belonging/exclusion in ways that reinforce racial marginalization and shape
the social life of minoritized groups. The study was also exploratory in nature due to the lack of
previously established propositions regarding the racialized nature of campus policing as an
institutional function (Mills et al., 2010).
The study site was a single private research university with one of the largest campus
public law enforcement agencies in the nation, representing an “extreme” case of campus
policing (Seawright & Gerring, 2008, p. 297). The stratified racial composition of the study site,
in tandem with the presence of a large campus law enforcement agency, provides an ideal setting
to examine the relationship between campus policing and institutional racism in higher
education. Black undergraduate men were included because Black men at large are
disproportionately targeted by police in the United States, yet their critiques of policing have
been largely unexplored or are pitted against pro-police views (Weitzer & Tuch, 2006; Wilson &
Buckler, 2010). The participants reported a range of experiences with campus police, which were
interpreted to discern shared constructed understandings of racial power in policing the college
campus. The participants collectively provided a counter-narrative of how racism and policing
converge in higher education.

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Participants
Criteria for study participation included being an enrolled undergraduate student and self-
identifying as a Black undergraduate male. The openness in the participant criteria was to
counter the assumption that Black men are a monolithic group and thus permit a wide range of
possible experiences to be considered. Random purposeful sampling was employed to recruit
participants (Onwuegbuzie &Collins, 2007). I leveraged relationships with student leaders and
the university’s Black cultural center staff to recruit at Black undergraduate student organization
meetings. A public call for participants was also posted on an online university announcement
page. Students self-selected into the study and were screened to ensure they identified as Black
undergraduate men. Each student participated in a semi-structured interview, the length of which
ranged from 45 to 90 min with an average time of 60 min, and received a $10 Amazon gift card
as compensation for their time. Twenty-one interviews took place in Fall 2018 and an additional
10 interviews in Spring 2019.
The final sample consisted of 31 students (Table 3.1). The participants represented a wide
range of academic majors in the social sciences, science and engineering fields, and humanities.
In terms of degree progress, 61% were in their third year or higher of study.

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Table 3.1
Participant Demographics
Name (pseudonym) Age Class Year Major Residence
Dre 18 1
st
year Public Policy On-campus
Rick 18 1
st
year Law, History, and Culture On-campus
Christopher 18 1
st
year Business On-campus
Franklin 19 1st year Computer Science On-campus
Leo 19 1st year Aerospace Engineering On-campus
Victor 26 2nd year Psychology On-campus
Integrity 18 2nd year Accounting On-campus
George 19 2nd year Neuroscience On-campus
Ori 19 2nd year Cinema & Media Studies On-campus
Jason 19 2nd year Theatre On-campus
Jax 19 2nd year Political Science On-campus
Darren 20 2nd year Media Arts and Practice On-campus
Allen 20 3rd year Communication On-campus
Giovanni 31 3rd year Civil Engineering Off-campus
Lamar 20 3rd year Popular Music Off-campus
Devon 20 3rd year Music Industry Off-campus
Barry 20 3rd year Cinema & Media Studies Off-campus
Arya 20 3rd year Communications Off-campus
Kevin 20 3rd year Accounting Off-campus
Marcel 21 3rd year Chemical Engineering On-campus
Tony 20 4th year Pop Music Off-campus
Candler 21 4th year International Relations Off-campus
Mark 21 4th year Jazz Studies On-campus
Nick 21 4th year Political Economy Off-campus
John 28 4th year Psychology Off-campus
Nathaniel 21 4th year International Relations Off-campus
Todd 22 4th year Political Economy Off-campus
Bruce 42 4th year Sociology Off-campus
Leonel 22 5th year Computer Science Off-campus
Jay 22 5th year Neuroscience Off-campus
Anthony 21 5th year Theatre Off-campus

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Significantly, almost all of the participants discussed having had conversations with
family about how to interact with the police. Several participants were active in the Black student
community either as members or leaders. While all identified as Black men, the sample was
diverse in terms of ethnicity and pre-college geographic context. The sample included one
international student from an African nation, several from African immigrant families, and
overall the students hailed from 15 states in the U.S. Immigrant status and ethnicity have been
found to shape similar and divergent perceptions of campus racial climate among Black college
students (Mwangi et al., 2019; Griffin et al., 2016). The variation in participants’ experiences
and perceptions of campus policing were undoubtedly shaped by their identities and involvement
on campus.
Data Collection
The study drew upon data from two sources—documents and interviews—to develop a
holistic understanding of the case context and phenomenon of interest, campus policing.
Documents were used to produce a description of the case context, inform the interview protocol,
and triangulate with interview data. These included campus safety policies, the website of the
campus police department, campus and community demographic data, campus crime alerts, and
newspapers. Documents were collected at the start of the study prior to the interview phase.
Interviews were used to obtain detailed accounts of individual experiences with campus policing
(Marshall & Rossman, 2010). In line with a critical constructivist paradigm, the 18-question
interview protocol was designed to elicit participants’ direct and vicarious experiences with
policing, as well as their views of the relationship between the university and the Black student
community. Questions moved from asking participants to recall their experiences generally to
reflections about the role of race in campus policing. Sample questions included:

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a. Every now and then, we get texts or emails from the university about crime incidents.
What are your impressions of these messages?
b. What do students have to do to enter the campus and buildings?
c. What interactions have you had with a campus police officer?
d. Have you ever been mistaken for not being a student?
e. What conversations have you had with fellow Black students about campus police?
Minor modifications were made to the interview protocol as a result from insights that
arose during memo writing and unexpected topics shared by participants. For instance, initial
participants shared the use of a group text thread among Black undergraduates to warn one
another about campus police activity. I consequently asked later participants about their
awareness and participation in this community forum. The interviews took place in person and in
a private university office according to the participant’s schedule. All interviews were audio
recorded and transcribed verbatim. Memo writing after each interview ensured data saturation
was achieved.
Data Analysis
Data analysis was concurrent with collection (Merriam, 1998). The documents were read
and used to construct a description of the case with particular attention to its campus policing
infrastructure. The documents informed the development of interview questions and were
referred back to throughout the interview phase to better understand events mentioned by
participants. For the interviews, I followed the procedures of constant comparative analysis
outlined by Fram (2013) as an analytical method independent of grounded theory. First, I
engaged in an open reading of the transcripts to understand the individual participant’s
experiences with campus police. I wrote preliminary jottings on the physical transcripts to note

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keywords and phrases followed by analytical memos to reflect on my understanding of the
participants’ relationship to campus policing (Saldana, 2015). Second, I descriptively coded
transcripts in NVivo 12 as a way to categorize and reduce the data. Examples of descriptive
codes included “crime alert,” “direct encounter,” and “access.”
I engaged in constant comparative analysis to integrate the conceptual framework and
differences between participants (Fram, 2013). Thus, in the third step, I revisited the conceptual
framework to identify relationships between the descriptive codes that pointed to how racial
meanings were embedded in campus policing and how participants’ social lives were affected. I
examined relationships in the data to identify a shared condition, if any, between participants and
common actions/interactions with campus police (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Codes produced
from this step included “behaviors to avoid campus police,” “questioning race in ID checks,” and
“fear of being stereotyped.” I also identified opposing viewpoints among the participants. For
example, participants expressed campus crime alerts were useful because students were informed
of the location of crimes. However, several remarked on the racial stereotypes reinforced through
suspect descriptions. Noting differences between individuals was important to maintain a focus
on what can be learned about policing and racism on an institutional level, thereby keeping the
analytic focus on how campus policing constrains or enables the lives of Black undergraduate
men. These three rounds of analysis generated the four themes that anchor the findings.
Trustworthiness
To ensure trustworthiness, I engaged in several strategies. First, I reflected on my
positionality during all stages of the research process. As a Filipino American and non-Black
man of color, I am not at risk of police harassment, violence, and surveillance to the same degree
as Black people in the United States. Yet, I identify as a scholar and educator committed to

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eradicating racism in all forms. My prior professional experience in multicultural student affairs
included advising racially minoritized students as they coped with racial profiling by campus
police and incidents of police brutality reported in the media. These experiences motivated, in
part, my desire to conduct the study and shaped the research questions. Acknowledging my
positionality was tied to obtaining quality data, a key aspect of establishing trustworthiness in
qualitative inquiry. At the start of all the interviews, I disclosed my racial identity, past work
with racially minoritized students, and my motivations for the study. My transparency helped
create an interview space for the respondents to offer candid and authentic responses.
Another trustworthiness strategy was memo writing, which identified consistency in the
data. I observed that similar topics were raised by participants, including those who were not
active in the Black student community. This is not to suggest that the participants all held the
same views, but rather to acknowledge experiences common to being a Black male student.
Throughout conducting interviews, I also became aware that participants referenced one other in
the disclosure of their experiences. The shared experiences and connections among the
participants indicated that the emerging codes and final themes provided a coherent narrative
unique to the case. Interview data were triangulated against documents, which served to provide
additional information, such as if an event was discussed and also written about. Finally, findings
were reviewed by two academic colleagues who identify as Black men and have been profiled by
campus police officers. This peer debriefing was to help challenge possible underlying
assumptions and provide feedback on the findings. Peer debriefing is also a credibility technique
aligned with the critical constructivist paradigm informing the study due to the collaboration
between myself and peers who have experiential knowledge and have theorized about the topic
of the study (Creswell & Miller, 2000). One limitation is worth noting. Due to the significant

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investment in time required, the study did not include observations, which would have provided
another source of data to analyze the presence, visibility, and interactions of campus police
officers with the campus community, particularly Black undergraduate men. Ethnographic
fieldnotes could have been used to triangulate the interview data and add to the case context.
Future studies of racism in campus policing may benefit from observational data (Allen, 2014,
2016).
Case Context
Adamson University (AU; a pseudonym) is a historically white private, research-
intensive institution on the West Coast. Approximately 20,000 undergraduate students are
enrolled. White students make up the largest racial group (29%), followed by Asian Americans
(17%), Latinx (15%), and Black students (5%). International students make up a quarter of the
undergraduate student body. Among first-year students, about 15% are first-generation college
students compared to 17% who are legacies. The median family income of a SU undergraduate is
$161,400; only 4% of students come from a family in the bottom 20% of income. The university
is situated within a local community that starkly differs demographically. The surrounding
residents are predominantly Black (27%) and Latinx (63%). The average median household
income is $28,25 and approximately 11% of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher.
The local community is associated with prevalent crime and highly publicized acts of violence,
including the murders of students and faculty. In this context, Black undergraduate men are
susceptible to being perceived as local residents and associated with criminality.
AU administration manages security, crime, and fear of victimization with an extensive
campus policing structure. The AU Department of Public Safety (DPS) provides the main form
of law enforcement with 306 full-time personnel, who patrol university property and a two-mile

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radius off-campus. For comparison, the average number of full-time law enforcement personnel
is 37 for a 4- year postsecondary institution in the United States (Reaves, 2015). DPS employs
two types of officers. Public safety officers are academy-trained sworn peace officers authorized
to arrest and carry firearms. In other words, public safety officers have the same training and
near-complete set of powers as full-fledged municipal police officers. Community safety officers
are nonsworn and do not carry firearms. In addition, SU contracts with a private security
company for additional guards and partners with its local city law enforcement agency. DPS
enforces university safety policies and measures, including a surveillance camera system,
identification checks, controlling campus entry, and sending out Clery Act-mandated crime
alerts. Officers work in tandem with student affairs units, such as residential life and conduct, to
handle non-crime-related student behaviors and emergencies. DPS’ stated aim is to provide “the
highest level of professional public service to the wide range of ethnic and culturally diverse
groups that make up Sunnyside University.” By ensuring campus safety, DPS supports “students,
faculty, staff and campus visitors to realize their academic and social pursuits.” The statement
conveys that DPS provides a service that is necessary to fulfill the academic mission of the
institution. In doing so, DPS implies that it equally serves the “ethnic and culturally diverse
groups” that make up the campus community.
The participants were highly aware of DPS and its presence on campus. They all
mentioned being oriented to the campus safety measures as new students, such as being
instructed to input the DPS number into their phones and to download a mobile safety app. One
student was at first “taken aback because I was a bit surprised at all the security guards you see
around the area,” while other participants described the level of policing as “normal,” “well
organized,” and makes SU “a fortress against any crime.” The comments suggest that DPS

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fulfills its mission in part by socializing students to see the necessity of campus policing. The
“fortress” simile signals that students are at risk of crime and DPS’ role is to safeguard the entire
campus community. The visibility of campus police officers, while jarring at times, normalizes
police presence as a service to be expected.
DPS officers enforce two key security measures, campus crime alerts and the closed
campus policy. Per the Clery Act, AU is mandated to “alert the campus community to certain
crimes in a manner that is timely and will aid in the prevention of similar crimes” (U.S.
Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, 2016, pp. 6–12). AU alerts, sent
out by DPS, consistently included geographic and racial demographic data to contextualize
crimes and safety hazards. All the participants were aware of the campus crime alerts, which
they received through text messages and email. Some remarked on the frequency of the alerts:
“We get the email notifications and the text notifications all the time from DPS.” A second
security measure is the closed campus policy, which DPS and the contracted security guards
enforce. The general policy permits anyone to freely enter campus grounds until 9:00 p.m. At
that time, gates surrounding the perimeter are closed to permit a small space for access that is
staffed by a security guard. A person must have a university identification card (ID) to enter.
However, at any time, DPS officers have the power to require proof of ID and remove anyone.
This aspect of campus policing is highly visible to students and even touted by university staff
and administration. Recalling his orientation, Mark, a senior, shared, “They definitely stressed
that we live in a bubble, in like a highly, highly surveilled situation.” Both DPS functions are
focused on identifying potential “illegitimate members of the campus community” (Smith et al.,
2007, p. 562). In light of the range of participants’ interactions with DPS, the themes presented

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next explore how students’ experiences belied the equality sentiment expressed by the DPS
mission statement.
Major Themes
The research study was driven by two main questions. First, how does campus policing
shape how Black undergraduate men experience the campus community? Second, what do these
experiences reveal about campus policing as a racial project? In what follows, I summarize
major themes common across the participants’ experiences with campus policing. The first two
themes are based on the participants’ descriptions of how race was embedded into two campus
police practices: the campus crime alerts and identification checks. The next set of themes refer
to tactics used by participants and the larger Black student community to navigate a policed and
racialized environment. These social practices aimed to ensure Black undergraduate men were
recognized as SU students and safe from police harm. In the discussion, I provide further
analysis of how campus policing operates as a racial project in higher education.
Criminalizing the Local Community
The first theme describes how campus policing practices socialized students to perceive
the local community as dangerous and criminal. Part of how participants learned to navigate the
campus safely included being aware of the surrounding area. Consequently, campus policing is
presented as a resource of protection. For instance, the perceived usefulness of the alerts was tied
to students’ unfamiliarity with SU’s vicinity and the potential exposure to crime. Third-year
student Devon shared
I appreciate them. If there’s police activity, they’ll let people know so it’s like stay away
so they can finish it up…It’s to keep people aware and then if it’s something they feel

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people can learn, they also blast it out and…they have tips on how to prevent that
situation from happening to you.
Dre, a first-year student, expressed that the alerts were helpful because they “let you know
what’s going on. I think it’s better to be informed than to be ignorant.” Jason saw the alerts as a
reminder to be aware of his surroundings but also to be assured that AU is “working very hard to
make sure that you’re safe.” Another benefit was the inclusion of safety education content, such
as how to avoid being a victim of the crime that was reported. The frequency and information
provided in the alerts were seen by students as an institutional response to their safety needs.
Similarly, participants understood that the closed campus policy was intended to prevent
crime and keep out threats. Most participants did not raise major concerns about their own
experiences going through access procedures and reported that the ID checks when entering
campus were equally required of everyone. Franklin, an international student from Nigeria,
expressed
I’m a student, and I know that I’m not doing anything wrong, so I just want to go to my
bed and sleep. But sometimes when I hear something going on around campus, I kind of
appreciate it because I’m used to it. It doesn’t take up more than a minute of my
day…Whenever I think about DPS here, I’m thinking about the police versus the
criminals outside.
Participants described the closed campus policy as “very secure” because it is “difficult for
strangers to walk in past certain times at night.” The policy reinforces the popular belief that
there are "criminals outside" the campus boundaries. In addition to the evening restriction,
libraries require an ID at all times to enter. Although any form of ID is permissible, the
participants understood the policy to mean that only AU affiliates could enter. Nick, a student

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from an African immigrant family and not connected to a Black student organization, was the
one participant to express approval: “The neighborhood kids make a lot of noise in the libraries.
There’s interference of students’ ability to study effectively and learn. Any way to keep control
of them then I’m all for that.” Nick’s comment illustrates a perception that outsiders must be
controlled and regulated so as not to disrupt students’ lives.
The cumulative effect of DPS presence and the enforcement of security policies shaped
students’ overall understanding of crime in the local community. John shared, “We are
constantly alerted of crimes happening in the neighborhood.” Franklin reiterated that “the
majority of [crimes] happened off-campus…so I would say I’ve become extremely aware of the
safety surrounding campus.” The local community’s standing reputation as crime-ridden was
reinforced by AU and DPS. As Marcel stated, “it’s the kind of narrative that has been passed
along coming here. AU is in the ghetto. Just things like that. You come here, you’re like, ‘AU is
actually not that bad.’ But then it’s ‘Don’t go past this certain place…now you’re in the ghetto.’”
The pejorative use of “ghetto” was a descriptor for the predominantly poor Black and Latinx
community surrounding AU. Participants referred to the spaces outside the SU perimeter as
“ghetto” either because they subscribed to the stereotype or were aware it was a common phrase
among AU students. The campus security measures affirmed the “ghetto” stereotype and
justified DPS presence. Arya summarized this perspective: “We definitely need security on this
campus. I feel like our surrounding area is not the most ideal, in terms of safety, so it’s definitely
necessary.”
Some participants were aware of but resisted such stereotypes. Todd, a fourth-year and
former president of AU’s Black Student Union (BSU), commented, “These extra security
measures just serve to continue to block actual community access to these things under the guise

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of safety.” Given AU’s location within a less-resourced neighborhood, participants believed the
university’s resources should be made available to the public. Giovanni offered a unique
perspective as a reentry student who attended AU eight years prior and recently returned to
campus. He did not recall the same ID requirements or police patrols at campus entrances. The
university was open to the community, including the libraries and events. Giovanni remarked,
“AU is removing themselves from the community. It’s very controlled now and not like a
university. I feel that it’s policed.” Nathaniel, a student activist, further critiqued the exclusivity
of AU and stated: “You would have to prove to me that people with AU IDs are less likely to
commit violence.”
Navigating the Dangerous Black Male Stereotype
The second theme pertains to how participants were attuned to how racial stereotypes
were reinforced as the cost to have DPS available as a crime prevention resource. Participants
recognized that in being protected against the local community, one that is predominantly poor,
Black, and Latinx, that they were vulnerable to being targeted by campus police.
Despite some useful aspects of crime alerts, participants expressed criticism of how
suspect descriptions were racist stereo- types. The following is an excerpt from a crime alert:
“Suspect #1: Described as male, Black, approximately 5′8/160 lbs/19–21 years of age.” Integrity,
a second-year student, pointed out, “The thing is about being on this campus, it’s about five
percent Black people. Black male, five foot nine, ages 20 through 26 describes a lot of people on
this campus.” The generic description homogenizes Black men, an underrepresented group at
SU. Giovanni further critiqued the reporting:
They don’t give his [the suspect’s] height. They don’t give his description. They just say,
“Black male.” They don’t differentiate, and we’re pretty unique. When they say Black

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male…we know that that’s a code right there, that we have to be on alert, have to be
vigilant.
While the alerts are meant to be a warning to the SU population, racial suspect
descriptors are a “code” for Black undergraduate men to instead be primed for accusations of
being a criminal. In such moments, participants felt “on alert” and “vigilant,” wondering “is it
going to be me?” that DPS officers might stop to question. Moreover, the suspect descriptions
coupled with the underrepresentation of Black men led Jax to reflect, “We’re not seen as a
traditional SU student.” The comment illustrates that tied to the fear of a campus police
encounter was a feeling of marginalization within the AU community. As an underrepresented
group, Black men may be less likely to be perceived as an AU student and more so as an
outsider, even a criminal due to the nature of DPS crime reporting.
Although all the participants were AU undergraduates with the right to be on campus,
several recounted instances in which they had to verify their student status. Dre vividly
remembered an evening during his first semester. Dre was already within the campus after 9:00
p.m. but was asked for his university ID by a DPS officer. The officer explained that due to the
time they are required to check identification for anyone on campus. For Dre,
That was very alarming because it’s just like what are you getting at? Immediately at that
point, in my mind, it’s because I’m Black. It has to be, because why else? As soon as you
enter campus, you flash your ID, but outside of that you never have to show your ID
again because when you’re on campus they automatically assume you’re a student.
Although Dre was accustomed to the closed campus policy, he experienced an incident
that seemed out of the norm from his understanding. He felt singled out for having to reverify his
student status after having already done so earlier in the evening. Allen recounted a similar

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experience as he was leaving the campus library after a study session. A DPS officer on bike
patrol slowly circled past him and then doubled back to ask for his ID. Although he did not like
the interaction, Allen described it as “typical DPS. It’s what happens pretty regularly.” Dre,
Allen, and other participants conveyed that they perceived their Black male identity as the reason
for campus police stops. While routine ID checks can take a mere second, participants reported
that when campus police stop and question Black male students, the encounters can take up “20
minutes, 40 minutes of your time and your day which in any interaction with police can be
physically exhausting.”
One final example illustrates the vulnerability of Black male students. Todd recalled one
night of studying at the library where it was common for student workers to ask for ID after 9:00
p.m. This particular evening, Todd was tapped on the shoulder by a “DPS officer who has the
student staff cowering behind his back. I’m that much of a potential threat that you need a police
officer to just check my ID rather than just asking if I’m a student?” Although Todd was
studying and would have willingly complied with the student worker’s request for ID, he was
instead seen with fear. In sum, DPS officers demarcated racial, class, and spatial boundaries
while enforcing campus security. The byproduct is the association of Black men as outsiders to
the university and the likely perpetrators of crimes.
Self-Presentation as Threat Avoidance
Participants understood the importance of being seen as members of the university, which
informs the third theme. Throughout their discussion of campus policing, the participants
explained various tactics to avoid the threat of police altercations as well as mitigate perceptions
that they posed a threat to the campus.

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One tactic was to intentionally dress as an AU student. Arya expressed, “Sometimes I try
to wear SU-related clothing so that if I’m riding down the street and a police officer may run into
me, they’ll see that I’m probably a student at AU.” Devon echoed this and added DPS would
have “less of a reason to think that I am a suspect.” AU clothing and items such as a backpack or
a bicycle were used by participants to assert their AU status and distance themselves from crime.
Tony captured the significance of AU affiliation in this way: “I feel like DPS would perceive you
to be a better person than someone, another Black person that’s not an AU student.” In addition
to signaling their student status, the participants’ recognized the value that is ascribed to AU.
Bruce, who grew up not far from the campus, expressed that in his community, “everybody
understood AU as this private institution of privilege.” Participants remarked on how DPS
worked in service to the university. One shared, “they see AU as its own entity and separate from
the community. That leads them to be more hostile towards people who aren’t part of this
university.” Asserting their status as AU students was an attempt to evade DPS scrutiny and
remain within the boundaries of protection.
Another approach was to regulate one’s behavior. Devon discussed how he greets DPS
officers with a smile and his hands showing because “little tiny things like that make me seem a
little bit less suspicious.” Similarly, Jason explained that monitoring his behavior lessens the
chances of being stopped by DPS: “I personally walk very quickly. If DPS is around me, I’m not
gonna look at what they’re doing because that could make them want to ask, ‘Hey, what are you
doing?’” Although participants may be heading to class or an event on campus, they anticipated
being stopped and questioned. They were acutely aware that their Black male identity precluded
DPS officers from assuming they were SU students. Participants’ attire and behavior choices
were intended to alleviate suspicion and appear as “nonthreatening.”

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Participants offered several examples in which their mere presence was criminalized.
Giovanni exasperatingly shared that he has removed himself from study lounges multiple times
when he feels other students, particularly white women, look at him in ways that insinuate they
are uncomfortable with his presence. Exercise can also be incriminating as Anthony remarked: “I
can’t jog around campus, like off-campus because jogging looks like I’m running away from
something.” Similar to other participants, John succinctly captured the reality he faces as a Black
man: “People are just gonna always look at me in a crazy way until I prove that I’m not a
criminal.” Fear was a significant component for some participants’ behavioral choices. When
alerts were sent out, some participants were inclined to reduce the chances of a police encounter.
Participants read the notifications and make decisions about whether or not to be seen on
campus. Christopher shared his fear of being mistaken by DPS: “I’d be very scared. I’d just stay
in my room because if I’m an alleged criminal versus an AU student I’d be treated very
differently. So I just try and stay in my room until the next day.” While for Christopher the fear
was momentary, Victor limited his exposure to campus and DPS much more extensively: “I
intentionally avoid [DPS] by not leaving my apartment much. I mainly just study, get my work
done, and only come to campus when I have to or when I’m visiting friends.” Rather than freely
make use of the campus space, the participants, at times, felt compelled to selectively navigate,
and even avoid, the campus to reduce the chance of a police altercation
Safety in Community
In light of the negative campus racial climate at AU, the fourth theme emerged from
comments describing the Black student community as a haven and safety measure against
campus police altercations. Several of the participants were members and leaders of Black
student organizations, including the BSU and groups that pertained to Greek life, academic

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majors/preprofessional societies, creative arts, and activism. Dre reflected on his choice to come
to SU because of his initial impression of the Black student community: “I saw the Black culture
here as strong, and even though we are a small population, we are very much involved in each
other’s business and care about each other.” George remarked that because he is one of few, if
not the only, Black students in his classes, he’s “happy that those groups exist because it makes it
easier to connect with people.” Others described the Black student community as a “safe space”
where Black students can vent about “different frustrations that are race-related on campus.” As
a whole, the Black student community is a counter space and physical cultural community
connection within the predominantly white and hostile climate of SU (Harris & Patton, 2017;
Hypolite, 2020; Yosso & Lopez, 2010).
Policing, on campus and in the U.S. more broadly, is an issue discussed within the Black
student community at SU. Participants referenced past general membership meetings in which
police brutality was the topic of discussion. Lamar recollected one meeting for the Black Male
Collective (BMC) during which students shared their experiences with police. Anthony, who
transferred to AU, initially perceived AU as a safe campus. After attending a BMC meeting, he
learned about his peers’ negative interactions with DPS. Hearing these stories early on prepared
him for later encounters he had with campus police, knowing “this is actually a thing.” When he
then took on a leadership role, Anthony expressed the care taken with such events. He shared,
“When you have this role, these are my kids. I have to make sure they’re safe. I have to make
sure we’re putting on events that they feel safe at.” Devon experienced the validation that came
with being able to disclose one’s experiences with campus police among peers: “Even though
you may not feel like a fully integrated member of the SU community at all times, you at least
have that small community to go back on and feel welcomed and accepted.” Discussions on

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campus policing within organized events equip Black undergraduate men with insight and
knowledge to ensure their personal safety. Akin to “the talk” on policing within Black families,
such collective sharing also facilitates communal bonds of trust (Whitaker & Snell, 2016).
In addition to meetings, participants mentioned two channels of communication between
Black students. Both were group text threads, one for all Black undergraduates at AU and
another for BMC members. When asked if they ever discuss campus police-related concerns
with other Black students, participants mentioned the group text threads as avenues for
information-sharing and warnings. The group texts warn Black students to be “hyper-aware of
where we are in our surroundings” and to “let each other know what to expect…You don’t want
to be caught off guard.” The group text threads struck me because all AU affiliates already
receive the campus crime alerts. Allen clarified, “If it’s a serious crime alert, someone will send
a screenshot in the chat so they’ll be aware of this. Not everyone checks their emails. The
community leaders especially want to make sure everyone’s aware.” Rather than sharing
information so students avoid being the target of crime, the group text threads help ensure Black
students are safe from the campus police as they search for crime suspects. According to Kevin,
students will also disclose to others if they have been stopped so “everyone knows. This is
something that’s happening, so you might get stopped. When you’re on campus, you need to be
careful.” Black undergraduate men recognize the danger they are in when on- campus during a
time when campus police are actively on patrol. In contrast to the purported aims of the campus
crime alerts and police stops, the Black student community’s internal alert system is an attempt
to safeguard against the racialization of Black students as criminals.
Campus Policing as a Racial Boundary Project

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This study explored how one racially minoritized group, Black undergraduate men,
navigated a policed college campus. The themes described how Black undergraduate men are
socialized to campus police presence in order to benefit from some protection and avoid harmful
police altercations. This involved becoming hyper-aware of their racial identity and how others
viewed them as Black men on a predominantly white campus. Several participants relied upon
the Black student community as a resource to evade campus police violence. The remaining
discussion extrapolates how the findings support an institutional perspective of campus policing
as a racial boundary-enforcing project (Omi & Winant, 2015).
Recall that a racial project makes use of racial meanings in the operation of social
institutions and the distribution of resources. From the documentary evidence and participant
responses, DPS practices explicitly used race in reporting crimes, patrolling the campus
community, and identifying potential outsiders and threats. The study demonstrates that the
racial formation of Black male undergraduates is a precarious predicament: Regardless of their
class and student status, they are prime targets for campus police officers. Participants’
experiences with the campus crime alerts and ID checks echo previous research, which find that
such policing practices reinforce racist stereotypes both in the minds of Black students and others
in the campus community (Jenkins et al., 2021; Pelfrey et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2007, 2016).
Unique to this study was how campus policing constructs layered Black racial formations. To an
extent, some participants conveyed an endorsement of racist and classist stereotypes of the local
community, thereby justifying the university’s policing structure. Yet, many also recognized
their vulnerability of being associated with the Black male criminal stereotype and described
tactics to associate Black male subjectivity with the university student identity. The study
portrays a “double consciousness” produced in part by campus policing and mediated by

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participants’ awareness and resistance to how Black men are situated in the U.S. racial hierarchy
(Du Bois, 1903).
Racial formation theory suggests that rights and resources are distributed along racial
lines, thereby reproducing racial inequities and hierarchies. The findings demonstrate the nuance
in how Black undergraduate men access university resources and engage on campus. Given that
policing practices were to some degree expected and routinized (e.g., the frequent alerts, the
regularity of ID checks at specific entryways), participants conveyed the sense that they
benefitted from the protection afforded by campus policing or were at least not overtly harmed.
Complying with policies, such as displaying an ID, might ultimately ensure that Black
undergraduate men remain protected. However, the sense of being disproportionately targeted to
provide ID outside of expected situations and being questioned for allegedly matching a suspect
description is reminiscent of how municipal police “tax the time” of the poor through stop-and-
search policing (Lipsitz, 2016, p. 115). Taxing the time of Black undergraduate men is a
psychological stressor that reminds students they do not belong while also disrupting their
studies and cocurricular activities (Smith et al., 2007). Such experiences add to the ways in
which Black college students are tokenized and isolated in classroom and social spaces (Bourke,
2010; Morales, 2020; Solorzano et al., 2000). Relatedly, participants contextualized their campus
police-related experiences as constant reminders of their underrepresentation at AU. This was
further exacerbated by the burden to steer away from campus police and the university itself,
taking time away from studies, leadership involvement, and student life.
Conceptualizing campus policing as a racial project highlights why racism needs to be
examined as an institutional, rather than interpersonal, phenomenon. When policing is confined
to the interpersonal realm, arguments can be based on superficial readings of self-reported data

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(Allen, 2016; Allen & Jacques, 2020), and neglect how organizational processes advantage some
groups and disadvantage others (Milem et al., 2005). Moreover, by moving away from a focus
on individualized accounts, we better understand how institutional structure and context promote
a racist hierarchy. In the study, some participants reported negative direct encounters with
campus police officers, but over half of the sample discussed the racist implications of campus
policing without having direct experiences of racial profiling. These experiences were reported
on a campus in which race is embedded into the systematization of campus crime alerts, ID
checks, patrols, and criminal investigations. As a system input, racial data are reported to DPS
and used by officers when on patrol. Race is also a system output when, for instance, suspect
demographics are included as seemingly objective information in campus crime alerts.
Participants understood that the systematic use of race disadvantaged Black men within the
campus racial hierarchy, leaving them susceptible to inequitable treatment.
The themes reported convey how campus policing produces and maintains multiple,
intersecting boundaries (e.g., white/nonwhite, safe/dangerous, university-affiliated/local resident,
campus/off- campus). The boundaries constructed by campus policing are both fixed and mobile
in order to protect a predominantly white and affluent student body within a mostly poor
minority neighbor- hood in which campus police officers patrol and exercise their full powers.
Physical campus borders are one boundary alongside the ID, a mobile boundary marker students
should always have on their person to show to DPS officers on- and off-campus. Jenkins et al.
(2021) critique the constant need for Black students to show their university ID as another
instance of “Black surveillance, un/belonging, and a manifestation of the legacy of
antiblackness” (p. 14). The university ID is a “second ID” in contrast to the “primary ID of

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‘whiteness’” (p. 14). In line with Harris’s (1993) theorization of race and property rights,
whiteness determines who can freely enjoy and make use of the university space.
Finally, the study demonstrates how Black student life is shaped by campus policing.
Tilly (2004) argues that distinctive social relations exist on either side of a social boundary.
While security policies are meant to apply equally to all SU students, the findings convey that
Black SU students engage in unique sets of social practices to safely navigate policed
boundaries. The individual and collective safety tactics described by participants, such as attire
choices and group communication, complement research on how Black male youth navigate
policing in their local communities (Brunson & Wade, 2019). Gau and Brunson (2015) found
that rather than trusting the police who engage in misconduct, Black male youth from lower-
income communities feel safe due to their established networks and the protection they offer.
Such self-help tactics, they argue, arise when trust in the police is low. The present study
similarly found that Black undergraduate men actively managed their appearance and
communicated with one another to ensure their recognition as students, access to the campus,
and avoid campus police altercations. Relatedly, the meeting topics discussed among Black
students about the history of policing on campus echo the need for “the talk” in Black families to
prepare children for potential police encounters (Cintron et al., 2019).
Research and Practice Implications
The study demonstrates how racial difference is embedded into campus policing,
resulting in racial inequities. Research can help advance how institutional structures and
practices reinforce group- based differences (Hurtado et al., 2012). Given how participants
described the criminalization of the local community, future research can better illuminate
university-community relations through interviews with community members and observational

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studies of campus police behavior off-campus with local residents. The study also implicates
how higher education institutions socialize students to endorse racist beliefs, such as the local
community as a perpetually criminal element. As the participants noted, new student orientations
are the starting point for being educated about campus crime and related dangers in the local
community. Further research might focus on how staff and administrators’ perceptions of crime
and safety shape the development of policies, procedures, and institutional messaging.
The spectrum of student experiences reported in this study demonstrate the limitations in
binary views of campus policing. Beyond Black undergraduate men, survey and qualitative
research on multiple groups can showcase how the benefits of campus policing are contingent
upon identity and status. Attention to intersecting marginalized identities would be important to
illuminate how race, ethnicity, gender, class, citizenship status, sexual orientation, among other
identities, may be tied to unique experiences with campus police. Contemporary calls for campus
police divestment and abolition bring up the question of how racially minoritized students define
safety and what structures are needed to accommodate their needs. One study participant was
alone in vocalizing a radical position: “We to need to seriously rethink how safety is structured
on this campus.” Previous work demonstrates current theoretical models weakly predict student
support for safety policies (Kyle et al., 2017; Schafer et al., 2018). The findings suggest that top-
down policymaking may not adequately ensure student safety and wellbeing. Researchers can
examine the degree to which students endorse campus policing and what factors motivate
different types of change-oriented attitudes towards campus policing. Such an examination
should also include how experiences with racism and underrepresentation shape perceptions of
safety.

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As campuses racially diversify and expand into the local community, leaders must begin
considering how to integrate campus safety and racial equity as joint, rather than separate,
institutional priorities. Potential steps might look like student affairs staff revising procedures
with a racial inclusion lens. For instance, residential life staff can examine situations that
currently mandate calling campus police officers and evaluate how police presence will achieve
the desired outcomes. Student affairs educators might consider if campus police are appropriate
when a non-threatening and non-criminal situation involves a Black or racially minoritized
student. The use of racial demographic data in campus crime alerts can also be reconsidered as
modeled by the University of Minnesota, which announced in 2015 that it would no longer send
out vague suspect descriptions (Jany, 2015). Internal campus assessments focused on developing
student-generated standards of safety, well- being, and racial inclusion can then be compared
against safety structures in place. Campus racial climate surveys can include items about campus
policing and safety (see the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates). Such data has
the potential to inform models of campus safety that promote racial equity and inclusion.
Conclusion
The findings of this exploratory instrumental case study illuminate how campus policing
is an institutional process that adds to the numerous ways Black students are disenfranchised
from full participation and membership within their campus communities. Amid on-going police
injustice, students at several colleges and universities have called for the abolition of campus
policing and university divestment from local police departments. Higher education is not
exempt from the national crisis of police legitimacy and leaders can no longer afford to neglect
the social ramifications of campus policing on student engagement, community building, and
university-community relations. The unquestioned assumption that campus police equals safe

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campuses is disconnected from the realities of racism experienced by racially minoritized
populations, particularly Black students and their communities. Abolitionist Mariame Kaba
(2017) argues safety is predicated on healthy relationships. The findings of this study are in
concert with the demands of student activists that call out how campus policing reinforces
unequal relationships between racially minoritized students and their institutions. The current
political climate requires higher education researchers, leaders, and practitioners to squarely deal
with the harm of campus policing upon minoritized students if they are to truly cultivate
affirming and welcoming campuses.

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Chapter 4: Campus Police Responses to Racism:
A Materialist Examination of Racial Ideologies
The contemporary crisis of police legitimacy in the U.S. has forced higher education
leaders and scholars to reckon with the over five decades’ long entrenchment of police on
college campuses. Since the 1960s, when students of color first led campus movements in the
1960s for civil rights, free speech, Ethnic Studies, and many more social justice causes, higher
education institutions have used campus police to repress critics and manage an ever-growing
diverse student body (Ferguson, 2017). As reported by both mainstream and social media,
campus police officers have been involved in incidents of racial profiling, excessive force,
disrespectful encounters, and the premature death of Black citizens (StudentNation, 2021;
Watkins, 2020; Weismann, 2020). College students of color have also shared stories of
harassment from campus police through public fora, the media, and most recently in demands to
reform or abolish campus police (Chessman & Wayt, 2016; Sainato, 2020). Especially since the
murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement influenced
campus politics by raising awareness of the relationship between campus police and institutional
racism in higher education (White, 2016). This link includes the routine use of campus police to
exclude students of color (Jaschik, 2018; Levin, 2018), protect hateful speech as free speech
(Panzar & Tchekmedyian, 2017), and facilitate the economic exploitation of campus workers
(Karlis, 2020).
While students and faculty have expressed grievances of police injustice to campus
leaders, the campus police perspective has not been as visible. Studying groups who hold power
on college campuses uncovers how seemingly neutral practices and policies cause harm and
inequitable outcomes, with examples in admissions and faculty hiring (Liéra & Hernandez, 2021;

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Salazar, 2022). In regards to campus police, research is limited to student perceptions of campus
police interactions (Jenkins et al., 2021; Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007). But there is more to
campus police beyond what students experience. Campus police are involved in a wide spectrum
of scenarios, from identification checks to crime investigations. Officers are motivated by
considerations and privy to information that is not apparent to campus constituents. To better
understand the nature of negative interactions between campus police and communities of color,
knowing the campus police officer perspective is vital to transform policing practices and
campus public safety.
As institutions seek meaningful change towards greater equity and inclusion on college
campuses, campus police must be examined as a tool of state oppression (Camp & Heatherton,
2016; Vitale, 2018). Whereas most extant research on campus policing describes campus police
history and practices without regard to social context and identity, I explicitly focus on the racial
ideologies of campus police officers— beliefs that are indicative of how racial difference and
hierarchy constitute the structure of society and its institutions (Mills, 1997; Omi & Winant,
2015). Ideologies have material foundations, which means they are socially constructed rather
than objective free-floating ideas (Burke, 2016). I examine the concrete social settings and
relationships campus police are embedded in as they navigate their lives and activities, informing
how they view issues of racism in policing. By situating campus police as organizational actors
representing and acting on behalf of the university, linking racial ideology to material conditions
can shed light on how organizational practices result in and help perpetuate racial hierarchies and
inequities in higher education (Ray, 2019; Ray & Purifoy, 2017). By identifying and
deconstructing campus police perspectives on their role, rather than simply asserting an abstract
claim that campus policing is racist, one can disrupt institutionalized racism in concrete ways.

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Few studies have examined police views on the role of race during encounters with
citizens; virtually no attention to policing and race in the higher education context exists. Even
fewer studies employed qualitative methods (Glover, 2007; Satzewich & Shaffir, 2009; Welsh et
al., 2020; Whitehead, 2015), which can add depth and context to broad claims of “racial
innocence” in the policing of citizens (Murakawa, 2019). Such claims, according to Murakawa
(2019) and others (Taylor, 2021; Van Cleve & Mayes, 2015) exhibit “willful ignorance, blame
displacement, and liberal reforms,” despite disproportionate violence during police/citizen
encounters in racially minoritized and low-income communities (p. 474). Police proponents and
critics also battle over the presumed racial innocence of policing. In the last ten years, the
popularity of reforms, such as diverse hiring, community policing, implicit bias and de-
escalation training, have been derided as ineffective (Herzing, 2021) and lacking a solid body of
evidence attesting to their effectiveness (Brunson & Gau, 2015; Engel et al., 2022; National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Shjarback et al., 2016). This study
aims to explore whether and how campus police personnel articulate and justify their “racial
innocence.”
The present study drew from a critical case study (Patton, 2015) of policing and racism in
higher education. More specifically, I examined how sworn officers and civilian personnel at
one campus police agency perceive the racial dynamics that are at play in their work. I also
investigated the influence of lived experience and the campus context on their perceptions of
race and racism in campus policing. To gather this information, I conducted interviews with a
racially diverse sample of 32 participants and sought answers to two research questions that
guided this study:
1) How do campus police perceive issues of race and racism in their work?

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2) How are those perceptions shaped by their lives and social relations?
The conceptual framework guiding this inquiry was based on extant sociological
scholarship on racial ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2003; Burke, 2018). This scholarship suggests that
racial ideology evolves to adapt to societal shifts, such as legislation and cultural attitudes, and is
expressed in diverse ways, dependent on social actors and contexts. In line with that work, my
analysis demonstrated campus police views on race and racism in campus policing are not
monolithic. While several participants minimized or dismissed racism as a departmental issue,
the responses illustrated a range of reasons that align with research on color-evasive racism and
diversity ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2018; Smith & Mayorga-Gallo, 2019). Importantly,
participants’ views on racism in campus police were apparently shaped by three sets of factors
that operated at the individual, organizational, and community levels. Rather than suggesting that
racist campus policing is a foregone conclusion due to officer bias, I argue that racial dynamics
relating to campus policing are produced by a contested set of relationships. The data indicate
that competing racial ideologies, emotions, racial climate, and institutional priorities converged
to prevent campus police from fully realizing an equal, inclusive approach to its role and
function on college campuses. The findings provide valuable insights into the issue of racialized
policing in higher education and ways in which it can then be minimized.
Literature Review
To set the context for this study, I connected two sets of literature regarding campus
police officers’ perspectives on their work, decision-making, and racial dynamics in policing.
Criminal justice scholars have examined police officers’ perspectives on their work because of
the potential influence of beliefs and attitudes on work performance and the treatment of citizens
(Freidrich, 1980; Terrill & Mastrofski, 2002; Worden, 1989, 1995). First, I reviewed studies

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regarding campus police officers’ perspectives of their work and explanations of decision-
making. I found that campus police mimics municipal police structures and culture (Paoline &
Sloan, 2003; Perez & Bromley, 2015). This similarity is problematic when considering that
campus police have been justified as being distinct from and operating as a buffer against
external police forces (Sloan, 1992). Moreover, while scholars have examined racialized
interactions from a student point of view (Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007), the campus police
perspective on race has been neglected. To address this gap, I explored literature to understand
how officers’ racial beliefs shape their work.
Officer Perspectives on Campus Policing
Scholars and practitioners have assumed that campus police officers are best suited to
meet the unique needs of a collegiate community in part due to the oversight of higher education
administrators (Wolf et al., 2010). However, the claim appears to be more of a commonsense
assertion than an empirical reality, as limited evidence suggests that campus police officer
outlooks align with the general ethos of the higher education sector. For example, survey
respondents from 10 campus police agencies in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States
reported that they prioritized the law enforcement aspect of their role above campus service-
related functions (Sloan, 1992). Valuing law enforcement duties over service functions may be
problematic as Terrill and Paoline (2015) found that, among municipal police officers, a pro-law
enforcement orientation is positively associated with citizen complaints of police excesses.
Although campus police agencies provide service-related functions (Reaves, 2015) and engage in
community-oriented practices to a higher degree than municipal agencies (Perez & Bromley,
2015), how this relationship affects campus officers’ views on racism in campus policing has not
been empirically investigated.

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Integration and legitimacy create another challenge to ensuring campus policing is
tailored to the campus context. General police subculture is characterized by social isolation,
which hampers relationship building and trust with constituents (Henry & Tator, 2005; Skolnick,
1966) Campus police officers likely experience social isolation from students as well. For
example, focus groups of officers at the University of Georgia reported that they perceived an
“us versus them” mentality among students, noting that the police uniform acted as a barrier to
forming relationships with the students (Williams et al., 2016). Wilson and Wilson’s (2015)
survey of 75 sworn campus police officers in Rhode Island indicated that the majority felt
unsupported and misunderstood by campus constituents, including administrators. The research
complements studies of students, which indicate they have a minimal understanding of campus
policing and perceive campus police officers as less legitimate compared to municipal police
(Allen, 2021; Jacobsen, 2015; Patten et al., 2016; Patton & Gregory, 2014; Wada et al., 2010).
The lack of support for campus police by the constituents they serve may contribute to feelings
of isolation and fear of retaliation, which can shape officers’ daily actions and decisions (Inoue,
2020; Skolnick, 1966).
Studies of campus police officer discretion offer another window into the relationship
between campus police and its constituents. Allen’s (2014, 2015, 2016) observations during ride-
alongs at one Southeastern U.S. university revealed that campus police officers drew on a range
of reasons to punish offending behavior by members of the campus community. Generally,
campus police officers drew on their authority from the criminal justice system: written warnings
were the most common sanction followed by citations and arrests. An educational approach by
officers was minimally observed as student disciplinary action was the least used sanction except
in alcohol-related crimes (Allen, 2016). Campus police officers justified their sanctions through

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both legal and extra-legal reasons, largely aligning with factors shown to influence municipal
police discretion (Black, 1976; Engel et al., 2000; Ishoy & Dabney, 2018; Phillips & Sobol,
2012; Terrill & Paoline, 2007). Race, however, was not a significant extra-legal factor in campus
police officers’ explanations of their exercise of discretion (Allen, 2014, 2015, 2016). Notably,
officers’ assessment of a person’s demeanor and a desire to be sympathetic were two reasons that
shaped the severity or leniency of an officer’s discretionary sanctioning of offenders, which can
themselves be shaped by the race and gender of officer and citizen encountered (Engel et al.,
2012; Welch, 2007). Additionally, campus police officers’ sanctioning did not vary between
students and non-students, which is unexpected considering that students are thought to be the
protected group (Allen, 2014; Sloan, 1992).
The small number of studies, some of which are dated, is both a limitation and an
indication that more research is needed. Findings from the research point to a strong resemblance
between campus and municipal police regarding how officers understand their role and exercise
their discretion. Further attention to racial diversity and inclusion is needed given the
demographic changes in higher education and recommendations for campus police that are
thought to be appropriate for diverse campus communities (Sloan et al., 2000). The campus
police officer viewpoint can shed light on how to better understand the interpersonal and
institutional context of racialized campus police incidents, such as those detailed in studies on
Black college students’ experiences with campus policing (Jenkins et al., 2021; Mills, 2020;
Smith et al., 2007).
Police Officers’ Racial Beliefs
Criminal justice scholars—focused primarily on public law enforcement (e.g., city and
state agencies)—have demonstrated racial inequities in several aspects of policing, from stops to

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use of force (Kovera, 2019). In an attempt to account for what leads to disproportionate contact
with communities of color, scholars have examined police officers’ beliefs about race and
racism. One line of inquiry has focused on how implicit beliefs about race influence police
discretion. Focal concerns theory, a dominant perspective of how decision-making occurs in the
criminal justice system, states that ideally, police officers rely upon legal rationales as they apply
their discretion while on patrol (Lynch, 2019; Steffesmeier et al., 1998). However, due to the
lack of information and uncertainty that characterizes interactions between citizens and officers
in the field, officers may rely upon “perceptual shorthands” such as racial stereotypes and
assumptions about criminality to guide their decisions (Steffensmeier et al., 1998). Focal
concerns theory has been used to explain racial disparities in police use of force (Crow &
Adrion, 2011) and traffic stop searches (Higgins et al., 2012; Vito et al., 2018). Findings are
similar to psychological research concerned with implicit bias specifically, which has found
evidence that police officers are biased against Black individuals in both laboratory and field
settings (Correll et al., 2007; Eberhardt et al., 2004; Fridell & Lim, 2016; Peruche & Plant, 2006;
Plant & Peruche, 2005). However, these studies assert the influence of prejudicial attitudes to
explain racial disparities without demonstrating the nature of officers’ racial beliefs and how
they interact with officers’ discretionary authority, a limitation of the quantitative approach in
implicit bias research (Engel et al., 2002). Moreover, beliefs about race result from socialization
experiences. Whether expressed explicitly or implicitly, factors shaping police officers’ racial
beliefs have yet to be fully explored.
A second line of inquiry qualitatively explores how officers view communities of color
and the issue of racial profiling. Scholars have analyzed officer perspectives through frameworks
that address colorblind racism (April et al., 2019; Glover, 2007; Welsh et al., 2021), police

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subculture (Henry & Trator, 2006; Satzewich & Shaffir, 2009), and community context (Reck,
2015; Vera Sanchez & Rosenbaum, 2011). Collectively, these studies document several
discursive and cognitive strategies employed by police to minimize accusations of racism and
displace blame. For instance, officers often rely on an “out of place” justification for stops and
searches (Glover, 2007, p. 242). According to this logic, officers are attuned to the interplay
between a person’s racial identity, presence in a specific locale, and behavior (Carroll &
Gonzalez, 2014; Meehan & Ponder, 2002). By looking for people and behavior that presumably
“do not belong” in a given neighborhood, police officers can assert that whites and people of
color are subjected to similar scrutiny (Glover, 2007). Relatedly, officers have conceded that
they do profile, but do so on the basis of paying attention to cues that may signal a violation is in
progress (Satzewich & Shaffir, 2009; Welsh et al., 2021). This “criminal profiling” argument
depicts policing as objective and supports claims of equal policing regardless of the race of the
citizen being encountered.
Studies have produced some insights related to organizational and community-level
features and officers’ racialized beliefs. For example, officers deflect accusations of racial
profiling by referencing department policies of intolerance toward racism by officers and hiring
practices that result in more diverse and younger officers joining the ranks who are aware of
contemporary community needs (Satzewich & Shaffir, 2009). Welsh and colleagues (2021)
found that San Diego police officers referenced the presence of “bad apples” and laziness among
some of their colleagues to acknowledge racism on an individual basis, but steer away from
racial profiling as an organizational issue. In terms of community-level features, Reck’s (2015) a
comparative case study of three municipal police departments found that officer behavior can be
shaped by vocal community stakeholders, resulting in officers exercising caution during citizen

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encounters to avoid being implicated in a racial profiling case or be pressured to target racially
minoritized youth because of bias among local residents. In a different manner, officers have
blamed “the media” and citizens for promoting hostile interactions with police and circulating
anti-police attitudes within communities (Vera Sanchez & Rosenbaum, 2011; Satzewich &
Shaffir, 2009; Welsh et al., 2021). Collectively, research suggests that officers are resistant to the
notion they engage in racial profiling because they can justify doing so by arguing about the
legality of their actions and authority. Additionally, police officers may have difficulty
understanding that citizens’ attitudes and behavior towards police are frequently shaped by
policing’s racist history and patterns of racialized mistreatment by them (Whitehead, 2015).
In sum, the literature on racial beliefs in policing highlights the role of implicit bias as a
driver of many racial inequities in police-citizen contact. Research also documents how officers
explain away racialized policing through color-evasive narratives such as “criminal profiling”
(Bonilla-Silva, 2018). These findings likely apply to policing in the higher education context
given the similar training and professional development of campus and municipal police officers.
Still, it is important to examine the campus police perspective on issues of racism given the
differences in work setting, such as the type of constituent (students, faculty members, staff,
visitors), service responsibilities, and the educational mission of a college or university. The
present study builds upon existing insights and addresses some of the shortcomings in prior
research. In doing so, I explicitly examine how campus police perceive the racial dynamics of
their work and investigate the bases for their perspectives. In the next section, I discuss my
application of a racial ideology paradigm, which emphasizes how individuals understand race as
a construction of power and social structure.

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Conceptual Framework: Racial Ideology and Racial Frames
Campus police perspectives on race and racism in their work offer a lens into the larger
racial structure in which they operate and the ideologies that maintain racial inequity (Ray,
2019). Unlike studies on implicit racial beliefs, which tend to promote the notion that individual
attitudes and behavior explain social phenomena, a racial ideology paradigm situates racial
beliefs and representations within the “group-based life conditions and experiences of the races”
that are embedded in social systems of power and privilege (Bonilla-Silva, 2003, p. 66). A racial
ideology paradigm thus provides the opportunity to link campus police personnel’s racial beliefs
to the material conditions that shape those beliefs. Racial ideology is expressed through a racial
frame, a path for interpreting information that may reinforce or challenge the racial order
(Bonilla-Silva, 2003).
Color-evasive racism is the dominant racial ideology in the U.S. that stems from the
legislative gains for equality obtained during the Civil Rights movement. Color-evasive racism is
the belief that race is no longer a central organizing principle in social life. As a result, instances
of racial inequalities are attributed to either the larger culture and/or individual merit rather than
to institutionalized racism. As explained below, Bonilla-Silva (2018) described four racial
frames that constitute color-evasive racism: 1) abstract liberalism; 2) naturalization; 3) cultural
racism; and 4) minimization of racism. Although these four frames are neatly defined, Bonilla-
Silva (2018) acknowledges they are often combined and used by individuals who view
communities of color positively as well as negatively.
The abstract liberalism frame asserts the primacy of equal opportunity, individual choice,
and hard work to explain racial disparities in various areas of social life. For instance, in the
context of citizen-police encounters, officers assert that they “treat all people the same” and “do

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not discriminate” on the basis of race. The naturalization frame explains racialized patterns and
incidents as if they are given occurrences. An example of this would be when police officers
argue that racial profiling is illogical when patrolling a racially homogenous community (Vera
Sanchez & Rosenbaum, 2011). The cultural racism frame associates qualities with a particular
culture, rather than race. Vera Sanchez and Rosenbaum’s (2011) finding that police officers who
patrolled a predominantly Mexican community with low crime rates described Mexicans
positively due to their perceived work ethic and community cohesion. The minimization of
racism frame suggests that discrimination is no longer the primary determinant shaping racially
minoritized communities’ life chances. The use of the minimization frame can deploy multiple
reasons to downplay racism, such as when police accuse others of playing the “race card” and
flatly deny racism exists (Welsh et al., 2021).
While Bonilla-Silva’s racial frames serve to justify the existing racial order, scholars
have also explored beliefs that challenge racism. Warikoo (2016) identified a power analysis
frame in her study of racially minoritized college students at elite institutions. A power analysis
frames racial inequality as the result of unequal power relations among members of different
groups and calls for active resistance to change the social order. Relatedly, Jayakumar and
Adamian (2016) also identified an understanding of power differences among white students’
racial beliefs and experiences while attending historically Black colleges and universities. Rather
than challenging the status quo, Jayakumar and Adamian added the disconnected power-analysis
frame to Bonilla-Silva’s color-evasive frames. The disconnected power-analysis frame is the
“ability to align oneself with racially progressive conceptual understandings of structural racism,
Whiteness, and counternarratives that challenge racial hierarchy while disconnecting one’s own

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story, personal experiences, and actions from this understanding and critical analysis”
(Jayakumar & Adamian, 2016, p. 34).
Finally, scholars argue for the rise of diversity ideology in the U.S. as a concurrent racial
logic to color-evasive racism (Embrick, 2011; Mayorga-Gallo, 2019; Warikoo, 2016). Diversity
ideology is conceptualized as a “co-optation of calls for race consciousness that challenged color
blindness” and provides limited acknowledgment of structural inequality (Mayorga-Gallo, 2019,
p. 1790). From a diversity frame, individuals are recognized as “members of racial and ethnic
groups, which are assumed to influence their cultural practices, ways of understanding the world,
and tastes” (Warikoo, 2016, p. 50). When groups are not included, or their contributions are
devalued, inequality results. In higher education, scholars have noted that while demographic
underrepresentation continues to be an issue, representation without substantive structural
changes and resources to support communities of color is insufficient (Gurin et al., 2002; Milem
et al., 2005). Consequently, diversity ideology can allow decision-makers to state an appreciation
for difference but also maintain current social and legal systems that privilege whiteness
(Mayorga-Gallo, 2019).
I apply the above racial frames to my analysis of campus police perspectives on the racial
dynamics associated with policing a private university. Although prior research has emphasized
color-evasive racism as predominant among officers, I was purposeful to make room for the
possibility of varied views given a growing diversity and inclusion discourse in the higher
education sector. By incorporating additional racial frames, I examined how, if at all, campus
police personnel were aware of power inequalities and their views of diversity. In addition to
how campus police personnel talk about race, I was equally concerned with the material
conditions that might shape campus police perspectives. Through my analysis, I illustrate how

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racial ideology is expressed by campus police. Next, I outline the case study methodology,
including context about the site, data, and analytic process.
Research Design
The present study uses data originally collected for a larger critical case study of policing
and racism in higher education at a historically white private university, which I call Adamson
University (AU; a pseudonym). A critical case is one that can yield the most information about a
particular phenomenon (Patton, 2015). The site was selected due to its potential to study the
effects of campus policing in a racially and economically diverse context. The study site has one
of the largest campus police departments in the nation. The diversity within the department
provided an opportunity to examine issues of racism in contrast to similar studies with majority
white police departments. Given these site characteristics, AU was ideal for studying issues of
campus policing and race to produce theoretically generalizable insights that could be further
tested and applied to other campus contexts.
The present study focused exclusively on interview data collected from DPS personnel.
Data collected from these individuals provided the basis for studying the relationship between
racial ideology, racial identity, and the practice of campus police. Documents were also collected
to triangulate officer responses and develop the interview protocol. These materials included
department policies, examples of training curricula, and a campus racial climate assessment.
I developed the study from a critical constructionist paradigm, which assumes a socially
constructed nature of reality shaped by systems of power and domination (Crotty, 1998;
Kincheloe & McLaren, 2005). I approached the project with an interest in “how social actors
recognize, produce, and reproduce social actions and how they come to share an intersubjective
understanding of specific life circumstances” (Schwandt, 2015, p. 37). In the present study, I

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situated campus police within an assumption that higher education is an institution with an
ongoing legacy of racism. In the following sections, I outline the details of the study site and
sample, data collection and analysis, and measures to ensure trustworthiness.
Study Site and Sample
Data were collected at a private, historically white, and research-intensive institution,
Adamson University (AU). The institution is adjacent to the downtown area of a major West
Coast city and enrolls approximately 50,000 students. The student demographics (as of Fall
2021) were as follows: 27% white, 19% Asian, 16% Hispanic, and 6% Black. Referred to as the
Department of Public Safety (DPS), campus police fulfill wide range of needs at AU. The DPS
mission is to provide safety and security for the AU community in support of the academic and
social pursuits of students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors. In addition to core law
enforcement duties, DPS personnel provide building and event security, regulate campus access,
provide safety and self-defense training, and manage a surveillance camera system. Outreach
efforts include designated liaisons for faculty and student constituents, and a youth development
program.
The sample consisted of 32 DPS personnel employed during the Fall of 2021. At that
time, DPS employed a total of 287 staff in law enforcement and civilian roles (see Table 4.1).
The largest personnel group were those serving as public safety officers (PSO). PSOs receive
initial law enforcement training at an accredited police academy and, upon completion of that
training, are sworn police officers with full arrest powers while on duty. Nonsworn community
safety officers (CSOs) were the second largest DPS personnel group. Together, PSOs and CSOs
provided the main law enforcement, security, and patrol services for the campus. Civilian roles
within the department included public safety dispatchers, surveillance operation monitors, and

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administrative positions. DPS personnel overall are majority men and from racially minoritized
backgrounds.
In Summer 2020, I contacted the DPS chief to introduce myself and discuss my study.
The initial introduction led to two meetings that resulted in the chief granting me access to the
department for the purpose of recruiting DPS personnel who would be interviewed. An
administrative assistant in DPS shared the recruitment e-mail with the department, and included
text stating that the recruitment message was approved by the chief. Working with the chief and
the administrative assistant, the recruitment e-mail emphasized the confidential nature of the
interviews to assuage suspicion and hesitation. From Fall 2020 to Fall 2021, I recruited DPS
personnel using individual e-mails collected from the university directory and from the
department-wide e-mails sent on my behalf. In total, 32 DPS personnel agreed to participate and
be interviewed. Among them were a majority of men and individuals from racially minoritized
backgrounds. Most participants were PSOs and CSOs (see Table 4.2). Participants’ average age
was 45, with a range of 28 to 66. The average length of employment at DPS was 13.7 years with
a range of one to 41 years of employment. In terms of prior law enforcement experience, 40% of
the PSOs had worked with another law enforcement or security agency.

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Table 4.1.
DPS Personnel by Racial Identity, Gender, and Role
Racial Identity PSO CSO Civilian Total
Asian 5 5 1 11
Black 29 35 15 79
Latinx 37 49 47 133
white 20 7 6 33
Decline to State 16 6 9 31
Total 107 102 78 287

Gender

Man 94 73 47 214
Woman 13 29 31 73
Total 107 102 78 287

Table 4.2.
Interview Sample Members by Racial Identity, Gender, and Role.
Racial Identity PSO CSO Civilian Total
Asian 1 0 0 1
Black 6 0 1 7
Latinx 6 5 3 14
Multiracial* 3 0 0 3
white 4 0 2 6
Decline to State 0 1 0 1
Total 20 6 6 32

Gender

Man 18 4 4 26
Woman 2 2 2 6
Total 20 6 6 32
*Participants had the option to select one or more racial identities. These were categorized as
“Multiracial.”

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Data Collection
To sensitive myself to the case, documents were collected to develop an understanding of
DPS’ current practices and policies, as well as issues of policing and racism in the AU
community. Documents that were reviewed included the DPS website, annual reports, campus
crime alerts, news stories from the campus newspaper and local media outlets, a campus report
produced by a DPS community advisory board, and survey results from a campus racial climate
survey. These documents were used to help generate interview questions and later analyzed to
verify consistency with participant interviews (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). For an example
of how the documents were used in the information protocol, one question on the campus racial
climate survey asked students: “In this school year, how often have you personally experienced
racism happening in each of the following…” followed by a list for participants to select from,
with one option being “Campus police or security.” I ran descriptive statistics for this item and
asked participants to review the graph and provide their reactions (see Figure 4.1). This question
provided an opportunity for participants to respond directly to campus feedback.
Figure 4.1.
Percentage of students reporting personal experience of racism with campus police

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Semi-structured interviews of participants were conducted over Zoom, an online video
conferencing platform, on a day and time selected by the participant. Interviews ranged between
60 to 90 minutes. I began each interview with an explanation of what motivated my desire to
study campus police and detailed how participants’ identities would be protected in accordance
with the Institutional Review Board. Participants were asked questions regarding their work
responsibilities and challenges, the role of DPS for the campus, how the DPS prioritized racial
inclusion, and about accusations of racial profiling by DPS officers. Minor modifications were
made to the interview protocol as a result of insights that arose during memo writing and topics
shared by participants. One example pertained to the role of caller bias. I used later interviews to
confirm caller bias as a salient issue for DPS officers and accusations of racial profiling. Sample
questions included:
• What’s your relationship like with student of color organizations? With the cultural
centers? With faculty (of color)?
• What is the department’s commitment to racial inclusion? How does it demonstrate that
commitment?
• Have you had any kind of racial diversity training while employed at USC?
• How do you respond to accusations of racial profiling?
• There was a campus racial climate survey conducted here a couple years ago. Student
responses indicate the following ________. What’s your reaction to this?
Data Analysis
I analyzed the data with a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014). This
approach assumes social reality is processual and constructed, and considers the researcher’s
positionality. Data analysis was on-going as I wrote reflective memos (Rubin & Rubin, 2012)

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following each interview, noting important topics and related insights. Memos included an
overview of the participant (e.g., racial identity, gender, position), main issues that stood out
from the interview, highlights of responses to the interview questions, and emerging themes and
questions. I also wrote analytic memos (Saldaña, 2011) of potential themes after concluding a
majority of the interviews. Once all interviews were completed, I conducted an open reading of
the transcripts in Dedoose, a cloud-based qualitative data analysis software, and inductively
coded line by line to reduce the data. I used a combination approach of labeling data as topics
and actions (Charmaz, 2014). Given the unique viewpoints of each officer, topic-based coding
allowed me to synthesize material and develop insights through later rounds of coding. For
example, “relationships with local community” was an initial topic-based code because
responses were general rather than describing the nature of policing. In contrast, I created action-
based codes when participants were clearer in what they were conveying. Examples of action-
based codes included “being misunderstood” and “responding regardless of reason.”
As I moved from transcript to transcript, I kept memos of how responses across
interviews related to one another, which refined the codes. After reading all the transcripts, I
reviewed the codes, the research questions, and conceptual framework (Fram, 2013). I then
decided to align data with the racial frames established from the literature, a form of focused
coding (Charmaz, 2014). Identifying how data aligned with particular racial frames from the
responses was developed deductively (from the literature review) and inductively through the
analysis process. I first used definitions of racial frames established by the literature and refined
those definitions through the analytical process (see Appendix H). By applying the abstract
definitions of racial frames to the data, I identified what I later categorized as the factors shaping
participants’ views. To move my analysis beyond description, in the final stage, I used my

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conceptual framework to inform the analytic questions I used to “guide [me] to search directly
for responses to research questions while being flexible to relevant content and contextual
information (Neumann & Pallas, 2015, p. 157). For example, I asked, “What is the relationship
between participants’ identities and their approach to campus police?” “What are tensions or
contradictions in participants’ responses?” “How does the data differentiate the participants from
other qualitative findings in other studies? From critiques of policing?” Through these steps, I
produced findings that illustrated the perceptions of campus police navigating accusations of
racism.
Trustworthiness
I pursued trustworthy research through established strategies that included using multiple
forms of data, having diverse participants, being transparent with my role as a researcher,
obtaining peer-reviewed feedback, and member checking. Transparency was especially
important with obtaining high-quality data in terms of authenticity and saturation (Morse, 2018).
Interviewing campus police personnel posed challenges that included being an outsider with no
personal ties to the law enforcement profession and navigating a highly charged political climate.
Acquiring access from the DPS chief required that I distill the goals of my study apart from my
biases and political beliefs, which I did.
Peer-reviewed feedback and member checking were also essential. Drafts of findings
were shared with two senior scholars from the higher education and criminal justice fields,
respectively. Their feedback was used to refine my analysis and subsequent argument.
Additionally, I shared a draft of findings during a meeting with the DPS chief and administrative
assistant. Their responses indicated that I had accurately captured issues they were attuned to
among the staff and as they conducted their work on campus. The chief commented that what I

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reported indicated that the officers provided authentic answers and displayed a level of trust that
was not always common. Additionally, the administrative assistant shared that he was aware of
officers referring their colleagues to participate, which was another indication that officers were
willing to be transparent with an outside researcher.
Limitations
There are three limitations to consider in the design of this study. First, I was not able to
observe campus police officers on patrol and witness how they interacted with members of the
community, including and racialized patterns in their interactions with those on campus. I
mitigated this limitation by posing questions that presented student feedback on officers’
interactions with them and referring to incidents involving DPS depicted as racist in the campus
newspaper and allowing officers to add their perspectives. Second, officers self-selected into the
study, and certain types of officers may have been more likely to participate than others. For
instance, officers who were more willing to stand by DPS practices may have taken the interview
as an opportunity to express those views while officers with critiques may have been less willing
to participate. Nonetheless, as the findings indicate, the responses indicate variation rather than a
commitment to a company line. Third, the results do not allow me to make solid claims about
differences in accounts by officer race, which future research should address. These limitations
notwithstanding, the findings nonetheless shed light on and provide a starting point for
investigating the links among identity, organizational culture, practice, policy and racial
inequities in campus police.

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Findings
The findings that follow outline the perceptions of campus police about racial dynamics
associated with policing a private, traditionally white college campus. Below, I first summarize
the range of responses to reports of racism in campus policing at the study site. In line with
color-evasive ideology (Annamma et al., 2017; Bonilla-Silva, 2018), several participant
responses corresponded to discursive maneuvers documented among white individuals to
minimize, redirect away from, or ignore the reality of racial inequality (Mueller, 2017; Welsh et
al., 2021). Participants also responded in ways that recognized and validated diversity (Mayorga-
Gallo, 2019). About a fourth of the participants cited historical and contemporary race issues in
the general U.S. policing institution at some point during the interview. Still, these participants
and others adhered to a narrative of DPS providing a positive impact and exerting good faith
effort to serve the campus community.
To answer the second research question, I was interested in the influence of lived
experience and social relations on racial ideologies expressed by campus police. Participants
contextualized their views on racism by discussing individual, organizational, and community
factors. At the individual level, participants discussed the salience of their racial identity and past
experiences with law enforcement. Participants also emphasized their intent to be helpful, which
along with identity and experience, informed claims that campus policing was not a racialized
institutional practice. Organizational factors included department-wide policies and practices to
mitigate bias and promote diversity. Participants’ work lives were shaped by tangible efforts to
integrate principles of inclusion and equality into campus police. Finally, participants discussed
the impact of community factors that constrained their efforts to provide safety and protection,
thereby casting their work as racist and contributing to hostile dynamics.

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The findings are presented in discrete categories for ease of communication. However,
the range of responses do not necessarily characterize any single person (e.g., officers who are
color-evasive are a distinct group from officers who appreciate diversity). Officers expressed
examples of more than one racial ideology in their interviews. Relatedly, the factors that
informed participants’ racial views were not discussed in isolation from one another. For
instance, among some participants, negative experiences with law enforcement informed how
they fulfilled the department’s commitment to bias-free policing. Acknowledging the interplay
between factors is necessary because “informal expressions of ideology are a constructive effort”
(Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 58). Additionally, participants cited some of the same factors even when
diverging in how they responded to reports of racism among their ranks. This suggests a complex
interplay between racial ideology, personal experience, organizational context, and community
context. The findings demonstrate the importance of connecting racial ideology to lived
experience and concrete social relations to identify progress and barriers towards racial equity in
campus police.
From Disbelief to Recognizing Inequality: Responses to Allegations of Racism
In the interviews, I asked officers to share their reactions to accusations of racism in the
department, citing student feedback (e.g., the campus climate survey) and recent campus events
that were depicted as highly racialized in the media. The range of responses included shock,
denial, redirection, and a power-conscious understanding of police relations with racially
minoritized communities. In reviewing the campus climate survey results, a Latino male CSO
commented:
I’m lost for words to be honest. I’m a little shocked. In the grand scheme of things, when
I hear the radio traffic, a lot of it, it’s always either a Black or Hispanic on the subject

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description. It’s shocking because Blacks and Latinx make up such a small number of our
population here. Why is it that you know they would have more interactions with DPS
compared to other races?
The participant was shocked to learn that almost half of Black student respondents reported an
experience of racism with DPS. The participant seemed to have difficulty reconciling the
awareness that his colleagues responded to calls involving Black and Latinx subjects despite the
low representation of these communities on campus. What stands out about his response is the
recognition of race in terms of numerical representation and disproportionate impact, but an
inability to account for possible causes for this disparity. For another Latino male CSO, shock
bordered disbelief: “That’s bad. If that’s what they’re saying, it shouldn’t be that way.
Everybody should be treated equally. My reaction is that, if that was true, it should not be that
way.” The officers appeared to be challenged in reconciling competing views of reality, their
own versus their constituents in the area of racial conflict in campus police.
Other officer responses moved closer to denying allegations of racism in the department.
These responses shared the claim of “not seeing” racism in the field as in the following excerpts:
I’ve never actually seen the examples of what they’re talking about so I can’t really speak
to that (white male civilian staff).

I really haven’t seen anybody have been accused of this, at least to my knowledge, or
witnessed anybody that has been accused of racial profiling (Latino male CSO).

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I’m not defending any party. I haven’t worked here long enough to feel the atmosphere
coming from the DPS officers I’ve only seen positive interactions so far (Latino male
CSO).

From what I’ve seen here, I would say it’s totally untrue. Most of our CSOs are people of
color and I think we treat everyone fairly (Latino male CSO).
The responses convey denials of explicit racial profiling among DPS officers through asserting
their individual experience against institutional assessment data. As opposed to not noticing
racial identity and difference, the officers claimed not to witness overt acts of racism among their
colleagues, which prevented serious engagement with student feedback. Some officers associated
a lack of seeing racism with ignorance (“I’ve never actually seen examples…I can’t really speak
to that”),
4
while others relied on providing evidence that should seemingly negate accusations of
racism, such as positive officer behavior and personnel diversity.
Another set of responses directly addressed the validity of students’ experiences. A white
male PSO, with years of service above the average in the sample, shared
I’m not trying to be defensive, but what are they defining as racist. I’m not in the field, so
I can’t tell you what happens day to day, but if an officer stops an African American
student or any minority student and it’s an appropriate context for asking for their ID.
And the student resists because they think that’s racist. Maybe they’re interpreting that as
racist when there was no racist intention. I can’t imagine that 50% of encounters that our
officers have with African American students are racist. I would reject that
wholeheartedly; it is not accurate in any way, shape, or form.

4
Here, I attempted to describe the participant’s logic. I do not equate denying the significance of race with
blindness, which has been deployed as a metaphor for lack of knowing (Annamma et al., 2017).

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The officer questioned how students understood and reported their experiences with DPS. He
contrasted the officer’s intention against how students might interpret an interaction. Allegations
of racism were discounted through asserting his interpretation of what should be understood as
an appropriate exercise of DPS authority. Other officers expressed more openness but still
questioned student perceptions. A Latino male PSO commented:
Let’s get into semantics. What’s their definition of racist? Was there something said, a
derogatory term? Or was this just an assumption based on the fact coincidentally, there
were people of color and the officers showed up? It all depends on what is considered
racist. But just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It would be foolish
for me to say nothing happened. Something happened that caused them to believe this
was an act of racism, but what was this action and was it a true act of racism?
The response exemplified a solid attempt to assess racism in campus policing. The officer
acknowledged the different ways people define and identify racism in their everyday lives, from
the utterance of a racial epithet to the possible appearance of selective treatment or racial
profiling. Unlike the responses claiming not to see racist behavior, this officer gave some weight
to student feedback and the realities of racism (“just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it
doesn’t exist”). Yet, he concluded his response by questioning if students’ experiences aligned
with an undefined objective definition of racism (“was it a true act of racism?”). Participants
tended to privilege their perspective and good intentions while suggesting that students
misinterpreted their encounters with DPS officers and inaccurately labeled them as racist.
One- fourth of participants acknowledged the history of racism in the general policing
apparatus and issues within DPS to some extent. Comments tended to be brief and vague. A
white male PSO remarked: “We got to learn from our mistakes and move on and teach people

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not to make the same mistakes we did.” While this participant did not specify how DPS should
move forward, a Black male PSO discussed the role of dialogue: “We just got to keep dialogue
open. I think it’s tough. I know that law enforcement has come a long way. I don’t think we
should ever not talk about it, especially issues of race relations.” Responses such as these
touched upon long-standing problems in policing and DPS without much detail as to what
mistakes have been made or the nature of progress in race relations. By pivoting to aspirational
statements of reform, participants attempted to sustain a positive image of DPS.
Two participants made more explicit links to historical and contemporary issues in
policing. An Asian American male PSO remarked, “For the past few years, we’ve seen
unacceptable behavior from law enforcement officers. I’m not gonna protect them because I’m in
the same line of work. Good is good, bad is bad, even among officers.” He went on to share that
student reports of racism with DPS officers were to be expected: “Seeing this graph doesn’t
surprise me, but doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed.” The participant readily acknowledged
police misconduct and was not going to defend such actions in order to preserve a positive self-
image or the department’s reputation (“I’m not gonna protect them because I’m in the same line
of work”). His comments situate campus police within the general policing institution and its
current legitimacy crisis. The campus environment does not inherently make DPS officers
exceptional within the broader law enforcement community, hence the participant linking
allegations of racism in DPS to larger patterns of police misconduct with communities of color.
Similarly, a white male PSO referenced that his critiques of policing stemmed from witnessing
the outcome of the 1992 trial of Rodney King. “If I skip ahead to where I’m at now, I’m working
closely with the executive staff to address communities that we serve. We cannot hide the fact or
ignore the fact that there is a lot of systemic racism.” This participant’s responsibilities included

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staff training. Due to his understanding of racism as a systemic issue and not a personal
characteristic, he saw the need to support DPS officers to better navigate the current public
scrutiny on policing. “If we want them to retain and to see this perspective, we can’t have them
feeling like the fingers being pointed at them when they themselves specifically have not done
anything but open themselves up to service.” The comment illustrates how DPS officers might
benefit from considering how their actions have meaning within a larger history and pattern of
racial inequality.
In sum, responses from campus police generally asserted that campus stakeholders were
treated equally, or should be. Very few officers acknowledged systemic reasons for negative,
disproportionate contact with students of color. Participants tended to question the veracity of
allegations of racism reported by students and in the media regarding visible racialized campus
events. The reactions demonstrate how campus police and constituents can diverge in their
perspectives, with campus police privileging their point of view. Some officers situated DPS
within policing’s larger racist history and legacy, but at times, disconnected their actions from
the consequences that have resulted from systemic racism and police misconduct. While officers
may want to “move on,” individuals and communities of color may not be able to do so easily.
To better understand campus police personnel’s racial ideologies, I turn now to the relevant
factors that informed their views. Rather than impose an a priori assumption that campus police
personnel inherently endorse a monolithic color-evasive racist ideology, it was important to
consider how they negotiate their views with specific contexts and social relations.
Individual Experience and Intent
Several participants invoked their identity and experiences with law enforcement to
convey that they were not perpetuating racially biased police practices. For some, they entered

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law enforcement with a motivation to change the relationship between policing and racially
minoritized communities. Additionally, campus policing is characterized by a higher degree of
service-oriented responsibilities compared to the municipal sector (Sloan, 1992). Participants
cited the service emphasis and the educational mission of the university to convey their
intentions to support students and faculty in achieving their respective pursuits.
To demonstrate the significance of experience and intent, I highlight one participant, a
multiracial (Black and Latino) male PSO who exemplified how campus police personnel were
drawn to the profession due to police violence and misconduct that they witnessed or
experienced directly within their lives and communities. This particular officer grew up in a
town marked by hostile police-community relations. This experience and the influence of his
parents’ military careers led him to aspire to be a “bridge and the voice of reason for my
community.” He reflected on his college experience and how that led him to consider campus
police:
To be candid with you, a shit-ton of white people went there. Pretty much the only
minorities you saw on campus were athletes; I was an athlete myself. There were a lot of
times where we felt like we were being profiled or stereotyped or followed for no reason.
A lot of suspicious calls would be called on us, especially if we were practicing late at
night. We would have keys to the facility, but they didn’t believe we would have keys. So
there was always that conversation to be had. That’s where I really found myself, you
know what, this needs to change. And that’s how I found my way to AU.
As a college student, the officer recounted experiences of racial microaggressions with campus
police, which stems from anti-Black racism and the framing of Black racial identity as out of
place within traditionally white spaces (Jenkins et al., 2021; Mills, 2020; Smith et al., 2007).

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Given the mismatch between his experience and how he believed campus police could serve
racially minoritized students, the officer sought out a role with DPS: “I fight hard for the
individuals who want to feel safe, learn, and grow from their education. These are pivotal years
in a young adult’s life.” This participant was conscious of the less socially privileged segment of
AU and was committed to supporting students, particularly those who did not take their
education for granted.
Collectively, participants’ expressed intentions to serve were evocative of a “guardian”
approach to policing, which emphasizes empathy and protection (Rahr & Rice, 2015). The
guardian mindset was conveyed most often when participants described their perspective
towards students. One officer shared, “We’re here to help them…You’re a counselor, you’re a
dad, you’re trying to teach them right and wrong. You have to be more of a guide to them than a
law enforcement officer.” The comment mirrors how several participants understood that they
had to adjust to student needs and operate from a developmental and educational perspective, not
always from a law enforcement stance. Given the difference in approach between campus and
municipal law enforcement, participants described instances of having to make their intentions to
help clear, especially to racially minoritized students. A Latina female officer dedicated to crisis
intervention recounted an instance in which a student resisted opening the door to speak with
her: “Tell me your side. I just want to know how can I help you. We’re not here to get you in
trouble. We can’t help you if you don’t share where we need to go with this.”
Individual experience and intent were conveyed as evidence of bias-free policing
practices in DPS. At times, such reasons were deployed without much explanation and officers
expected to have their actions taken in good faith. A Latino male PSO discussed an instance
when a Latino undergraduate accused the officer of racially targeting him and his friends. The

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officer recollected, “You’re telling me, Officer Antonio [spoken with an emphasized accent;
pseudonym], who’s darker than you, who does not have money to come to a private university,
that I’m shutting you down because you’re brown.” The student then recanted his accusation.
The officer reasoned that the interaction could not be racist because of his Latino identity and
class background, while not considering the larger history of violence and inequity of policing in
Latinx communities. Personal experiences with racism and motivation to serve mattered for how
campus police fulfilled their responsibilities. Accordingly, it makes sense that it would be
difficult for officers of color to understand how their actions could be perceived as racist,
especially in interactions with populations of color.
Organizational Commitments to Diversity and Equality
Campus police consistently referred to the department’s hiring practices, training, and
accountability policies as tangible commitments to racial diversity and anti-discrimination. These
organizational practices and policies were described as robust measures against racial
discrimination and representative of how DPS tailored its approach to the diverse AU
community. Several commented on diverse representation at all levels of DPS, including senior
leadership. Some officers thought that personnel racial diversity alone should be seen as a
symbol of anti-racism. A multiracial male PSO officer expressed: “I hate when people say that
DPS is a racist department when if they actually looked around, it’s one of the more diverse
departments on campus.” Officers believed that organizational inclusion extended to policing
practices. An officer commented, “the department itself is a mixing pot of ethnic diversity.
That’s why I don’t see how that [racial profiling] could happen.”
Training was a second organizational feature that aimed to prevent racist policing
practices. DPS personnel received on-going training in line with the requirements for sworn

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peace officers and received additional training tailored to the AU campus. Topics mentioned by
participants included implicit bias, cultural diversity, LGBT awareness, Title IX issues, and
responses to current events (e.g., the murder of George Floyd). Officers reported that training
equips them to go into the field and operate without bias. A Latina female CSO supervisor
shared, “In that situation where they [a student] think we’re stereotyping, or we’re just targeting
this race, no. There is training that the department gives our officers and I think it helps so that
we don’t get trapped in that situation.”
Moreover, officers asserted that they are trained to use evidence to assess a potential
crime or danger. Rather than race, officers profiled criminal behavior. The following response
captures how officers conducted their patrols:
We focus a little bit more on the areas where break-ins are occurring. If we see someone
who looks suspicious, we’ll keep an eye on them because we don’t want to invalidate
their rights. If we see that their behavior is suspicious, we wait and see what they do. So
we’re looking for behavior. When they tell you that police officers profile, we do. We
criminal profile. We see their actions.
The example illustrates how DPS officers tailored their patrol activity to crime patterns based on
calls the department receives and information shared by the municipal police department.
Monitoring an area was understood as routine practice by campus police and not indicative of
biased decision-making. In the example, the officer highlighted the difference between
observation and taking an action that might “invalidate their rights.”
Finally, when asked how the department is committed to racial inclusion, officers cited
accountability policies. Documents provided by DPS indicated several policies that prohibit bias
and discrimination. A 2012 policy defined constitutional policing as the overarching guide for

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departmental practices and procedures, which prohibits discriminatory conduct on the basis of
race/ethnicity and mandates that police-initiated stops must be unbiased. Accordingly, the policy
on detention, arrest, and restraint procedures states that “race alone is insufficient grounds for
reasonable suspicion or probable cause.” A policy specifically on bias-based profiling states that
racial/ethnic profiling and racially biased policing is “unacceptable”; violations are addressed
through disciplinary actions, including termination. Officers also referenced the seriousness in
which DPS handles complaints, including accusations of racial profiling. A white male PSO who
conducts internal audits and investigations shared there is “zero tolerance for any kind of
discriminatory statements or behavior on the part of officers.” To ensure bias-related complaints
are appropriately investigated, such cases were handled within another unit at AU dedicated to
equity and inclusion.
Some participants shared the importance of holding one another accountable as a form of
implementing the department’s values and policies. There was a recognition that officers could
act out of laziness and according to “their own ideas and their own opinions” rather than
departmental policy. A Black male PSO who had been with the department for 17 years gave the
following example:
I had to tell a coworker before you know you’re not going to just say that this person is
suspicious—a male Black, six foot two, about 200 pounds, wearing a white t-shirt and
blue jeans. You’re not going to say that person’s suspicious without telling me an action
because you just described my brothers. They thought that was funny at first until one
day someone stopped my brother.
The officer’s story echoes the policy that race alone is an insufficient reason to presume
suspicion and relays the importance of reminding fellow officers to exercise discretion with

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legally sound reasons. The officer’s brother was not doing anything other than walking through
an area in which DPS officers were patrolling. His admonition—“you’re not going to say that
person’s suspicious without telling me an action”—conveyed that he understood how racist
stereotypes can inform police discretion. Such informal, frank conversations in the field
reinforced the formal policies and procedures that held officers accountable to policing
constitutionally and without bias.
As an organization, it appeared that DPS operated in ways that did not reproduce racial
inequities within its ranks, a problem that scholars have begun to investigate in studies of race
and organizations (Byron & Roscigno, 2019; Wooten & Couloute, 2017). Officers are not only
exposed to a racially diverse workplace but are further valued for their ability to connect with
campus stakeholders due to their shared identities and for practicing what they learn in training.
A few of the participants were directly involved with writing and updating department policies
and trainings; describing the impact of these organizational practices was not just parroting a
department line, but conveying their daily work reality. For campus police who work in a
seemingly egalitarian, inclusive environment and are actively trained and held to standards that
enforce bias-free practices, it follows that officers believe that they treat campus constituents
equally, regardless of identity.
Community Constraints
Several participants articulated how they could relate to indignity experienced at the
hands of law enforcement and thus were intentional in policing in a more humane manner.
However, essentially all officers felt their positive efforts were constrained by community factors
that led to negative perceptions of DPS. Given the time of the study, which began in Fall 2020,
the public discourse in response to police-involved killings of unarmed Black citizens impacted

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how participants navigated their role and relationships with stakeholders. Participants felt that
the political climate, anti-police attitudes, and the media unfairly filtered how stakeholders
viewed DPS actions. According to a Latino male CSO:
The local community might really be on board and be really supportive and come to our
neighborhood watches and then a situation, like George Floyd, comes along and just
overnight, lights are switched and the community is against us. Even the people that you
were going to those neighborhood watches with where you would have coffee with them
and their family, now they won’t even look at you away. And you think that It's
something that you did, you know, and you feel a certain type of way.
The officer’s comment conveyed the personal challenges of serving in law enforcement when the
public is critical and scrutinizing the general policing apparatus. Events in another part of the
country by officers employed by a different department can negatively influence DPS officers’
relationships with stakeholders (“overnight…the community is against us”). Comments, such as
this one, suggest that campus police may be resentful of having their well-intended efforts—
whether as individual officers or a department—be overshadowed by officers to whom they have
no connection other than being in the same profession.
Relatedly, although serving in a campus role, officers felt that students associated them
with municipal law enforcement and drew upon their past experiences with police to inform how
they should view DPS. A Latina officer recounted one interaction in which a student shared that
she did not like the police and was “raised to hate” them. While accepting that public law
enforcement has a history of negative interactions with communities of color, officers expressed
discontent with being associated with problematic police officers. One stated: “Just like certain
groups don’t want to be told, well this is how you are, it’s the same thing with officers.” The

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concern of being associated with all law enforcement, especially in a politically charged national
climate, was significant because DPS officers felt that their intent to help students and their
commitments to constitutional, bias-free policing were overlooked. The media was cited as
reinforcing negative police perceptions as one officer expressed:
People who don’t like police will sometimes influence others that are on the fence. The
media has a lot to do with it. With the rise of social media, that’s very prominent in
putting the thought out there of what police do or what they shouldn’t do.
DPS officers believed that accusations of racism in their ranks were the product of others’ views
and actions, not their own. Perceptions of being profiled were relegated as “more of an emotional
response than a factual one,” from one officer’s perspective. Given the ways in which officers
felt that external influences unfairly shaped how they were perceived, it follows that officers
might question reports of racism and wonder how stakeholders are defining racist police
behavior. For officers who experience drastic changes in their relationships with stakeholders
due to national events, they may disagree that their behavior is racist when previously
constituents positively viewed them.
Additional community factors included the demographics of the neighborhood and racial
bias among campus stakeholders. Four participants suggested that perceptions of racial profiling
were due to the conflation of bias with routine police actions in a largely Black and Latinx
community. A white male administrative staff member who compiles crime report data remarked
You have to take into consideration the racial makeup of the neighborhood, which is
mostly Black and Hispanic. Our officers are getting a bad rap for stopping Black and
Hispanic suspects. Why aren’t you stopping white people? There aren’t any white people
in the neighborhood. I mean, it’s a slight exaggeration, but the only white people in the

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neighborhood, for the most part, are our students. Are you racist because all the people in
the neighborhood are Black? I don’t think so.
This participant and others relied on arguing that appropriate and routine police work in a
majority-minority community should not be taken as racist. According to this logic, police
encounters with Black and Latinx residents are to be expected and not the result of selective
police action.
A final community constraint officers highlighted was being implicated in the racially
discriminatory beliefs and actions of campus constituents. Officers referred to “caller bias” and
“transfer profiling” as significant reasons for why DPS may become embroiled in investigations
and criticisms of racial profiling. DPS officers mentioned calls from campus staff, faculty, and
students that they perceived were racially motivated. According to one officer, “A lot of the time,
75% to 80% of the time when we go make contact with someone is because there was a call on
that person. We’re not sitting there profiling people. No, it’s someone who called.” The same
officer recounted a story in which an administrator called DPS officers to question a Black
adjunct instructor and his guests, also Black men, who were waiting outside the main
administration building. Another incident involved staff members of color who called DPS to
remove a transient for being an “eye sore.” Caller bias was understood as a problem that led DPS
officers to be in situations that they even felt uncomfortable in given their training and personal
experiences with racism.
The significance of caller bias conveys that campus police personnel were aware of
racism as a deep-seated issue affecting the campus climate and contributing to the
marginalization of racially minoritized groups as well as the poor and unhoused. Racially biased
calls exploited the expectation for DPS officers to “do something about everything,” a

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deployment policy that reflected the service orientation of the department. In such instances,
officers lacked the agency to interrupt racially motivated calls. Officers must investigate calls to
avoid potential liability in case there was an actual threat, even though they may ultimately
determine no action is needed. Officers’ frustration with being accused of racial profiling may be
exacerbated when considering how they witness how campus stakeholders act out of racial bias
and utilize DPS to attend to their racialized fears.
Discussion
The goal of this study was to examine and illustrate campus police perceptions of racial
dynamics in their line of work. The findings of the study make important contributions to the
emerging dialogue on racial justice and policing in higher education. First, while color-evasive
racism has been regarded as the dominant racial ideology in the U.S. since the Civil Rights era,
the study demonstrates the presence of diversity ideology and an analysis of power among
campus police personnel (Smith & Mayorga-Gallo, 2017; Warikoo, 2016). The findings reveal a
complex interplay of color-evasive racism, diversity ideology, and power analysis, suggesting
that racial ideologies do not operate uniformly within a group, regardless of a shared occupation
(e.g., campus police) or racial identity (Burke, 2016). Second, the study identified how lived
experience and social relations contributed to campus police personnel’s racial ideologies.
Conceptualizing racial ideology as the product of a dialectical interaction between social location
and structure contributes to the literature by illustrating how campus police personnel negotiate
reform efforts within an unequal social structure. I expand these points in the remainder of the
discussion and conclude with implications for research, policy, and practice that can help
advance racial justice and inclusive campus safety efforts.

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Interacting Racial Ideologies
In this study, I found that campus police personnel generally did not view racist policing
practices as a problem within DPS. Participants drew upon employed color-evasive frames,
which has been supported by prior literature (Hughes et al., 2016; Glover, 2007). Several
expressed an individualized analysis of racial conflict and defended the status quo. Racism was
minimized when inequality was reduced to a matter of perception, which allowed participants to
provide alternate reasons to ignore, reject, or question racialized experiences among campus
stakeholders. In line with the abstract liberalism racial frame, campus feedback of racist practices
challenged officers’ views of an egalitarian society and attempts to naturalize negative and
disproportionate contact with Black and Latinx communities. The reasoning presented by
campus police officers matches onto logics Welsh and colleagues (2020) documented among
municipal police officers. These logics constituted “color-blind policing,” which on the surface
opposes explicitly racialized practices and promotes equality and fairness regardless of race
(Welsh et al., 2020, p. 388). Officers’ disbelief and frustration with being associated with racism
precluded them from understanding campus constituents’ views and experiences (Whitehead,
2015).
A contribution of this study is the documentation of diversity ideology as a paired logic
with color-evasive racial frames to counter accusations of racial profiling (Embrick, 2011;
Mayorga-Gallo, 2019). Campus police personnel often expressed recognition and appreciation of
racial difference while discounting racism as an institutionalized system of inequality. From
participants’ perspectives, racial profiling could not be possible within a department that valued a
range of perspectives and experiences, including their own and which was visually attested to
through the diverse makeup of their colleagues and leadership. The racially diverse staffing and

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leadership were also deployed to make claims to the campus community about its commitments
and intention to provide equal treatment and service. Diversity thus served as a kind of
insurance, rather than a liability (Smith & Mayorga-Gallo, 2017), against accusations of racist
policing practices. From a diversity ideology standpoint, race was reduced to a cultural identity
that could be leveraged as an asset for an individual officer and the department collectively. The
emphasis on representation aligns with the community accountability hypothesis in policing
research (Reiss, 1971), which places a premium on hiring racially minoritized police officers to
serve in diverse communities (Decker & Smith, 1980; President’s Task Force on 21st Century
Policing, 2015; Smith & Holmes, 2003). However, research on the effectiveness of officer racial
diversity is mixed in terms of its impact to reduce racial disparities and foster positive
relationships with racially minoritized constituents (Brunson & Gau, 2015; Hickman & Piquero,
2009; Smith & Holmes, 2003).
One-fourth of the participants expressed some of their views through what Warikoo
(2016) termed a power analysis racial frame, an understanding that racial inequality results from
unequal power. The present study is the first to document power analysis framing among campus
police. A few officers understood that the general policing institution was characterized by the
history and on-going perpetuation of racism in U.S. social institutions and culture. They
demonstrated a clearer willingness and motivation to correct the flaws of campus police and
were wrestling with how to better confront the institutionalized racism in policing and broader
society. However, the extent to which campus police personnel were critically aware of
institutionalized inequality varied. Some viewpoints were indicative of a disconnected power-
analysis frame, a color-evasive form of reasoning (Jayakumar & Adamian, 2017). Through the
disconnected power-analysis racial frame, campus police articulated a theoretical understanding

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of institutionalized racism and policing’s racist origins, while attempting to absolve DPS, such as
in superficial acknowledgment of past mistakes and the need to “move on.”
A striking feature about the responses was the interview sample: a majority of Latinx,
Black, and multiracial participants drawn from a racially diverse campus police agency in which
white officers were the minority. The pattern of responses adds to emergent and complex
narratives regarding the nature of racial ideologies among racially minoritized communities.
Rather than assume a uniform perspective within any one racialized group or across groups that
share experiences of marginalization, the study corroborates the influence of color-evasive
racism among Black and Latinx individuals (Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2011; Wellburn &
Pittman, 2012) while also documenting the simultaneous use of diversity ideology and power
analysis. Additionally, the findings also point to the relationship between racial ideology and
professional subculture. Studies have examined the relationship between police subculture and
racialized practices and beliefs (Conti & Doreian, 2014; Lasely & Hooper, 1998; Satzewich &
Shaffir, 2009). However, just as research demonstrates that racial ideologies are not uniform
within a racialized group, scholars have also attested to the dynamic, rather than deterministic,
nature of police subculture (Chan, 1997; Chan et al., 2003; Paoline, 2003; Paoline & Gau, 2015).
The study suggests that campus police cannot be thought of as a monolithic entity. Resistant
beliefs that aim to change practices and subculture exist among officers albeit to a limited extent.
Material Foundations of Racial Ideology
It was important to examine what might account for the varied racial ideologies
expressed among campus police personnel, hence the second research question’s focus on the
influence of lived experience and social relations. In this regard, the study makes contributions to
the call for scholars to go beyond describing the presence of racial ideology and examine the

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material social conditions, or perceptions of those conditions, in which ideology is grounded
(Burke, 2016). Three sets of factors were identified in participants’ interviews as contributing to
their views on racial dynamics in campus police. First, racial identity and experiences of injustice
with law enforcement were discussed as motivators to work in campus police and as anchors that
grounded how officers fulfilled their responsibilities. Relatedly, officers emphasized their
intentions to support students to develop and achieve their educational goals. Second,
organizational commitments to diversity and equality shaped the working conditions of campus
police. Finally, community factors constrained the ability of campus police to provide inclusive
and equal service.
Through a color-evasive lens, scholars have framed municipal police officers’ deflections
of racial profiling as rhetorical maneuvers (Satzewich & Shaffir, 2009; Welsh et al., 2020). The
focus on discourse provides an opportunity to analyze the contradictions between officers’
claims and their actions (Glover, 2007; Whitehead, 2015). While these analyses are significant to
illuminate the nature of racial ideology, it is important to consider the material reality of
individuals and not dismiss their references to lived experience and context as mere words or
mechanistic repetition of a free-floating ideological script. In regards to the individual factors,
studies have investigated how critical reflection on one’s identity and lived experiences can
shape leadership practices for social justice and equity in education settings (Alston, 2005;
Santamaria, 2014; Theoharis, 2007). It is plausible that campus police officers harness their
minoritized identities and experiences of unjust policing are resources to inform their individual
exercise of police discretion and contributions to the organization.
To connect individual and organizational factors, the findings indicate that accountability
within DPS was enacted in part through officers’ initiative to call out their colleagues on biased

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decision-making. Related research on bystander anti-racism documents that active bystanders are
motivated in part to educate the perpetrator (Hyers, 2007). It is possible that campus police
personnel who confront their colleagues may be effective if they are in a higher-status position
(e.g., field training officer) or are equals as power differentials can have an effect on bystander
action (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2014). For officers who undertake such actions, situated within a
department that follows through with its commitments to hiring diverse candidates and ensuring
constitutional, bias-free policing through training and accountability mechanisms, it follows that
they believe campus stakeholders are treated equally and that racism is not a deep-seated
problem internally.
The community constraints identified by the officers can be taken as efforts to displace
blame to anti-police and racist behavior enacted by others, but more so pinpoint how campus
police cannot escape the real ways institutional racism manifests in policing and higher
education. Despite concrete efforts to provide equal and inclusive service, participants were
frustrated through a perceived unfair association with the national crisis in police legitimacy and
consequently blamed constituents for transposing anti-police attitudes to the AU context.
Municipal officers have reported similar views regarding hostility and anti-police attitudes from
racially minoritized communities (Vera Sanchez & Rosenbaum, 2011). Moreover, the climate
towards policing post-Ferguson has had a negative impact on officer morale (Deuchar et al.,
2019; Nix & Wolfe, 2017; Pew Research Center, 2017; Torres et al., 2018). Minimizing
accusations of racial profiling in an atmosphere of heightened criticism may be a coping
mechanism among campus police personnel.
The problem posed by racially biased calls from campus constituents is representative of
the broader set of racial climate issues that have beleaguered higher education institutions for

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decades (Harper & Hurtado, 2007) and for which effective leadership is still needed (Kezar et al.,
2018). This particular constraint suggests that campus police may contribute to, but are not the
sole source of, institutionalized racism in policing college settings. Campus police personnel can
be the unwilling vehicle for campus stakeholders to express racial bias because officers are
mandated to “do something about everything.” Individual officer agency to resist responding to
racially biased calls is restricted due to the need to protect the institution from legal liability.
Ramos (2012, 2014) examined how one public land-grant university employed “racial risk
management” to avoid the threat of legal action from racially minoritized groups and
perpetrators of racism. How administrators make use of the campus police department to fulfill
their aims, such as through repressing protests, can place officers into situations that may conflict
with personal and organizational commitments to equality.
I focused on understanding the material foundations of racial ideologies among campus
police officers to better attend to the problem facing higher education: racial inequity and harm
from policing. Officers’ beliefs and attitudes about racism in their line of work and in the campus
community can be problematic in and of themselves. Most of the officers in this sample did not
express an awareness of the larger history and on-going pattern of racist violence and harm that
result from the state-sanctioned legitimacy of policing, as documented in other studies (Glover,
2007; Welsh et al., 2020; Whitehead, 2015). However, it may be too simplistic to claim that
campus police officers reproduce racism as a matter of fact beyond their control. For practices to
change, we have to assume there is room for agency. The value of exploring what shapes
officers’ racial beliefs can move scholarship and educational praxis forward in ways that can
cultivate safe and inclusive campus environments.

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Implications for Research
Based on the findings and discussion, I suggest future research apply novel methods to
examine to identify how racial ideologies inform campus police actions. The limitation of the
current study was its restriction to interviews and the perceptions of campus police personnel.
Observational methods can be leveraged to identify racialized patterns in campus police-
constituent interactions. Detailed case studies of specific racialized incidents may also be able to
trace the actions and perspectives involving police and non-police campus actors, such as student
affairs staff. Process-focused studies have the potential to examine the relationship between
stated beliefs, actual behavior, and outcomes, such as in Lewis and Diamond’s (2015)
examination of racial inequity in school discipline. Given that the present study identified more
than one racial ideology at play, a process-focused approach can uncover whether similar or
divergent outcomes and stakeholder experiences result among officers who express different
racial ideologies (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2016).
Relatedly, future in-depth research on racial ideologies and actions of campus police
officers of color and comparative studies across officer racial identity would be beneficial to
understand the significance of representation. Racial identity tends to be studied in the aggregate,
such as a department’s percentage of Black officers (Smith & Holmes, 2003). When race is
employed as a descriptive variable, researchers do not account for lived experience, values, and
beliefs that racially minoritized officers bring into their work. The present study at minimum
points to the need to study how racially minoritized officers with critical appraisals of racial
inequity engage in policing and contribute to their departments.

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Future research can incorporate an emphasis on organizational analysis. Campus police
agencies have yet to be studied as racialized organizations (Ray, 2019), but recent advances
combining race and organizational theories provide templates for future studies of racial equity
and campus police (Wooten, 2019). The experiences of campus police personnel in this study
suggest that DPS is an equitable organization, which informed how they then viewed the impact
of the department in the larger campus community. Reform measures referenced by participants,
such as training, diverse hiring, and accountability, have been criticized for their ineffectiveness
to curb police violence (Herzing, 2020). Rather than studying reforms in isolation, future
research can study how reforms interact and their holistic impact within a campus police agency
and how policing practices consequently play out with campus stakeholders.
Implications for Policy and Practice
The current political climate has seen the discussion of radical alternatives to policing,
prisons, and safety enter mainstream discourse. In higher education, students, staff, and faculty
have called for the divestment and abolition of campus police agencies. Leaders and proponents
of policing also understand that changes must be made to address officer misconduct and
violations of justice that can result in premature death for racially minoritized populations
(Griffith, 2021). Recognizing that reimagining campus safety is a process, the findings suggest
that reform efforts in the general policing institution merit further experimentation to align
campus police with the needs of increasingly diverse campus communities. I offer
recommendations for policy and practice that colleges and universities can begin to implement in
the process of long-term cultural and institutional change planning around campus safety and
racial justice.

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First, higher education leaders have an opportunity to ally together and revise police
training. This recommendation aims to transform the current education and training system for
law enforcement. Trainings to reduce bias and reinforce de-escalation, although popular in recent
years as responses to public criticism, lack evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness (Engel et
al., 2020). One-off or ad hoc trainings may be beneficial in the short-term but not in terms of
long-term change (Engel et al., 2022; Devine, 2012; Smith, 2015). Higher education institutions
provide the majority of basic training and, to a lesser extent, continuing education (Hammond et
al., 2021). Compared to other basic training topics, little time is dedicated to content related to
social justice. Academies require only 1% of the total curriculum focuses on “cultural diversity”
(Reaves, 2015). Leaders can come together to strategize and allocate intellectual and human
resources to address the deficiencies in police training. In 2020, the California and Virginia
community college systems announced plans to review police training programs (St. Amour,
2020). Such system-wide efforts can be replicated in other states; overall, police training needs to
be enhanced to properly serve a multiracial democracy.
Training should include content that teaches officers about the history and on-going
persistence of institutional racism in policing and other major societal institutions. Officers must
be trained to apply an anti-racist and structural lens to present-day issues affecting communities
that have been impacted by economic underdevelopment, including cuts to education and social
services. This lack of understanding among police officers creates the opportunity for officers to
take negative community attitudes personally and form feelings of resentment and hostility
(Whitehead, 2015). The University of San Francisco recently developed race trainings for its
Department of Public Safety alongside a year-long series of community events to simultaneously

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raise awareness and dialogue in the larger campus.
5
The initiative exemplifies how campus
police can undertake training informed by critical analysis of policing alongside its constituents
to generate shared understanding and solutions. Similar efforts can be implemented at higher
education institutions that provide continuing education and at all institutions that hire their own
campus police.
Second, in addition to hiring racially diverse officers, job requirements and the screening
process can emphasize applicants who have a critical awareness of racial inequality and other
forms of institutionalized injustice and who have the potential to apply this understanding to
police work. Colleges and universities might also consider targeted recruiting at police
academies and avoid hiring officers who have served in municipal departments so as to socialize
newly educated officers to the unique needs of the campus environment without having to
“unteach” practices from the municipal sector. Relatedly, campus police agencies should not
serve as back up job placements for officers who have served in municipal agencies and who
have records of misconduct and other behavior that may be incongruent with an institution’s core
values (Ross, 2021).
Third, campus police agencies should train officers to be competent and proactive in
interrupting racist and other oppressive actions within their ranks. The current study indicates
that officers can and will hold their colleagues accountable to follow fair policing practices.
Ensuring that active bystander intervention is a norm is necessary to avoid and diminish police
misconduct. To support this effort, when officers make minor mistakes in the field, punishment
cannot be the first response by the department; opportunities should be offered for officers to
improve as they apply a socially conscious lens to their responsibilities. Officer evaluations

5
https://myusf.usfca.edu/jesuit-foundation-grant-initiative/re-imagining-the-department-of-public-safety

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should include a rubric for how they took steps to enact departmental policies that promote
constitutional and bias-free policing. Anonymous reporting mechanisms can also help officers
report misconduct without fear of repercussion or fostering negative work dynamics.
Fourth, institutions must provide education to all campus constituents regarding the
appropriate use of campus police. The general current practice is to call campus police at any
sign of concern. Education must be provided to help students, staff, and faculty confront their
biases that might motivate a decision to call the campus police on another member of the
community who “looks out of place.” Institutions can consider a policy that bans racially biased
calls to campus police. Such a proposal emerged in San Francisco following incidents of the
police being called on innocent racially minoritized individuals. The policy places responsibility
on campus constituents to be aware of their biases. Similarly, institutions can explore training
dispatchers un in how to determine if racial bias has motivated a call (Gillooly, 2020).
Fifth, administrators must evaluate the needs of the campus community and consider how
to allocate finances to create new resources if necessary. The current practice of relying on
campus police for a range of issues, from locked doors to threatening behavior to intoxicated,
passed out students, contributes to the potential for racialized police encounters. An unarmed
janitorial staff, increased staff for threat assessment and crisis support offices, and direct calls to
the local fire department and paramedic services are all viable options that address core needs
and do not involve the police. To fund these alternatives, institutions can consider the allocation
of finances to firearms and other weapons typically used by police. Reducing staff might also
help alleviate issues that arise when an organization is too large to ensure consistency and
uniformity. Rather than firing police officers, institutions can then create new officers that allow
officers to provide the same service functions but from a non-police role.

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Conclusion
Campus police are noticeably absent in scholarly and campus dialogue on racial dynamics in
policing colleges and universities. Examining their views demonstrated that campus police
personnel are not a monolithic group and apply differing racial ideologies in their work. In
addition to color-evasive racism, campus police personnel value diversity and understand power
inequalities in ways that can both advance and limit efforts to foster inclusion and reduce harm.
Although campus police agencies are embedded in the racist legacies of policing and higher
education, situating their views and concerns in the context of concrete social relations suggested
opportunities for policy and practice recommendations that might better attend to
institutionalized racial inequities. Rather than simply admitting to being culpable in racism,
higher education leaders and campus police agencies can take stock of ineffective reforms in
policing and be proactive in developing alternative approaches that are more aligned with the
needs of campus constituents.

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Chapter 5: Discussion
My motivation for this dissertation study was to help deepen and expand scholarly
understanding of the nature of policing in higher education. Within the last ten years, debates
over reform in the general policing apparatus have occurred in their own form on college
campuses. Reports of physical and psychological harm that result from campus police actions
have continued, which college students of color and faculty directly view as a symptom of
institutional racism in higher education (White, 2016). Debates over police reforms—their
proposed benefits and documented failures—may be attributed to “a misunderstanding (or
willful ignorance) of what policing is and does—the very nature of policing” (Herzing, 2021, p.
x). In practice and scholarship, the dominant view of campus police presents it as an objective,
neutral tool of crime control that is necessary and operates equally. The rationale for campus
police rests on the assertion that “a safe campus is a critical foundation for students’ learning
experience” (Wada et al., 115). Without a doubt, theft, sexual assault, mass violence, and other
life-damaging incidents must be taken seriously. Advocacy and court decisions have increasingly
held higher education institutions accountable for providing data and taking measures to prevent
crime and violence (Fisher & Sloan, 2013). A thorough discussion on crime was beyond the
scope of this study. Still, despite concern over victimization, the possible direct and indirect
effects of crime and violence on student achievement have yet to be documented and tested
empirically.
In light of limited evidence that campus policing reduces crime and supports student
achievement (Schuck, 2017), higher education leaders and scholarship on campus police may
certainly misunderstand the nature and impact of policing on college campuses given the
prevalence and continued institutional investment in campus police. The persistent accounts of

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campus police harm reported by Black students and faculty, and other marginalized groups, and
the lack of adequate institutional response might also be read as willful ignorance.
Here, I argue that scholarship on campus police cannot rely on a crime control rationale
alone. Regarding the general policing apparatus, “the failure of traditional reforms to address the
death-dealing nature of policing requires us to look again and differently at policing” (Herzing,
2021, p. x). Higher education scholars must also take up the task to inform leadership, practice,
and policy in regard to campus police and, broadly, campus safety. Journalistic accounts and
student activism have been ahead of higher education research in pointing out racial harm at the
hands of campus police. There is a clear, practical need to theorize then “how police are central
to both race-making and place-making” on university and college campuses (Correia & Wall,
2021, p. 1). I apply theories of race and society as alternatives to paradigms that assert that the
“institution of police is self-evident” in its purpose to enforce law and order in the name of safety
(Correia & Wall, 2021, p. 1). Overall, I provide evidence that policing in higher education
produces and maintains unequal power relations, repressing racialized and minoritized identities
while also generating meanings about them that are circulated and contribute to campus climate.
Policing helps shore up institutional identity, prestige, and reputation by demarcating the
university as an exclusive space in a stigmatized local context and filtering undesirable,
dangerous “outsiders” without formal ties to the university and who do not conform to the ideal
notion of who belongs. Synthesizing the experiences and perceptions of campus constituents
answered the question that guided this study:
How does policing (actions of the campus officers and partnering staff/administration)
shape individual experiences (among campus constituents: faculty, students) and

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relationships between groups (campus constituents and police/staff/administration) along
racial lines on a college campus?
To understand how I answered this question, I first revisit the methodological and theoretical
foundations that have grounded this study.
Revisiting Methods
The methods employed here have sought to capture the perceived impact of policing on
faculty, staff, and students and situate these perspectives in dialogue with how campus police
officers view and justify their work. I interviewed a purposeful sample of student leaders,
faculty, staff, administrators, and campus police officers. I developed an understanding of the
study site through reading documents (e.g., campus police department website, safety policies,
campus crime alerts, reports, news articles, etc.). By including what I learned in an initial study
of Black undergraduate men at the study site (presented in chapter three), I expanded the
dissertation to include a broader range of perspectives and build off those first findings. Initially,
the project was conceptualized from a perspective that campus police presence was a taken-for-
granted feature of the status quo in higher education. However, when the study began in Summer
2020, campus police at the study site became a focal point of concern for students of color and
faculty allies who demanded change along the spectrum of reform to abolition. Despite the
pandemic, I had some opportunities to engage in online participant-observation as the study site
engaged in listening sessions to gather campus constituent feedback. I also joined a student
organization and coalition founded to abolish campus police, which provided additional access to
viewpoints at the study site.
The methodological choices were in response to limitations in current literature. For
example, descriptive and multivariate analyses based on surveys have sampled campus police

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chiefs and campus police officers to document practices and issues in campus policing (Pelfrey
& Keener, 2016; Perez & Bromley, 2015; Schafer et al., 2010). These methods have also been
employed with student samples to assess campus police legitimacy, support, and satisfaction
(Aiello, 2019; Aiello & Lawton, 2018; Griffith et al., 2004; Hummer et al., 1998; Wada et al.,
2010). Qualitative studies have provided some insight on the issue of legitimacy from student
viewpoints, but, like quantitative approaches, do not emphasize the context of the study sites
(Allen, 2021; Jacobsen, 2017). A significant limitation of campus police studies has been in the
study of race, which I will describe in more detail in the next section, which revisits theory.
These common methodological choices align with the assumption that campus police are a
necessity and provide a universal good, and operate in a universal fashion.
The case study approach I employed permitted a more holistic understanding and
exploration of the nature and consequences of campus police apart from its stated crime control
rationale. The significance of the findings presented in chapters two, three, and four is in part due
to appreciating the study site has one of largest campus police departments in the nation and is
located in a racially and socioeconomically stratified context. This choice was essential to
examining racial and class dynamics that have shaped the general policing apparatus (Soss &
Weaver, 2017). Context mattered for the analysis and weight of the arguments presented.
The sampling of multiple perspectives across structural location, or role, was an
intentional choice. Only two studies have brought the perspectives of campus police officers and
students into dialogue (Jacobsen, 2017; Williams et al., 2016), however, again, focusing on
legitimacy and crime prevention. I included faculty as a group that is situated to be part of
campus policing and the intended beneficiaries. Staff and administrators with formal and ad-hoc
collaborations with campus police have not been studied before. Through conducting focus

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groups, I was able to get a sense of how members of each group shared or diverged in their
understanding and experiences with campus police. Sampling different groups and collective
interviews provided one way to holistically examine the social impact of campus police.
Relatedly, I was mindful of the racial representation in my sample. This was more
pertinent for the student subsample as the main criterion was leadership in a cultural student
organization. Including the students interviewed in chapter three, Black students were the largest
segment followed by Asian American students. Although I made several attempts to recruit
Latinx students, this was one of the least represented groups from a racially minoritized
background and there was no representation from Native students. Additionally, I reached out to
Greek life student organizations as a likely source of white students, but this did not result in
participants. White students who participated were student leaders in residential life and a
women’s organization. Overall, when I reported data, I took care to note the racial identity and
structural location of the source (e.g., a Black undergraduate male, an Asian American female
faculty) to contextualize the lived experience of that particular data point. Previous studies have
either not noted race, particularly in studies of officers (Allen, 2015, 2016), or have been based
on homogenous groups, such as Black college students (Allen, 2016; Smith et al., 2007), leaving
ambiguous the role of race in student-police encounters (Allen, 2016; Allen & Jacques, 2018).
Conducting the dissertation from the confines of my apartment and when the study site
was physically empty posed challenges. I have discussed limitations in chapters two, three, and
four, but I will highlight some additional considerations to understanding the findings.
Recruitment was limited due to the lack of opportunity to network and develop rapport
organically, particularly with students. Most likely, I could have participated in more online
meetings and fora had I been connected to students, staff, and faculty I would have introduced

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myself to in person, leading to opportunities to observe and hear campus feedback and recruit
participants for interviews. Given that campus constituents all worked or studied from home and
did not interact with campus police physically during the data collection period, participants had
to convey recollections from their time on campus before Spring 2020 with no opportunity to
reflect on real-time incidents with campus police. The responses I heard, much of which were
critical of campus police, may have been influenced to conform to public discourse and calls for
police divestment and abolition. The value of chapter three is that data collection was in 2018-
2019, a less heightened political time, which perhaps allowed for a greater range of responses
from that particular subsample (as a reminder, some Black undergraduate men expressed support
for campus police and endorsed the notion of a dangerous local community). Relatedly, campus
police officer responses may have been more defensive in light of campus criticism and an on-
going reform effort at the study site.
On a personal note, in the previous chapters, I have described my positionality and use of
disclosure as tools in obtaining access (particularly to campus police officers) and trustworthy
data. Throughout the study, I was particularly sensitive to the idea that I had to come off as a
“friend” to the campus police. I have no family member in law enforcement, I am an academic,
and police nationally are under scrutiny—characteristics and conditions that would position me
as a threat to campus police officers. Although I truthfully presented the academic rationale for
my study, I was self-conscious about the tone of my voice and wording of my questions, as I was
worried I would come off as critical and attacking. It took a lot of emotional labor to manage my
feelings and opinions, especially as I undertook this research with a critical view on policing.
When I published the Insider Higher Ed op-ed, I felt worried that the campus police chief would

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read it and deny me access.
6
This was never discussed between us, but when I released a guide
for higher education leaders on issues of campus policing, the report had reached the campus
police chief who met with me to ask if that was the product of my interviews with his officers
(no, as I just had barely started the dissertation) and to relay that his senior staff disapproved of
the content.
7
I had to temper the report’s image and reposition myself as a “friend” to him and
the department. Although I saw the value in interviewing campus police officers, a group not
studied by higher education researchers concerned with racial equity, I felt troubled and bothered
by the emotional and impression management that was part of my process.
The methods I applied to understand the social dynamics of campus policing were tied to
my theoretical framework. Through critical race theory, racial formation, disciplinary power, and
boundaries, I see campus policing as a truly socially constructed phenomenon that shapes
individual subjectivity, shared meanings of race, and relationships between groups. Thus,
drawing on critical theories of race and society, I map out the production of a racial hierarchy
and unequal power relations within a policed campus community.
Revisiting Theory
This study has been founded on the problem that “the nature of police is rarely
considered, much less defined or analyzed,” yet has not been a barrier to the institutionalization
of policing in higher education (Correia & Wall, 2021, p. 1). Campus police are framed as a
necessary and universal good that operates in a non-biased manner. Research and administrative
oversight are, accordingly, focused on improvements to what is considered a technical operation.
When race has been studied or should be of importance, scholarship reduces racism to a matter

6
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/06/02/heels-george-floyd-killing-colleges-have-moral-imperative-
not-work-local-police
7
https://pullias.usc.edu/download/campus-policing-report/

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of individual psychology and interpersonal interaction (Allen, 2016; Allen & Jacques, 2018). For
instance, Allen’s (2016) study of stop-and-question policing relied on a majority Black student
interview sample. The students were largely in favor of the practice, which Allen notes is
significantly different from previous studies of racial discrimination in policing. Allen’s
commentary on the role of racism in campus policing was speculative:
Perhaps it is because they [the Black student respondents] do not associate campus
policing with racial discrimination. Or, conversely, perhaps because race is such a salient
feature of their interactions with police it becomes taken for granted and, thus, left
unmentioned. Future research should do more to examine why minority members do not
assess police practices in light of racial/ethnic issues or, at least, do not verbalize this
matter during interviews (p. 517).
The statement is problematic for several reasons. Understanding that the study site enrolled a
majority of Black students, Allen could have foreseen the need to ask questions about race and
racism. The use of news articles and other documents could have been used to better understand
campus police interactions with Black students at the study site. Given the scholarship on racial
profiling in policing, the study could have been designed to ascertain whether such issues extend
to the higher education environment. Instead, stop-and-question policing was studied as an
abstract practice, and students were interviewed without considering their social identities and
experiences. The study lacked a theory regarding the design, analysis, and subsequent discussion.
But even in relying on an empirical argument to justify the student, Allen artificially and
problematically divorced stop-and-question policing as distinct from stop-and-frisk policing and
other known racialized police practices.

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In a different approach, scholars have interviewed Black college students to recount
interactions with campus police. Critical scholars in higher education have framed these
interactions as racial microaggressions, which are understood to impact sense of belonging and
contribute to negative psychological and behavioral aspects of the campus racial climate (Mills,
2020; Smith et al., 2007). However, focusing on interpersonal interactions can be limiting, as
Allen and Jacques (2018) engaged in a similar method yet concluded that Black college students
did not find campus police to be racially discriminatory. Allen and Jacques situated their analysis
in procedural justice and police legitimacy, which focus on the interpersonal level but in a
manner disconnected from a systemic analysis of racism in policing.
The decision to use critical race theory, racial formation theory, racial ideology,
Foucault’s work on discipline, and boundary theories was motivated by a desire to examine
racial dynamics and consider individual experiences, group relationships, and institutional
structures. The starting point was to anchor campus policing as an institutional practice (such as
through the daily police patrols) and a structure (represented in policies, procedures, and campus
partnerships). More often, higher education studies focus on individual experiences with racism
without contextualizing such experiences in the structure in which participants are embedded.
Through combining racial formation theory and disciplinary power, I read campus policing
practices as tools to manage racial difference. The integration of campus police to address non-
crime-related situations further amplified the power of campus police to racially discipline the
campus community.
The application of a racial ideology paradigm with a focus on material conditions to the
study of campus police officers situated racial beliefs as a socially constructed phenomenon
(Burke, 2016). To understand what might enable someone to exercise anti-racist beliefs or

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reinforce racism, research has to do more than document a set of beliefs. The findings of study 3
(chapter 4) highlighted the significance of lived experience and contextual factors that informed
the views of campus police officers. The disconnect between officers’ beliefs of racism in
policing and that of campus constituents—simplistically, two opposite viewpoints—is rooted in
real conditions, which if studied, can be the focus of intervention. Similarly, the use of boundary
theory (Lamont & Molnár, 2002; Tilly, 2004) and Foucault’s (1977) work on discipline provided
a way to understand racialization in terms of concrete mechanisms. Additionally, these theories
demonstrated how relationships and experiences were shaped on a daily basis, including but not
limited to overt instances of racist interactions. The qualitative insights complement the
limitations of survey studies of campus racial climate (e.g., Nguyen et al., 2017) and racial
microaggressions literature (e.g., Palmer & Maramba, 2015). For instance, the attire choices of
Black undergraduate men (study 2, chapter 3) may become so normalized that it no longer
becomes apparent to a student and his overt experience, but is nonetheless a salient component to
being a Black man on a policed campus. I reflect on how theorizing campus policing as a
racialized system of social control shaped daily campus life in the following section.
Synthesis of Findings
Taking into consideration the research question and findings across all three studies, I
conclude that campus policing can be read as a racial project that operates through police
surveillance and governance practices. A racial project is the simultaneous link of racial
meanings and a racialized logic of organizing and distributing resources (Omi & Winant, 2015).
Students, faculty, staff, and administrators recognized that campus policing produced objects for
control and exclusion: broadly communities of color from higher and lower-income
backgrounds. In contrast, campus policing was discussed as a resource that protected white and

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wealthy, full-tuition paying students. Specifically, the social construction of included and
excluded groups was based on multiple, overlapping binaries, which were racial (white/Black-
Latinx), class-based (affluent/poor), and organizational membership (AU affiliated/non-
affiliated), themes discussed in chapters two and three. I arrived at this understanding by
synthesizing across responses. Individuals did vary, as some recognized that racialized treatment
may have been a prevalent issue or could become one. These were tentative on race in
comparison to viewpoints that strongly asserted racialized dynamics in campus policing based on
observations, direct, and vicarious experiences. Nonetheless, campus constituents understood
race was tied campus policing at some level, even if only as a perceived concern among
communities of color.
The production of racialized objects of policing was tied to everyday anxieties around
crime victimization. Students and faculty in chapters two and three conveyed that campus police
presence had a contradictory effect among some participants, leading them to simultaneously
feel safe and fearful of crime. Relatedly, campus constituents conveyed that the outside
community was framed as the persistent threat to be on guard against when there was an
awareness that fellow AU members instilled fear of harm. In chapter three, a segment of
participants endorsed the need for police protection against non-AU members and subscribed to
a belief that the local community was dangerous. Other participants, such as in chapter two,
discussed fearing students and staff who exhibited threatening behavior. Women students and
faculty expressed fear of sexual assault and cited fraternity row as a salient site for that kind of
violence. The findings demonstrate the hegemonic logics that maintain the legitimacy of
policing, lines of thinking that reinforce racist and class-based stereotypes, while obscuring other
real and pressing safety needs.

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Campus policing also shaped racialized subjectivities, or how campus constituents
understood themselves and their social position within a policed university. This was clearly
illustrated in chapter three. Black undergraduate men shared how they were hyper-aware that the
campus crime alerts functioned to instill fear of being accused of a crime, rather than as a
message of precaution and assurance of campus police protection. The fear of being seen as a
criminal, instead of a student, motivated Black undergraduate men to proactively show their AU
affiliation through clothing and appear non-threatening to campus police and fellow students.
Black student life at AU was collectively shaped by campus policing through how student
leaders created intentional conversations to discuss issues of policing and share personal
experiences of profiling at AU. In light of the danger the campus crime alerts posed, the Black
student community circulated its own counter-alerts to ensure student safety from the campus
police.
This set of findings, summarized above, demonstrates that campus policing does more
than regulate and address crime. It is experienced as a race-making practice that (re)produces
meanings of racialized criminality, which overlaps with class and the privilege of university
affiliation. Campus policing conditioned particular emotions, self-understanding, and behavior
that exploit the vulnerability of communities of color, which have historically problematic
relationships with the police at large. The racialized dimension to this set of findings gets at what
is meant by “institutional racism” by depicting how campus policing mediates the experience of
living, working, and studying in a racially and socioeconomically stratified university
community. Legal scholar Ian Haney López (2000) argued that “racial-status enforcement” is an
integral component of institutional racism, the outcome of which is the maintenance of a racial
hierarchy (p. 1717). Findings from chapters two and three suggest an alignment between broader

167

campus racial dynamics and the racial meanings (re)produced by campus policing, such as the
marginalization of Black men.
The perspectives of the campus police officers and staff/administrator partners illuminate
the other side of racialized institutional life. Findings in chapters two and four described formal
collaborations, policies, and practices that asserted police authority and exposed communities of
color to police contact, including in non-crime-related situations. The perceived necessity of
campus police regarding all matters concerning safety contributed to the development of
partnerships with units, such as threat assessment, crisis support and intervention, residential life,
and cultural centers. While some units articulated an inherent value in police collaboration, such
as threat assessment and crisis support, other staff expressed conflict and tension in their
partnerships with campus police due to the potential negative impact on students with
intersecting marginalized identities. The findings suggest that the legitimacy of the campus
police is reliant on a universal conception of safety (that police are ideally suited to provide) and
the notion of a homogenous campus community (for which the police are assumed to equally
serve). The university’s expansive use of campus police helps to make comprehensible the
primacy of police authority to discipline not only the most marginalized, such an unhoused
person, but also members of the campus with higher social status, such as faculty.
In this particular study site, the diversity and sense of equality within the campus police
department belied the promise of liberal multiculturalism. Popular reforms in policing include
racially diverse hiring, cultural competency trainings, and community policing strategies—all of
which the study site could serve as an exemplar. Yet there remained a disconnect between
campus police and their constituents. One side of this disconnection was a perception of the
campus police as racist. On their side, officers were perplexed about accusations of racism and

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could point to concrete reasons to justify that they practiced fair, bias-free policing. Due to their
unique racial context in the campus police department, officers perceived their work and its
impact differently than students, faculty, and staff who were aware of and embedded in broader
campus racial dynamics. Given the history of conflict between campus police officers and
students of color, particularly Black students, the disconnect between police and the campus
community may be a factor that prevents a thorough accounting for racialized police practices.
An Abolitionist Reflection on Implications
A substantial section in chapters two, three, and four was devoted to practice, policy, and
research implications. Rather than summarizing those implications here, I offer a brief reflection.
During this project, I was involved in a police abolitionist organizing project. At the start, I was
not fully versed in abolitionist thought and praxis although I believe that my political
commitments and educational practice were aligned in that direction. Among what I learned in
the past two years was the difference between “reformist reforms” and abolitionist steps.
Reformist reforms appear as potential solutions but continue or expand the reach of policing. In
contrast, abolitionist steps erode police power and make proactive investments in community
wellbeing. The organization Critical Resistance (2020) provides the following questions to assess
potential change:
1. Does the proposed change reduce funding to police?
2. Does the proposed change challenge the notion that police increase safety?
3. Does the proposed change reduce tools/tactics/technology police have at their disposal?
4. Does the proposed change reduce the scale of policing?
If answers to these questions are “no,” then the proposed change is likely a reformist reform that
maintains police power. Examples include popular proposals, such as body cameras and

169

community policing practices. If answers to the above questions are “yes,” the proposal may be a
step towards abolition. Examples include suspending the use of paid administrative leave for
suspended officers and withdrawing police participation in militarization programs.
The above binary can present as simplistic and limiting when U.S. society’s collective
imagination is already constrained due to years of relying on the police without other
alternatives. One possible intermediate step is to develop solutions that are “non-reformist
reforms,” a concept introduced by Austrian-French theorist André Gorz, a radical thinker of the
New Left movement in the 1960s (Engler & Engler, 2021). According to Gorz
[A] not necessarily reformist reform is one which is conceived not in terms of what is
possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what
should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands.
8

Non-reformist reforms are not ends in and of themselves, but are steps towards a larger goal. For
instance, with regard to police abolition, disarming police can be considered a non-reformist
reform because it reduces the ability of officers to enact lethal violence.
To the best of my limited ability, I provided practice and policy recommendations in
chapters two, three, and four derived from the data. To perhaps a lesser extent, I formulated
recommendations aligned with abolitionist principles, which is perhaps most evident in the
conclusion of chapter four. Despite the insertion of “abolition” into mainstream discourse, this is
not necessarily a popular idea that people truly want. In my study, not all participants explicitly
endorsed the abolition of DPS and conveyed the need to “feel safe.” Possibly, there are college
campuses in which campus police are favored. To take into consideration the varied perspectives
on campus police, I produced recommendations that implicated the entire institution and would

8
From Engler & Engler (2021).

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require campus-wide change, my attempt at non-reformist reform. The racialized issues with
campus police can be partially addressed by targeted change aimed at police officers and
departments, but a more complete view of change for racial justice takes the entire institution
into account. Policing reflects the needs of the dominant group in the social order and prevailing
cultural beliefs that even the most marginalized may uphold. The core goal of any proposed
change should be to reduce sanctioned violence and disproportionate harm.
Regarding research and scholarship, the current political moment provides an opportunity
to break down siloes and provide comprehensive evaluations of campus safety and wellbeing.
First, it behooves campus leaders and policymakers to capture how campus constituents define
safety for themselves rather than relying on abstract, general ideas of what leaders think safety
means or conflating safety with legal liability, which seems to be the case. Although policing has
been justified in relation to crime, scholars have food insecurity, sexual assault, mental health
crises, and hate crimes in higher education, issues that are pertinent to safety and wellbeing but
are discussed in separate spaces. A multi-dimensional framework of safety can be developed
through combining existing research and campus assessments.
Relatedly, the political moment is calling for courage in testing out non-police
alternatives. In chapter three, one finding described how the Black student community at AU
held discussions and used group texts to help students avoid negative police interactions. How
could such practices be directed towards other issues of safety and wellbeing? How could
community-driven communication and resources be scaled up to reduce police reliance? And
how could such interventions be tested in terms of their impact on sense of belonging,
adjustment, retention, and mental wellbeing? In addition to piloting non-police alternatives,
research on structural changes may shed light on what can effectively contribute to safety. For

171

instance, if crimes are based on survival, what might be the effect of lowering food costs on
college campuses? In regards to local communities, how might higher education leaders
advocate for public rent control and affordable housing to combat the inflation of real estate
prices? Non-police alternatives and structural changes seem inconceivable because police have
been the most constantly proposed solution to social needs for decades, but now is the time to
research other options that are sustainable and life-affirming.
Conclusion
“How to draw a line when the work is unfolding and unfinished?” (Davis et al., 2022, p. 167).
I began this project first as an intervention in color-evasive research on campus police
and to respond to the limitations of higher education practitioners to adequately respond to issues
of racialized policing on our campuses. This study, to the best of my ability, accomplished its
goal of demonstrating campus policing as a racialized system of social control. However, rather
than just reinterpreting or uncovering problems of racism in policing, higher education
scholarship should join the movement to reimagine campus communities that are free from
violence and harm, not just by external threats, but that result from long-standing practices.
Beyond the way in which I defined policing in this study—the actions of uniformed officers and
those who collaborate with them—policing happens in multiple ways, from what is considered
an acceptable academic idea to the determination of appropriate attire and to what is deemed
civil dialogue. Unequal power relationships allow some to call on the uniformed police and other
disciplinary mechanisms to control and punish others. I hope that, as a field, we can begin to take
practice accountability for harm, whether intentional or unintentional, and make necessary
changes that affirm life, rather than constrain it.

172

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Appendix A. Officer Interview Protocol
Hello ____________. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my dissertation
study about campus safety. I’m interested in the development and execution of campus safety
measures. I want to learn more about how you perform your work and your thoughts on the
safety of the campus and local community. My goal is to help campus leaders think critically
about the work you do in the effort to keep the campus community safe.
• Everything we talk about is confidential and no information identifying you will be kept
following our interview today.
• Will you please sign a consent form for this interview?
• Is it alright with you if I audio record our conversation? You may stop the interview
and/or recording as well as pass on a specific questions at any time for any reason. [if
consented, start recording]
Build rapport
1. How long have you worked in your position and what brought you to this work?

Responsibilities
2. Why does this campus need its own police department?
3. What are your responsibilities?
a. What are some difficult aspects of your job?
4. From your role, what does it mean to protect the campus?
5. What changes when you’re working directly on campus versus when you’re out in the
off-campus jurisdiction?
6. How would you describe the DPS policing approach?
a. How have you seen the approach change over the course of your time here?

Impact
7. What’s the impact of DPS on the campus? On the local community?
8. What are your experiences like with students? staff/faculty? community?
a. Describe a cooperative situation you’ve been involved with.
b. Describe one that was the opposite.
9. When you’re out on patrol or addressing a situation, how do you know when someone is
out of place?
10. How do you know when a situation requires your proactive intervention?

Racial climate
11. What kind of impact does the racial diversity of DPS/security guards have on the campus
and community?
12. What is the department’s commitment to racial inclusion?
a. Have you had any kind of racial diversity training while employed at USC?
13. Student responses to a national survey indicate the following ________. What’s your
reaction to this?)
14. What’s your relationship like with student of color organizations? With the cultural
centers? With faculty (of color)?

199

15. How you have handled students’ perceptions or accusations of racial profiling?
16. Do you think white students and faculty have a different experience with campus policing
than students/faculty of color? Why or why not?
17. How does the national climate around police violence and racism affect you and your
work here on campus?
18. Anything else you’d like to share regarding campus police and the climate for students of
color?

200

Appendix B. Threat Officer/Crisis Support Protocol
Hello ____________. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my dissertation
study about campus safety. I’m interested in the development and execution of campus safety
measures. I want to learn more about how you perform your work and your thoughts on the
safety of the campus and local community. My goal is to help campus leaders think critically
about the work you do in the effort to keep the campus community safe.
• Everything we talk about is confidential and no information identifying you will be kept
following our interview today.
• Will you please sign a consent form for this interview?
• Is it alright with you if I audio record our conversation? You may stop the interview
and/or recording as well as pass on a specific questions at any time for any reason. [if
consented, start recording]
Build rapport
1. How long have you worked in your position and what brought you to this work?

Responsibilities
2. What are your responsibilities?
a. What are the key policies and procedures you implement?
b. What are new policies that have been created since you began working here?
c. What are some difficult aspects of your job?
3. How do you define safety?
a. Crisis?
b. Threat?
c. Can you provide an example of when these are compromised?
4. How does the DPS and the security guards relate to your work?
a. What situations require collaboration?

Racial climate
5. What kind of impact does your work have on the campus and community?
6. What is the office’s commitment to racial inclusion?
a. Have you had any kind of racial diversity training while employed at USC?
7. What’s your relationship like with student of color organizations? With the cultural
centers?
8. Every now and then, we get texts or emails from the university about crime or safety
incidents. Do you recall getting such messages?
a. If yes: What’s your impression of these messages?
b. If yes and no, show participant some examples of alert messages: Look over these
examples of safety alerts. What do you notice about them? What impact do they
have on you?

Think about your collaboration with DPS…
9. What considerations do you make around racial equity when collaborating with DPS?
10. How you have handled students’ perceptions or accusations of racial profiling?

201

11. Do you think white students and faculty have a different experience with campus policing
than students/faculty of color? Why or why not?
12. How does the national climate around police violence and racism affect you and your
work here on campus?
13. Anything else you’d like to share regarding campus police and the climate for students of
color?

202

Appendix C. Student affairs protocol
Hello ____________. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my dissertation
study about campus safety. I’m interested in the development and execution of campus safety
measures. I want to learn more about how you perform your work and your thoughts on the
safety of the campus and local community. My goal is to help campus leaders think critically
about the work needed to keep the campus community safe.
• Everything we talk about is confidential and no information identifying you will be kept
following our interview today.
• Will you please sign a consent form for this interview?
• Is it alright with you if I audio record our conversation? You may stop the interview
and/or recording as well as pass on a specific questions at any time for any reason. [if
consented, start recording]
Build rapport
1. How long have you worked in your position and what brought you to this work?

Responsibilities
2. What are your responsibilities?
a. What aspects of your job relate to campus safety?
3. What is your working relationship with DPS?

Orientation and Residential Life-specific questions
4. What do you communicate to new students about safety?
5. How safe is the campus? the local community?
6. How does the DPS and the security guards relate to your work?
a. What situations require collaboration?
7. What considerations do you make around racial equity when collaborating with DPS?

Student Conduct-specific questions
8. What kinds of cases are brought to you by other campus staff, administrators?
9. How do you assess when a student situation goes beyond the purview of your office and
requires additional support?
10. What considerations do you make around racial equity when collaborating with DPS?
11. What type of situations involve a student with your office and the criminal justice
system?
12. How does a criminal record/criminal behavior impact a student’s status (in being able to
return to campus, being removed form campus)?

Cultural center-specific questions—should I also interview Greek life staff?
13. How would you describe the relationship between DPS and your students?
a. What’s an ideal relationship between DPS and your students?
14. How safe is the campus for your students? the local community?
Perceptions of DPS, campus security, race

203

15. Every now and then, we get texts or emails from the university about crime or safety
incidents. Do you recall getting such messages?
a. If yes: What’s your impression of these messages?
b. If yes and no, show participant some examples of alert messages: Look over these
examples of safety alerts. What do you notice about them? What impact do they
have on you?
16. Have you observed any unexpected consequences related to the amount of campus
policing and surveillance?
17. How are student experiences shaped by the amount of policing and surveillance?
a. How might students of color be uniquely impacted?
18. How has the university and DPS responded to perceptions of racial profiling?
19. How does the national climate around police violence and racism affect the campus?
20. Anything else you’d like to share regarding campus police and the climate for students of
color?

204

Appendix D. Faculty protocol
Hello ____________. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my dissertation
study about campus safety. I’m interested in experiences related to campus safety measures. I
want to learn more about your time here as a member of the university. My goal is to help
campus leaders think critically about the work needed to keep the campus community safe.
• Everything we talk about is confidential and no information identifying you will be kept
following our interview today.
• Will you please sign a consent form for this interview?
• Is it alright with you if I audio record our conversation? You may stop the interview
and/or recording as well as pass on a specific questions at any time for any reason. [if
consented, start recording]
Build rapport
1. How long have you been on campus and how has your experience been thus far?

Campus policing
2. How is safety discussed on campus?
3. What’s your impression of campus policing?
4. Have you ever utilized a campus safety service?
5. How safe do you feel on campus? in the surrounding neighborhood?
6. Every now and then, we get texts or emails from the university about crime or safety
incidents. Do you recall getting such messages?
a. If yes: What’s your impression of these messages?
b. If yes and no, show participant some examples of alert messages: Look over these
examples of safety alerts. What do you notice about them? What impact do they
have on you?

Personal experiences
7. Have you ever interacted with a DPS officer? What was that experience like?
a. Examples if needed: been stopped, initiated contact, DPS enter classroom, DPS
presence in general while on campus
8. In what situation would you call DPS?
9. Have you ever been mistaken for not being a faculty member?

DPS impact
10. What’s your take on how the university handles controversial events?
a. Probe for the presence of police at such events.
11. Have you ever had a discussion with students about DPS and their experiences?
12. Anything else you’d like to share to help me better understand your experiences with
DPS?

205

Appendix E. Student Protocol
Hello ____________. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about my dissertation
study about campus safety. I’m interested in experiences related to campus safety measures. I
want to learn more about your time here as a student. My goal is to help campus leaders think
critically about the work needed to keep the campus community safe.
• Everything we talk about is confidential and no information identifying you will be kept
following our interview today.
• Will you please sign a consent form for this interview?
• Is it alright with you if I audio record our conversation? You may stop the interview
and/or recording as well as pass on a specific questions at any time for any reason. [if
consented, start recording]
Build rapport
1. Tell me about your time here at USC so far.
2. What experiences did you have with the police growing up?

Campus policing
1. How is safety discussed on campus?
2. What’s your impression of campus policing?
3. Have you ever utilized a campus safety service?
4. How safe do you feel on campus? in the surrounding neighborhood?
5. Every now and then, we get texts or emails from the university about crime or safety
incidents. Do you recall getting such messages?
a. If yes: What’s your impression of these messages?
b. If yes and no, show participant some examples of alert messages: Look over these
examples of safety alerts. What do you notice about them? What impact do they
have on you?

Student organization and police
6. Describe the relationship between your organization and DPS.
7. What discussions has your organization had internally regarding DPS?
8. How do you think your members are perceived on campus?

Personal experiences
9. Have you ever been mistaken for not being a student?
10. Have you ever interacted with a DPS officer? What was that experience like?
11. In what situation would you call DPS?
12. What’s your take on how the university handles controversial events?
a. Probe for the presence of police at such events.
13. There is saying, the police protect and serve. How do this apply to DPS and its treatment
of your student community?
14. Anything else you’d like to share to help me better understand your experiences with
DPS? DPS and the climate for students of color?

206

Appendix F. Descriptive Codes

Descriptive Code Sample Quotation
Students
Crime alert “Like exactly what Justine said. You get that crime alert on your
phone. It’s like a Black man and you look up and you see Black
men, black hoodies, like that isn’t that going to change the way
that you perceive and act towards people? The probability it’s
actually one of those people is so low, but of course, it’s going to
make people act in more racist ways.” (Asian American
undergraduate female)

DPS presence “Their [DPS] presence is more stressful and causes more anxiety
than they do peace of mind. I would much rather like if there
was some type of clear attempt to build some type of
relationship with the school community and not just the leaders
of the school. Specifically, like the Black students. If there was
some type of attempt that they are trying to reach out to us.”
(Black undergraduate male)

Selective policing “As part of student government, we learned that a lot of the frats
have this sort of compromise with campus police and local
police in order to remain on good terms. They know that
underage drinking is going to happen on the row, but the frats
wouldn’t get in trouble as long as they would call an ambulance
for anyone passed out. They thought that was sufficient, but the
Feminist Cultural Assembly was trying to prevent sexual assault
on campus and that was not an adequate response.” (Asian
American undergraduate female)

Belonging “I stick out more. And I feel like, my dad has tattoos all over. I
know he would stick out among the AU community because it’s
a predominantly white university. He’s somebody who doesn’t
necessarily fit that mold.” (Latino male undergraduate)

Faculty
Sense of safety “The only time I think in 25 years that I felt unsafe on campus
was with a violent student who was having extreme mental
health issues and was threatening to my faculty. The university,
at that point, did not have a protocol to address those sorts of
issues. What we saw with DPS was escalating problems rather
than de-escalate them. They’re not really trained to deal with
mental health issues.” (white female faculty)

207

Descriptive Code Sample Quotation
Vicarious police
experience
“I’ve heard students talk about DPS officers regardless of their
race, you know, just harassing them for whatever reason.
Probably has to do with their training. A lot of these DPS
officers are ex-cops, ex-municipal police.” (Black female
faculty)

DPS interaction “When I first got your e-mail, I was thinking, gosh, I have
nothing to add. I’ve never had any issues with policing on
campus and it made me think about how that is a place of
privilege because I haven’t had those run-ins with DPS.” (white
female faculty)

Perception of DPS mission “It’s a good mantra, protect and serve. The question that arises,
or the concern is, protect whom? Serve whom? They should be
held accountable and with the expectation that they protect and
serve everyone, not just some particular demographic.” (Black
male faculty)

Staff/Administration
Difference in approach “DPS is getting a lot of grief here, there’s no doubt. Some of it is
well deserved. It’s in that sense that you’re really a police
officer. You’re providing a service to the community. We all
have officer in our title. We spend more time sitting with folks
trying to figure out what’s going on and where do we go to solve
things. I think our approach is very different. Law enforcement
is designed to react when bad things happen.” (white male
administrator)

Positive collaboration “Our relationship with DPS is invaluable. We have a direct line
of communication with them. If we have an immediate concern
about somebody, I might get in touch with them or the sergeant
who’s in charge of the team to give them the collateral
information that they need to have to do a welfare check.” (white
female staff)

Issues with DPS “We’ll ask for video because on occasion, DPS’ recollection of
how something happened and the student’s recollection didn’t
align. I can think of one case specifically where the student’s
recollection was confirmed by video and I personally made a
report to DPS flagging them.” (multiracial female staff)

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Descriptive Code Sample Quotation
DPS engagement “Over by [this area] we have four or five officers hang out there
and talk to each other. I don’t see them going and talking to
staff. As long as they’re seen as ‘we’re the guard dogs of the
university,’ then they will be kept at arm’s distance and it hurts
their effectiveness.” (white male administrator)

DPS officers
Policing approach “We’re more professional, we’re more caring. We can more
about how our students, faculty, and even neighbors feel about
what happened or how we did. It’s a matter of fact. I have my
sergeants during the day they’ll go to back to back calls. Let’s
say they responded to you and they took a report. Sergeant will
come back to you a little later and say, ‘hey, can you give me
some feedback on how my officers did and what we could do
better?’” (white male officer)

Difference from municipal “I think a lot of the CSOs when they get hired, they think this is
kind of like a police agency. I have to tell them, look, this is a
school campus. We are not out in the streets. We are not here to
detain the students and treat them like the police would treat a
criminal. We have to conduct ourselves like in a nurturing way.
These are our students. We’re here for them.” (Latina female
officer)

Relationship with students “Any type of situation, I try to put myself in their shoes. We’re
not going out there because they look like they don’t belong.”
(Latino male officer)

Role of DPS “Our mantra is, basically, create a safer environment, you know,
really eliminate crime and fear of crime. As a law enforcement
officer, we meet people on some of the worst days of their lives,
something bad has happened to them, something that they don’t
understand.” (Black male officer)

209

Appendix G. First-level Analytic Questions

Question Descriptive code: Quotation
How does [participant]
describe their experiences
with campus policing?
DPS experience: “When I’m dealing with DPS, it’s like either
you’re a threat or you’re not a threat. If you’re a threat, I’m just
going to automatically treat you as if you’re…the lack of
understanding is just like out the door.” (Black undergraduate
female)

emergency situation: “As soon as they [DPS] showed up they
went between me and the student. They didn’t really talk to me.
I guess they thought I was a student even though I was dressed
like super nice. But yeah they ignored me the whole time and
they just put her on a stretcher and took her away and didn’t
even talk to me.” (Asian female faculty)

conflict with DPS: “There is a core of DPS that doesn’t know
who we are and sees my office as a threat to them. That we’re
taking away, you know good detective work. And, as a result, I
know there are a number of folks not, that many thank goodness,
that actively undermined me. It’s an uncomfortable alliance.”
(white male administrator)

Personal experience of injustice: “There were a lot of times
where we felt like we’re being profiled or stereotyped or,
followed for no reason. A lot of suspicious calls would be called
on us, especially if we were practicing late at night and we
would have keys to the facility. But they didn’t believe we
would have keys. The facility. That
S where I really found myself, you know what, this needs to
change. And that’s how I found my way to AU.” (multiracial
male officer)

According to [participant],
who benefits from campus
policing?
DPS interaction: “They like let us off the hook. It was me and
my Asian friend and some other white people. So like again,
being part of a demographic that’s not suspicious.” (Asian
undergraduate female)

DPS interaction: “A lot of times when I’m coming in and giving
my card, it’ll be like almost a come on. Some kind of flirty
remark or something to show that they’re interested. Sometimes
it’s like, ‘oh I don’t need to see your card.’” (white female
faculty)

210

Question Descriptive code: Quotation
According to [participant],
who benefits from campus
policing?
equal policing: “In the work that I do, I do work a lot with
students of color who are being targeted and I do deploy the full
resources that I have at my disposal to support those students.
Why shouldn’t students of color who are being targeted online
or being harassed because of race, also be protected by police?”
(Asian male administrator)

purpose of DPS: “We are here to provide a safe environment for
people to educate themselves and better their quality of life.
That’s positive, that’s not negative. It is a positive environment
because everyone here is trying to educate themselves, educate
someone else. They are free to think and learn about life. We’re
not contacting people on a negative basis, day in and day out for
every single call. Our basis for being here is a positive one.”
(Black male officer).

According to [participant],
what is the impact of
campus policing on the
university community?
purpose of DPS: “If we’re trying to think of why DPS exists, I
would think it’s because there’s this belief outside the AU
community is an other and that’s widely held by the upper
echelon of students who to AU. The privileged. So that’s why
DPS is funded, to give those parents who are funding that
education peace of mind.” (Asian undergraduate female)

security theater: “You know as You know, Grendel said, you
know, security theater. I feel like that so much of what it is.
Right. You know, because from the incident when the two
International students were killed off campus AU has doubled
down on producing a theater of security to sell to international
student parents right.” (white female faculty)

crisis support: “I think of them as a crisis management tool. We
have officers who have found a lot of student bodies. We have
student losses and DPS are sometimes the first face in the room,
finding a deceased individual and helping to manage that
situation and protect people involved. It’s an invaluable crisis
management tool.” (white female staff)

Protection-focused: “I tell our officers, remember that AU is our
employer, we’re not municipal officers. Our primary goal is to
ensure the safety and security of AU students, staff and faculty.
So if we start off there and just know ultimately that it always
comes back to, ‘does this involve AU, does this benefit AU, or
does this harm AU students, staff and faculty?’ If our officers
really get that and kind of stick with that, It’s a good baseline.”
(Black male officer)

211

Question Descriptive code: Quotation
According to [participant],
what racial dynamics are at
play in campus policing?
feeling targeted: “I was walking down and this DPS officer pulls
up to me with their car. They start asking me what is my name,
what am I doing here, and that they were looking for a suspect
that matched my description. That didn’t make sense because
I’m wearing a nice shirt, nice shoes. If someone was going
around breaking in car windows, I’m pretty sure they will not be
wearing what I was wearing. But I just wanted to get it over with
so I gave my name and told him I was a student. Then they kept
on following me as I walking home. It didn’t feel right. I told
him I was a student and they still decided to follow me. I was
very angry once I got to my room.” (Latino male graduate
student)

race and policing: “It was pretty early on in my tenure, I started
to hear specific incidents around African American students. It
was a wake up call that mirrored what was happening in our
communities with policing and police violence that always
seemed to involve our children, our African American children.
It’s through those specific incidents that shed light and it was a
wake up call of how you could be lulled to sleep in your safety
and realize that other people’s safety is compromised every time
they walk out.” (Black female faculty)

DPS presence: “They’re walking around, especially for my
community that’ primarily Black athletes, it sends the wrong
message. Your presence here is just not helpful in general. I have
Black students here who just don’t care for you and don’t want
you here.” (Black female staff)

response to allegation of racism: “I’ve never seen anything like
that. Everybody has their own terms of what being racist is. I
gave you an example, that guy I was talking about. We didn’t
stop him because they were a different color. Most of the time
we’re stopping people because it’s related to some type of
reasonable suspicious.” (white male officer)

212

Appendix H. Racial Frame Coding Scheme

Racial
Frame
Definition from
Literature
Application to
Study
Representative Data
Abstract
Liberalism
Pertaining to “equal
opportunity”;
individual choice;
meritocracy
Notion that
policing is fair,
constitutional,
un-biased
Fairness would be applying the law
to every person, regardless of, you
know, race, nationality sexual
identity, whatever. Having a
fundamental understanding of the
different policies and laws of
whatever area you’re serving in is
key to that because you remind
yourself it doesn’t matter who they
are, just tell them the law. These are
the rules.

We police constitutionally, we know
what citizens’ rights are. We have to
have reasonable cause, probable
cause to stop people and question.

We never have the luxury of asking
who it is that needs help.

Minimization Discrimination is
not a factor today
Diminishing
racism to a
matter of
perspective, one-
off incidents;
emphasis on
officer intent
The media has spun it to seem like
it’s racism. No, it’s not.
Unfortunately, it’s just that if a
crime occurred, we stop you and
you’re going to go to jail. It has
nothing to do with your skin color
and has to do with the crime.

Often it’s just a misunderstanding or
misinterpretation of what our duties
are. The perception that people get
can be positive or it can be negative.
Sometimes people forget that
officers are human too.

It’s not racial profiling every time. A
lot of the time when we go make
contact with someone is because
there was a call on that person.

213

Racial
Frame
Definition from
Literature
Application to
Study
Representative Data
Cultural
Racism
Cultural based
arguments for
inequality
Certain
populations are
prone to
criminality
Unfortunately, people that look like
me commit crime.

Most people that commit crimes
prey on their own. Blacks prey on
Blacks, Hispanics on Hispanics
because that's where they live.
That’s their community.

The cadet program reaches out to
families that have problems. A lot
of times of those kids don’t have a
father figure and that [the cadet
program] is their father figure out
there. They give them things to do.

Naturalization Explaining away
phenomena as
natural occurrences
Police
interactions are
reflective of
local
demographics,
crime trends,
policy
A younger black male was riding a
bike that had a lock on it, so I
stopped to talk to him. [The student
said] “You’re racist.” No, I’m
stopping you because bike safety on
campus is the number one crime on
campus. It’s one o’clock in the
morning you’re riding a bike.

The other thing you have to take
into consideration is that the racial
makeup of the neighborhood is
mostly Black and Hispanic. So our
officers are getting a bad rap for
stopping black and Hispanic
suspects.

The perception is you’re harassing
Black people. No, if you're in
primarily in a Black area, who are
you going to stop? It’s going to be
Black. If it’s primarily Hispanic, it’s
going to be Hispanic.

214

Racial
Frame
Definition from
Literature
Application to
Study
Representative Data
Diversity Understanding that
people are members
of groups;
appreciate
multiculturalism
References to
departmental
diversity efforts
I’m not defending any party. I
haven’t worked here long enough to
feel the atmosphere coming from
the DPS officers. From what I’ve
seen, I would say it’s totally untrue
Most of our CSOs are people of
color and I think we treat everyone
fairly.

We have African American officers,
Asian officers, female officers,
Hispanic officers, white officers.
We’re really trying to fill the need
and understanding of the different
know cultures and diversity is, you
know, really trying to reach out and
we understand that we serve a
diverse community. When you
understand who you serve, then I
think you can serve them better.

I was trained in different how to
recognize different cultures and
what not to do and what to do. So,
for example, some Asian cultures,
they will not ever directly look at
you in the eye because you’re an
authority figure. Some Latino
communities are the man of the
household will run everything, you
know, it just depends. You need to
be culturally sensitive, culturally
aware.

215

Racial
Frame
Definition from
Literature
Application to
Study
Representative Data
Power
Analysis
Understanding
racial inequality is
a result of unequal
power
Understanding
of historical and
contemporary
issues in
policing
African Americans, we make up
like 13, 14% of the population of
the U.S., but we make up like damn
near 50% of the prison population.
Statistically, how’s that possible? It
goes back to a lot of the urban or
Poor parts of the city. They don’t
get enough funding for education.
They don’t have a lot of jobs
available for people in that area.
You’re compounding all these
negative things against a small
population of your city and then you
wonder why criminal activities
happen. Because everyone’s trying
to make money or everyone’s trying
to make a better life for themselves.
So when it says that, oh, well, you
know, African Americans are
arrested more. I’m like, yeah, true,
but is justified? I mean, in my
opinion, not all the time.

What we’re trying to address is
more of a systemic problem. And so
an analogy I’ll use is, we are the
leaf on the tree. And a lot of times
the leaves draw the attention, but
the issues that we’re a part of
involve the branches, the trunk, the
roots, the soil, the air, the amount of
water. There are so many other
components going on that just
because we talked about the tree
doesn’t mean we’re only speaking
about the leaves. That’s what we’re
trying to convey as we talk about
these topics.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Campus police are ubiquitous: 95% of postsecondary institutions operate their own campus police department (Reaves, 2015). The rapid growth of campus policing in the last 50 years has coincided with rising enrollments of students from racially diverse and immigrant communities. Campus policing is generally framed as an instrument of crime control, yet this may overshadow how underrepresented students are surveilled and punished in ways similar to the policing of communities of color in broader society. In three empirical papers, I applied concepts from critical race theory, sociology, and ethnic studies to examine interview data from campus police officers, staff, administrators, faculty, and students. The first study compares all four groups’ perceptions of campus policing. The findings illustrate how campus constituents perceived policing was justified through exploiting fear of victimization and constructing racialized meanings of who was a criminal and who was to be protected—what I call policing effects. The findings also described how campus police were embedded into structures of the university that expanded their power and authority to determine how campus constituents related to one another and the institution, what I refer to as policed relations. In the second study, I examine the effects of campus policing further through the experiences of Black undergraduate men. I found that campus policing operates as a racial boundary project through shaping Black student social life to remain safe from police violence. In the third study, I examine how campus police officers respond to allegations of racism, finding that their racial beliefs are the product of a dialectical interaction between social location and structure, shaping how campus police negotiate reform efforts within an unequal social structure. Ultimately, I argue that campus policing functions as a race-making process that employs institutionally sanctioned force and violence to shape structural positions and social identities according to a racial hierarchy.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Dizon, Jude Paul Matias (author)

Core Title Broken windows on campus: Policing and racism in higher education

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Urban Education Policy

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/19/2024

Defense Date 05/10/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag black students,campus climate,campus police,OAI-PMH Harvest,racial formation,Racism

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Kezar, Adrianna (committee chair), Carrington, Ben (committee member), Harper, Shaun (committee member)

Creator Email jpm.dizon@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111373226

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