BUZZ
Syracuse University faculty, still reeling from the trauma of seeing U.S. Marshals on campus, are demanding “transparency” from their leaders.
Students and staff at the Onondaga County private college recently were upset after seeing two federal law enforcement agents on campus, mistaking them for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“Several posts on the anonymous social media app YikYak claimed ICE was on campus Monday morning,” the Daily Orange reported. “The marshals were on campus as part of an investigation into an auto theft that occurred last month, the spokesperson said.”
Still, community members were left perplexed as to why the school did not send out a campus wide alert telling them that law enforcement were on campus. There have been at least three fake reports of ICE in the area, according to an official who spoke at a faculty townhall earlier this week.
The Daily Orange reported about the “calls for transparency”:
Michael Bunker, chief of SU’s Department of Public Safety, answered a handful of ICE-related questions early in the meeting. He said DPS has investigated multiple recent reports of ICE activity in the area, but there has been no evidence to substantiate them.
“We’ve had three reports recently that come into the Department of Public Safety,” he said. “All three of those we’ve been able to look into and have not seen ICE in the area.”
Bunker acknowledged that the possibility of ICE agents on campus was “quite alarming.”
That did not satisfy some faculty members.
“Still, several senators questioned why DPS never sent an official campus alert to quickly dispel rumors,” the student newspaper reported. (Never mind that alerting potential student suspects that law enforcement was on campus could hinder the investigation).
“They suggested using the university’s Orange Alert system to push out notifications for students and faculty,” the Daily Orange reported. “Bunker did not respond to the suggestion.”
Faculty and staff reported students being “scared” about ICE on campus.
“A lot of students wrote to professors and said, ‘I’m not coming to class because there’s ICE on campus,’” English Professor Crystal Bartolovich said. “It would have been helpful to have that dispelled quickly to the students, so that they could go to class and be reassured.”
“Every day I have students … that are so scared,” Ling LeBeau reported.
That was not the only concern of professors that day.
“I’m wondering what the administration is doing to counteract this erasure of its commitment to public erasure of its commitment to racial equity,” Professor Coran Klaver asked. She is “an associate professor and co-chair of the Senate Committee on Intersectional Equity for Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality, Gender Identity & Disability,” according to the Daily Orange.
Other universities have grappled with student hysteria over rumors ICE agents were on campus. Loyola University-Chicago students panicked after mistaking a Census taker for an immigrant officer.
University of Washington students also worried about rumors that officers would be on campus.
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