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Macalester students are working with
faculty and staff to end racial descriptions of criminal suspects in
campus-related incidents. Last spring, a student named Keon West (who is now
studying in Oxford
on a Rhodes Scholarship) spearheaded the effort upon noticing a security alert
that described a suspect only as “African-American,” without any substantive
descriptors such as hair color, skin color, or height. Concerned that this was
resulting in racial profiling, the group drafted a bulletin to alert the
Macalester community that, should they ever need to describe a perp, they
should be prepared to describe more than the person’s race. While the
administration agreed to put out the bulletin last spring, they have not yet
done so. They have, however, begun training Residence Hall Directors to ask
specific descriptive questions when speaking to the victims of a crime.

12/8/06 Read More from
Macalester