#POLICEFREECAMPUS

NATIONAL PETITION TO SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES FOR THE IMMEDIATE DIVESTMENT FROM POLICE

The Scholars for Black Lives collective is issuing this open letter and petition to teachers, school administrators, college and university faculty and staff, higher education leaders, and education policymakers regarding the ongoing relationship between police and our institutions. We offer this petition in solidarity with those on the frontlines of resistance work needed to bring an end to policing. We also offer this letter in support of our Black students who routinely experience the violence of policing in the classroom, on campus, and within the broader social world. And, finally, this letter is an affirmation of our collective commitment to research, teaching, and learning as liberatory practices through which we attempt to change society. 

As a collective of scholars politically and ideologically committed to improving the lives and material conditions of Black people, we find it deeply important to explicitly advocate for the divestment from police by the educational institutions and environments in which we live, work, and learn. We do not find it sufficient to simply redouble our efforts as researchers, attempting to yet again validate the dignity and humanity of Black people through data stories about pervasive inequity at the foundation of policing. Instead, building on the work of Critical Resistance to dismantle, divest, and defund, and in accordance with the Movement for Black Lives policy platform to divest from institutions of violence and invest in Black communities, we find the need to issue an immediate call to action.

We believe the institution of policing is wholly antithetical to the aims and purposes of both education and society. As data on police violence continue to show, Black people remain uniquely and disproportionately vulnerable to profiling, harassment, and assault, which can be fatal. In nearly half of the nation’s largest school districts, police and security officers are hired more often than counselors and health professionals. On college and university campuses, research shows us that Black students are routinely profiled, assumed to not belong, and forced to authenticate their identities at the risk of arrest or harm. 

Now more than ever, as we envision anew schools, colleges, and universities in what will follow the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe the discontinuation of contractual relationships between local police organizations and educational institutions is a moral imperative. As ongoing furloughs and layoffs continue impacting educators and students, millions of dollars are reportedly being diverted from students to employ police as school resource officers. Furthermore, through the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, public funds have continuously been used to indirectly subsidize the further militarization of police, not to protect and serve people, but the property interests of racial capitalism. In no uncertain terms, we believe people are more important than property, especially those people who were once made property themselves.

Therefore, as a collective we implore schools, colleges, and universities critically assess their social, political, and financial relationships to local and campus police. In doing so, we demand educational institutions, K-12 and postsecondary, immediately divest from the presence and contractual subsidy of local police organizations for law enforcement support. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of police in schools as designated resource officers, the contracting of local departments for auxiliary law enforcement support during university events, and the employment of police organizations to intervene where emotional and mental health professionals are needed. Additionally, this divestment in police should coincide with an immediate re-investment in personnel, programs, initiatives, and support services that culturally sustain and humanize Black students, staff, and faculty as well as their families and communities.

The time for change is right now, for any justice delayed is a justice denied. We can no longer stand idly by in hopes the manufactured failures of school and society will remedy themselves. For campuses, and a world, in which we can all be free, the institution of policing cannot be.