African American and other Black students (AAOBS) often report feeling unwelcomed, alienated, and even unsafe in spaces on the campuses of primarily white institutions (PWI; Cureton, 2003; Green et al., 2017; Jenkins et al., 2021; Kelly et al., 2021; Lim, 2015; Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007; Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021; Turner, 2020).Footnote 1 These experiences can be associated with their interactions with professors (e.g., Kelly et al., 2021), college administrators (Green et al., 2017), campus police, staff (e.g., Jenkins et al. 2021), other students (Kelly et al., 2021), and the surrounding communities (Motley & Joe, 2021). Many universities have adopted the use of police force as an alternative to campus security (Jenkins et al., 2021). Campus police often protect and enforce white supremacist policies and practices implemented by white university leaders (Jenkins et al., 2021). AAOBS, especially males, are often targeted by campus police, suspected of wrongdoing, and harassed (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007). AAOBS aspire to pursue their career goals through university degrees like college students of other racial backgrounds. They hope for acceptance, respect, opportunity, and, when the situation calls for it, protection and safety. Policing in university settings, similar to policing in the community, is based on the social contract between members of society (Cohen & Feldberg, 1991; Moll, 2007). Students and their families empower university leaders to make operational and policy decisions to run the university. They empower professors to educate students to prepare them for the marketplace and entrust campus police to monitor, control, and protect students and other members of the campus community. When campus police betray their role of protection through racist targeting practices, assuming guilt when evidence is lacking, and harassing students, they break the social contract and abuse the power granted by their peers.

The authors sought to understand the experiences of AAOBS interacting with campus police at a public PWI in the northeastern USA. There has been limited work that examines the intersection of race and campus policing (Russell-Brown & Miller, 2023). This gap in the research is especially salient in terms of the lack of studies that examine Black students’ interactions with campus police. Several racist incidents toward Black students by white students had occurred on the campus, in which campus police became involved to investigate. The campus chief of police, a white man, reached out to one of the primary authors, himself an African-American professor, to consult about how to connect with African-American and other Black students on campus. The authors decided that the best strategy for helping the campus police to understand the experiences of African American and other Black students on campus was to consult with the students themselves. The authors used qualitative methods through focus groups to engage the students in discussions about their experiences with campus police at the university.

Impact of Race on Students’ Lived Experiences on Campus and at Home

University and college campuses are microcosms of the larger communities and society in which they dwell. Cultural differences and tensions between people of different races that exist in communities and institutions across the nation both feed and are fed by campus life (Cabrera, 2014; Cabrera et al., 2016; Jones & Reddick, 2017). Students look for the university, with its focus on learning and discovery, to be a space for opportunity, personal growth, and safety. Disappointment, a sense of betrayal, and demoralization occur when the university fails to fulfill its mission to all of its stakeholders (Green et al., 2017; Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017).

Climate at Home

Racial tensions, especially between Black and white people, continue to be a major challenge and scourge of our times. White people live in fear of losing their identity and safety (Jenkins et al., 2021; Logan & Burdick-Will, 2017) and Black people live in fear for their lives (Campbell & Valera, 2020; Motley & Joe, 2021). In the USA, most Black people live in fear of surveillance by police (Lim, 2015; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). Myths that Black men are violent and predatory continue, often leading to false accusations and persecution of those men (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007). Exaggerated fears in white people result in reactionary defenses characterized by white supremacist policies and white avoidance (Jenkins et al., 2021). Many white people live in segregated, sometimes less impoverished, communities where interaction among the races is atypical (Logan & Burdick-Will, 2017), leaving Black people ostracized in urban enclaves. Government leaders often protect white supremacist policies under the pressure of white interest groups while begrudgingly acknowledging the social injustices of those policies and allowing minimal shift toward inclusion and equity (Green et al., 2017). Black students arrive at PWIs with hopes of experiencing a more inclusive and equitable environment but usually encounter similar avoidance and minimalization of the concerns that they had experienced in their communities (Biondi, 2012; Cureton, 2003).

Climate on Campus

Many AAOBS have expressed feeling unsafe and unwelcomed in white campus spaces, often experiencing wrongful surveillance and “un/belonging” (Biondi, 2012; Jenkins et al., 2021). At PWI, the lack of representation by AAOBS is associated with a barrier of understanding toward them (Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). Often students of color must negotiate finding support from campus agents who do not share their cultural background history or knowledge (Turner, 2020). Frequently, AAOBS feel that campus agents do not understand their concerns, or they may minimize those concerns, even failing to recognize when the student is feeling unsafe or disconnected (Brooms & Davis, 2017; Harper, 2012; Kelly et al., 2021; Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). Campus agents’ (e.g., faculty, campus police, and/or administration) insensitivity and biases can leave the student feeling alienated and demoralized (Cureton, 2003; Jenkins et al., 2021; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021; Turner, 2020). Caring attitudes from campus agents and respectful interactions have been identified as especially helpful for the students to feel connected with the campus (Beasley, 2021; Turner, 2020). AAOBS often report feeling a lack of responsiveness and commitment to justice and equity by campus administrators (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007; Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017). During recruitment, AAOBS may be promised things that do not materialize in actuality; university leaders must practice justice for students in return for the financial gain represented by admission of AAOBS students to the university (Green et al., 2017).

AAOBS often feel misunderstood, undervalued, or singled out by campus police (Jenkins et al., 2021; Green et al., 2017; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). Among nine racial groups, Black students expressed the lowest levels of confidence toward the police (Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). Students who had come from a Black or Hispanic Latino community had less trust in campus and community police based on their experiences with police in their community (Lim, 2015). Campus police at a PWI where four Black men were falsely accused of raping a woman participated in perpetuating presumptive guilt until the charges were disproven (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007). When there is tension between students and campus leaders, too often leaders and campus police resort to violent tactics when frustrated students lash out (Green et al., 2017).

White Supremacy and Cultural Callousness

White supremacy refers to the creation of policies within government, academic institutions, employment practices, and other societal institutions wherein white members of society are provided opportunities and privileges denied to members of other races (Amico, 2017; Cabrera, 2014; Cabrera et al., 2016; Feagin, 2013; Jenkins et al., 2021; Jones & Reddick, 2017; Omi & Winant, 2015; Ray & Mahmoudi, 2022; Smedley & Smedley, 2018). It is an unnamed political system that shapes the world we live in (Mills, 1997). White supremacist practices on campus often entail the exclusion of AAOBS from social opportunities (e.g., Greek life), unwanted attention and surveillance from campus police, and suspicion and rejection of critical race theory (CRT) in academic curricula (Cabrera, 2014; Grier-Reed et al., 2016). White supremacist thinking is often accompanied by a lack of awareness of oppressive practices directed at AAOBS, unwillingness to be open to learning about the experiences of AAOBS, entrenched resistance toward listening to concerns of AAOBS, and perceived reverse racism directed toward white people by Black people (Cabrera, 2014; Foste, 2020). White supremacist thinking and practices are ubiquitous in American society and college campuses such that microaggressions and oppressive practices go unrecognized by most white leaders, faculty, staff, and students (Banks et al., 2020; Cabrera et al., 2016). AAOBS typically are left to fend for themselves socially, academically, and politically on the college campus. Campus police become the enforcers, under the leadership of college administrators, particularly in PWI, to protect and defend white supremacy (Jenkins et al., 2021).

Experiences and Perceptions of Campus Police Among African American and Black Students

Perceptions of campus police among African American and Black students are formed, at least in part, by their experiences of police in the community prior to coming to the college campus (Campbell & Valera, 2020; Outland, 2019). Personal encounters with police, experiences of family members and friends with police, and messages they have received about police all shape their perceptions of police even before they arrive on campus (Campbell & Valera, 2020). Eighty-one percent of students who reported being stopped by police in their hometown were Black or Latinx and 64 percent of those indicated they have high levels of anxiety about having future encounters with police (Campbell & Valera, 2020). Furthermore, the use of videos of police violence on social media seems to influence student perceptions of campus police (Motley & Joe, 2021). One study of student-police interactions found that students from various racial groups report negative experiences with police (Cureton, 2003). Far more studies report higher incidences of mistrust and fear of police among Black and Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) student groups, and these concerns are highest among students who are Black (Campbell & Valera, 2020; Jenkins et al., 2021; Lim, 2015; Motley & Joe, 2021; Weitzer & Tuch, 2005). In reporting their experiences with campus police, African American and Black students have reported being unjustly suspected of wrongdoing (Cureton, 2003; Smith et al., 2016), feeling their safety is threatened (Motley & Joe, 2021), being stopped and questioned for no reason (Cureton, 2003; Jenkins et al., 2021), and encountering bias that Black men are violent (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007). Negative experiences with campus and community police have led to students of BIPOC ancestry, and especially African American and Black students, often questioning the legitimacy of policing as currently practiced (Motley & Joe, 2021).

Students Do Not Feel Understood and Avoid Police

Lack of representation of AAOBS at PWI can lead to a barrier of understanding wherein students do not feel understood by campus police and the latter have little interest in understanding the experiences of all students (Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). AAOBS often believe that white campus police recognize only students’ Black identity and not their whole humanity (McClain et al., 2016). Dehumanization of African American and Black males by campus police can result in succumbing to destructive stereotypes such as the myth of rape and race (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007).

Social Contract Basis of Policing

The purpose of policing as an institution, under social contract theory, is to provide security in society. Citizens have assigned authority to police on their behalf (Cohen & Feldberg, 1991; Dizon, 2023; Moll, 2007). Police have official status with the government and criminal justice and do not have power unto themselves. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, in the USA, all citizens are supposed to receive equal protection of the law (Constitution of the United States, 2023). When the social contract is broken through abuse of power and unequal protection, estrangement between police and excluded groups ensues, excluded groups are abandoned, and commodification of the individual further dehumanizes members of a group who have been excluded (Cohen & Feldberg, 1991; Pillemer, 2020).

Under the social contract, police should work with students to build trust that includes understanding and adopting the practices of critical race theory (CRT; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021). There must be a desire and a requirement for campus police to communicate and build relationships with AAOBS (Lim, 2015). Efforts must be made to understand the humanity and unique cultural experiences of AAOBS, including their unique linguistic understandings and expectations of social distancing to help them feel respected and understood (Garratt et al., 1981; Motley & Joe, 2021). Campus police should engage and collaborate with AAOBS to share in the proactive responsibility of building a safe campus together in lieu of further entrenching reactionary practices after a problem occurs(Weitzer & Tuch, 2005). Through education in CRT police must come to recognize the white supremacist policies and practices at play within PWIs (Owen Patton & Snyder-Yuly, 2007). AAOBSs would like to see campus police building greater trust by cultivating connections that are collaborative, mutual, and proactive at their events on campus, rather than experiencing them as disinterested wardens of surveillance (Jenkins et al., 2021; Lim, 2015).

Effects of Racism on Student Mental Health: AAOBS Coping with Alienation, Oppression, and Violence

Minoritized student status, particularly at a PWI, can create significant levels of stress for AAOBS (Kelly et al., 2021; Harper, 2009a, b; McClain et al., 2016; Patterson, 2021; Williams & Shockley, 2017; Williams et al., 2022). The oppression of racism often contributes to social isolation and alienation, barriers to social opportunities, microaggressions (Patterson, 2021; Turner, 2020), and also to experiences of trauma and anxiety (Pieterse et al., 2010) and school dropout (Strayhorn, 2009). Furthermore, the student may begin to see oneself as an intellectual imposter or as someone who is unworthy of college attendance (McClain et al., 2016). One may begin to view one’s background and upbringing as inferior (Williams & Shockley, 2017). Black women students, carrying intersectional identities of gender and race, may experience invisibility and dismissiveness from faculty, staff, and other students (Kelly et al., 2021). Black men students, particularly those from lower SES, often experience isolation, surveillance, and the threat of early dropout (Jenkins et al., 2021; Harper, 2012; Strayhorn, 2009; Turner, 2020). The ubiquitous presence of racism on the campus, and in the surrounding community, coupled with one’s prior experience of racism in one’s home community, can be traumatizing for AAOBS (Motley & Joe, 2021; Pieterse et al., 2010; Williams et al., 2022). Systemic trauma entails the national political landscape that makes its way to the campus and cultural practices that create exposure to multiple instances of bias, microaggressions, and intrusion into personal space. Taken together, these threaten and wear down one’s mental/physical health, defenses, and sense of well-being (Shalka, 2020; Williams et al., 2022). University administrators pursue the students for their business value, turning them into commodities as sources of tuition income and athletic identity (Green et al., 2017). In this case, the failure to accommodate the total person denies these students a sense of true belonging and preventing access to the full breadth of resources available to admitted students (Patterson, 2021). Campus police often compound the problem by participating in the exploitation of AAOBS through practices of surveillance and pushing into student space at their social events (Jenkins et al., 2021). These practices result in additional stress and trauma, avoidance of the police by students, fractured communication between AAOBS and campus police, and finally estrangement in the relationship between AAOBS and campus police (Cohen & Feldberg, 1991; Moll, 2007).

AAOBS Strategies for Addressing and Overcoming Racism on Campus

Precollegiate impressions of community police, negative interactions with campus police, alienation from peers at PWIs, and the compounded mental health effects due to systemic trauma and stress require AAOBS to develop survival strategies. These include direct strategies like campus activism and indirect strategies such as joining sports teams or Greek societies (Jones & Reddick, 2017; Kelly et al., 2021; Patterson, 2021).

Activism is the primary strategy for many AAOBS, but as Williams and Shockley (2017) point out there are barriers to becoming an effective activist. Individuals must develop self-awareness and gain knowledge of how they react in certain situations, their emotions and vulnerabilities, and their convictions (Williams & Shockley, 2017). African American or Black student activists must also stand up to campus leaders who are part of the systemic racism oppressing AAOBS. Student activists often feel unheard and unsupported by campus leaders and faculty members at PWIs (Jones & Reddick, 2017; Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017). In classes, AAOBS perceive faculty as uncaring or dismissive because faculty will ignore racial tension in the room or avoid discussing racially charged campus incidents (Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017).

When campus leadership acknowledges AAOBS activists, they often take credit for their work and use their activism to promote themes of campus equity and inclusion without taking steps to fully understand AAOBS day-to-day experiences (Green et al., 2017). The results of AAOBS activism become a means for leadership to commodify AAOBS without addressing their concerns in any tangible way (Jones & Reddick, 2017). Even when students use systemic channels for their advocacy, the response from campus leadership is often lacking. Reynolds and Mayweather (2017) cite an example of a PWI in the Midwest USA where AAOBS activists proposed a 12-point plan to address racism on campus. The plan included hiring more people of color, diversity training for employees, a larger Black Studies department, safe spaces for marginalized students to congregate, and mandated multicultural courses for all students. Ignored initially by the institution, following an incident of racist vandalism a year later the plan was adopted as part of the university’s formal strategic plan. Some have advocated that CRT be used to inform curricula for expanded awareness of history and diverse cultural contributions (Biondi, 2012; Senreich & Williams-Gray, 2021).

Even among other AAOBS students, activists may not feel appreciated or supported. AAOBS peers may not understand the commitment of activists or may see the activists as self-serving (Jones & Reddick, 2017). AAOBS may join Greek societies (Cabrera, 2014) and use athletics participation (Green et al., 2017) as a means of connection with the campus. Even here, AAOBS often encounter resistance and avoidance from peers. Thus, AAOBS students in their attempts to express their voices and share in the life of the campus often come across barriers from white students and from other AAOBS students.

Social media is another strategy that AAOBS use for navigating racism on primarily white campuses. Communication happens quickly through social media, meaning students can share things that happen on campus without interference from campus faculty or leadership (Reynolds & Mayweather, 2017). Social media platforms also provide a place for students to mobilize and organize their activism efforts.

Conceptual Framework

Critical race theory (CRT) served as the conceptual framework to guide this study (Cabrera, 2020; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado & Stefanic, 1993; Parker & Lynn, 2002). CRT has utility in demonstrating how white supremacy and racism can be perpetuated through multiple changing mechanisms (Christian et al., 2019). It also foregrounds the unique and valuable perspective that people of color possess in understanding racial subordination (Solorzano et al., 2005). Consistent with this mode of inquiry, we draw upon Bonilla-Silva’s (2022) racial ideologies.

Bonilla-Silva (2022) describes racial ideologies as a mechanism by which social actors justify or explain the racial status quo. It is a framework that seeks to make the prevailing white culture seem like common sense, normalizing its perpetuation for all races in the racialized social context. For Bonilla-Silva (2022), the current racial structure is “more sophisticated, subtle, seemingly non-racial practices of the past have replaced the brutal tactics of racial domination of the past as the primary instruments for maintaining white supremacy” (pp. 37–38). It is a color-blind racism that relies upon an interactive matrix of four narrative frames that obfuscate the racial reality in the USA, namely, abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2022). Taken together these frameworks serve to highlight the lived racialized experiences of students of color on campus while also dislocating the normative invisible white supremacist ideology that protects and perpetuates racism on campus.

Research Design

To understand the influence of campus law enforcement personnel from students’ perspectives, the authors used a qualitative exploratory method. The main feature of data collection and analysis was the constant comparative method (Creswell & Poth, 2018; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This qualitative method is appropriate for the creation and refinement of categories and analytic themes in data (Tesch, 1990). We assumed that students would become more aware of various experiences that impacted their cultural navigation of campus when discussing it with their peers. Therefore, the authors chose to collect our data using focus group interviews.

Participants and Setting

Participants were selected from a 4-year medium-sized public university that is a primarily white institution (PWI). Total student enrollment is about 7500 students. The enrolled student population is 11.2% African American or Black, 0.229% Alaskan Native or Indian, 2.39%, Asian, 7.73% Hispanic or Latino, two or more races 2.39%, 4.6% is unknown, and 71.8% White. Students who self-identified as being African American or Black were invited to participate in focus groups about African American experiences with UP (university police: in this paper, the authors used university police [UP] and campus police interchangeably consistent with the professional literature) on their PWI campus. Recruitment materials stated that the researchers were looking for African American and/or Black students who had any interactions with campus police and were willing to discuss their experiences. The distinction between African American identity and Black identity is important, as persons who identify as racially Black may or may not identify as being ethnically African American. However, these terms will be used interchangeably within this piece. Participants did not receive any compensation for their participation in the study. The students ranged in age from 19 to 38. All of the participants were undergraduates. Refreshments were provided to the participants during the focus groups.

Data Collection

The research team used a semi-structured interview protocol with each of the four focus groups. Each focus group was led by one of the lead researchers and at least two graduate research assistants. Using a semi-structured interview protocol allowed the same information to be addressed across focus groups while allowing individual focus groups the freedom to expand particular points, which supported gaining a breadth of insights. The four focus groups were digitally recorded with the consent of the participants and transcribed verbatim through the transcription service Rev.com.

After the first three focus groups were held, the open coding process began; an additional focus group was held to ensure that no new themes emerged from the data and to confirm the initial categories. The first focus group had three participants, the second focus group had five participants, the third focus group had three participants, and the final focus group consisted of nine participants. In total, the team interviewed 20 AAOBS in the four focus groups. A departmental conference room was booked to hold each of the focus groups.

Data Analysis

Each of the focus groups was recorded with the consent of the focus group participants. The data were then transcribed using Rev.com. Subsequently, the transcriptions were reviewed and cleaned by the research team. The team then analyzed the transcripts using an iterative grounded theory approach. The transcripts were analyzed through a constant comparative method, continual coding, and categorization. The team also used analytical memos to track ideas and concepts as they emerged during the data analysis. The data were reviewed by the research team members in two independent groups. Finally, the principal investigators reviewed and discussed the material in until a consensus was reached about the major categories.

Findings

The conceptual model is depicted in Fig. 1. The core concept we found was estrangement. Three subcategories inform the construct of estranged relationships: safety, miscommunication, and cultural conflict. There were three main categories: cultural influences, racial oppression, and trauma. These three categories along with their derivative properties interact with each other to inform the core concept of estrangement. The core concept, main categories, and their derivative properties are described in more detail drawing on data from the focus groups.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The conceptual model demonstrating the estranged relationships (# 1) with three subcategories (#'s 2, 3, and 4) between African American students and university police

Full size image

Estranged Relationship

Ultimately, students in the study spoke about their experiences with UP in terms of a contract that had been violated. The students described their presence on campus as “a non-negotiable contract.” The non-negotiable contract connotes a relationship that is compulsory due to sharing a physical space, but in which all parties do not necessarily benefit from the given structural arrangements that govern how the space operates. One student participant described it as a “deadbeat relationship.” In their words, “if you think of a deadbeat father, they are there and want to take that role, but they do not do anything for you.” The non-negotiable contract is a binding agreement that creates an involuntary relationship between African American students and the university police. In every focus group, the discussion focused on participants’ relationships with UP that ranged from an attempt at complete separation to efforts to limit interactions. The students spoke about how they try to avoid UP at all costs. The discussions around their separation or estrangement from UP included both physical and emotional components. Students’ discussions centered on the desire to physically hide and distance themselves as well as being emotionally cut-off from UP. Students do this in order to preserve their own physical and emotional safety. As college students, their expectations were that UP is supposed to keep them safe. The students talked about safety in terms of being physically safe as well as the emotional stress of not feeling safe with those charged with their safety on campus. The difficulty of the relationship between UP and Black students is evidenced by the following comment:

It is like a deadbeat relationship. They don’t do anything. If you think of a deadbeat father, they’re there. They want to take the role, but they don’t do anything for you. It’s just a figurehead. I feel like they just want to say, “I’m UP. I work for the campus Police Department,” but what are you doing for us? And what they were talking about with the protest, they weren’t protecting us. They weren’t on our side essentially. It’s like you work for us, but are you doing your job? It’s a deadbeat relationship.

Safety

Across all of the focus groups, students discussed safety as one of their main concerns on campus. One participant discussed a campus event where two law enforcement agencies joined UP for the event. She described law enforcement’s presence at the event and her response to their presence:

And you’re coming armed as if . . . Community Police were there, village police were there, UP was there. When I tell you [law enforcement] wrapped around the entire vicinity of the ballroom, that was the first time where I felt unsafe because, at any point, if somebody popped off differently, the guns were coming out, we would have to fear for our lives, and I feel like after that instance and including the stuff that goes on in the world when I walk past a police officer, I don’t know if he’s just going to find something weird about me and just shoot me in the back of my head because I don’t know.

When asked to further clarify their relationship with UP, another participant had this to say:

After that, I told all of them, I don’t like any of y’all because if that’s how you would treat a person like that, I already know that when I walk away, I’m the conversation topic. I don’t like any of y’all. So, it’s like you can’t go to an RA, you can’t go to a university police officer. You can’t really do anything here if you have a problem. That incident with the university police happened in my freshman year. This is my third time talking about it because nobody ever asked, because nobody ever was like, “Do you feel safe with university police?” It’s an unspoken thing that we all don't.

The students suggested that they should not have to interact with UP unless it was a very serious situation. In terms of serious situations, they included things like violent crimes and murder. One student said, “things like smoking weed should be handled by RAs and mental health issues by people who handle mental health crises.” Across several focus groups, their experiences with UP in the residence halls present safety concerns for students of color. One student said, “Some things may be interpreted by UP as blatant disrespect, but it is not. It is how we are governing ourselves because we are scared.”

Miscommunication

Black students in all the focus groups talked about the ways in which communication has failed to foster better relationships between them and UP. The miscommunication between UP and students of color was one of the most salient aspects of the estranged relationship between UP and the students. There was a consensus that communications are inauthentic. UP communications tend to focus on white students in non-disciplinary scenarios or events, and Black students feel unheard in terms of what they believe they need from UP on campus to feel safe and to build better relationships. For example, in relationship to being inauthentic, one African American male participant made this comment:

We’re not buddies. It just gets me upset , because it’s like I don’t even know you [UP], and you come over here using slang, talking to me like you ain’t never talked to nobody in your life. Why do you think you can talk to me like that? Do you know what I am saying? It is kind of like a punch in the gut, like, why do you think you can do that? That’s not cool.

Another female participant had this to say about how communication during an interaction between Black students and officers is problematic:

And when they just knock on your door, it’s like, one, how are you here, two, you don’t say, “Hello, my name is Officer Such-and-such, and this is what I’m coming at your door today for.” They don’t do any of that, so that would be definitely something that I would have them do; introduce themselves, state why they’re there, and maybe, I don’t know, ask if you could speak in the hallway, because it’s like they know that they have a certain amount of power, and it’s like it hovers over your head, because if you answer a question wrong, like if they ask to come in and you’re like, “No,” it’s automatically like you’re hiding something because there are certain things you can’t have on campus.

Finally, a participant talked about how communication with UP looks different for students of color and their white counterparts in response to a probe about why relations with UP have broken down:

Exactly. We had a meeting with the assistant chief . . . That was the excuse because of COVID, but we had to explain there were multiple occurrences before COVID and throughout COVID that you had a chance to talk with us, but you didn’t. And so in my personal relationship, I’ve worked with them in res life as well, where they come out to residence halls and do things with students. But they generally talk to white students in general and have a conversation with them. They don’t really come down and sit down and talk with students of color, which was lacking. I’ve noticed it because I’ve done programs with them. It’s like I’ve talked with you before like, “Hey, you’re a RA so you’re our liaison and stuff. On the other token, when it comes to events I run with students of color, you’re not there.”

Participants felt that if UP would talk to students of color on campus and truly listen to their input, they would get a better perspective on what students need to be successful on campus.

Cultural Insensitivity

Students articulated that one of the reasons they chose not to deal with UP is due to a lack of understanding or empathy on the part of UP. Students feel like UP lacks diverse representation, which further exasperates their lack of cultural competence and cultural humility when dealing with students of color. One student captured these sentiments in the following statement:

It is kind of uncomfortable wanting to call the police for help if I needed it because there is just a lack of diversity in the police program. I have personally never seen an Asian police officer, a Hispanic UP, or a Black UP at that. So, calling them for help being that I am of Black skin color, I do not know how they would judge the situation I am calling them for, or how they would approach the situation when they get there. I do not know how they would interact with me when they get there. As I said, I do not know if they understand what it is to be a Black person needing help. I do not know if they know what it is like to be a Hispanic needing help.

Another student described the lack of cultural sensitivity by UP this way:

I was talking to this one officer one time and he was trying to do this reverse code-switching and trying to talk to me using slang and stuff like that. And I was like dude that is not even genuine. You have never talked like that in your life. Why are you trying to talk to me like that? Why are you trying to approach me like we are buddies? We are not buddies and that gets me upset when they approach me like that.

Cultural Influences

The students across all of the focus groups spent a significant amount of time talking about how different social contexts helped to define and shape their perceptions of and strategies for dealing with police encounters. The two major contexts that the students talked about were their home communities and their campus community. The communities were talked about in very different ways; each is a separate subcategory and is described in what follows.

Black Home Community

This subcategory represents the ways in which students’ communities of origin (i.e., home communities) influenced their perceptions of the PWI campus and UP. While the majority of students described their home communities as being normed by Black cultural values and perspectives, a few mentioned that although they were from Black communities they had significant contact with whites, particularly at school. All of the participants, regardless of whether they had significant contact with whites in the home communities, had an awareness that Black cultural values were different than those in white communities or contexts. Additionally, they pointed out that being from these communities had already influenced the ways in which they viewed and encountered police officers. For example, one participant stated:

Yeah, it’s a weird feeling knowing that you can’t call people who are supposed to protect you, but you kind of learn how to be self-sufficient. Growing up in my neighborhood it was, kind of like you said, everyone knows you don’t really call the police. So, because of that, whatever things happen, people tend to deal with it themselves.

The participant was describing being from a primarily Black neighborhood in a large urban area. Not calling the police is an unspoken rule in her Black urban community. Another participant describes her experiences first coming to campus that signaled to her she was in a different type of community than her Black home community:

I feel like when I first came to Northeastern University it opened my eyes negatively and positively about being African American. The situation I had with UP was the first time I was like, oh, I am Black on this campus. I need to remember like, it’s completely different, it’s like very different. And then I felt like coming to this school at first, I was like wow. Like I can’t find my community, like my people. I feel like everyone I’m around has nothing in common with me. Like I grew up in an all-Black community around all Black people.

Another female student in another focus group echoed similar sentiments:

I’ve always lived in mostly Black and Brown environments. So, up here it is very different because even though there is a good amount of people of color on this campus, we are the minority. And I am not used to that, because in New York City, Black people, yes, we are the minority, but we are not the minority. You don’t see a lot of white people unless you go to Manhattan. So, it’s culture shock.

Predominantly White Campus Community

The context at a PWI is very different for students of color from their home communities and students are aware of these differences. In the PWI context, there is a prevailing white cultural ethos. The cultural ethos of the campus made the students in the study feel like they were unwelcome, unwanted, isolated, or targeted. Even in situations when there are other Black students present in certain situations, they do not necessarily mitigate the effects of the prevailing white cultural norms on campus. Listen to comments by one African American female attending the initial orientation on campus:

I hated orientation so much. So, I hated every second of it. I hated coming. I was so open-minded. I’m like, I’m going to meet people. I’m great with talking to people. And then I was like, oh, I am the only Black person here. Like the only Black. And I am just looking for the Black people. I know I’m the only one. And it’s like even though there were some RAs who were there that were Black, I could tell they were not from the same community as me. They did not speak like me or use slang like me. You don’t seem to want to comfort me knowing I’m Black. Like they seem to, I don’t know . . . They seem to engage more with white students than me. And I was completely by myself.

Another student had this to say:

It feels like you’re alienated on this campus, to an extent, with the looks that you get. I've been the only Black female in a few of my classes before, and that never happened until I came up here. So, when you’re in class, it feels like you’re being looked over as a student when you’re sitting there and you’re the only person of your race, and everyone else knows each other, and they’re talking amongst themselves. Especially when they have relationships, like friendships with the professor, and you’re in class and you’re trying to participate, but it feels a little like you don’t belong, so it is very different from ... If I went to school at home, granted, it would’ve been most likely a white institute, but it wouldn’t have felt like that because of how many people of minorities live in the community and stay in the community.

Finally, a 38-year-old non-traditional student had this to say:

I mean because I know that this is a predominantly white school before I came and I knew that there had been issues at the school before I came. . . I go to places and I look for the Black folk and I want to be where the Black folk are at. And if I find the Black folk, I'm staying there because again, it’s degrees of safety because sometimes depending on the day, I want to keep myself safe. But then sometimes, depending on how I am and depending on how I'm feeling about the way that the world goes, I want to keep people safe from me so I stay because I don’t have the patience to deal with people’s microaggressions. I don’t have the patience to deal with disrespect. I just don't have the patience because I’m too old. I’m too old for that. I literally stay in this building all day and I have four classes all in this building and I’m dreading next semester if I have to take classes that are not in one building because I would rather minimize my exposure.

By minimizing his exposure, the non-traditional student was referring to minimizing his contact with white campus members, especially UP.

Racial Oppression

In every focus group, students brought up the reality that racism colors their interactions with UP on campus. They felt that this reality shaped their experiences of oppression and disconnection with UP as African American students on campus. The three major themes associated with this category were racism, racial microaggressions, and racial profiling.

Racism

Students in all of the focus groups discussed daily experiences of oppression in the form of racism. It is important to note that students did not distinguish between individual and institutional racism. Rather they spoke about racism being sometimes hidden and sometimes overt. Additionally, while some students used the term racism others talked about “bias against students of color.” In terms of how racism manifests, consider this African American male student leader’s perspective:

I’ve been a part of various departments on campus: track and field, res life, campus rec, and student government. Although I cannot say I have experienced racism directly, I have heard too many stories and witnessed too many things. . . Police responses on campus for res life. UP responds to incidents on campus and they would be so biased. If it was an incident regarding the health and safety of a student of color, they would say don’t worry about it. We had an incident where we had a student violently throwing up and we told UP we thought he needed medical attention. They told us to put him on his side and he would be okay. They called me and the other RA emotional. So, I have seen a lot. Some things are hidden and other things are very obvious. And I have heard a lot of stories. It is racism, racism is definitely on this campus.

All experiences with UP may not start out as overtly racist. However, as the number of interactions with UP increased for some students, they began to notice racial differences between how students of color are treated compared to white students. One Black female student leader had this to say:

So, being like an RA or an orientation leader we are forced to have like in our training these interactions with police. So, I, like my initial experience with UP was great, because I feel like when you are in that setting, they want to make a good impression on you. And they are like getting to know you, and like I had a good experience with police starting off. But when I started to have to do incidents with UP, that’s when it was like why are we responding differently to an incident involving Black people versus incidents involving white people? That’s when it became very questionable for me. I was like why are we busting down doors when it comes to Black people using? a little bit of weed, versus drunk college students throwing up in the hallway – white people and we are not doing anything, it’s like 18 freshmen. They were having a party and I could not control the situation. That’s when I am supposed to be able to call you, and they are taking it like a joke. With white people, it is taken more like a joke, but when it comes to Black incidents these are grown men, and grown women and they should know the implications of their choice.

Microaggressions

The participants also talked about the microaggressions that they faced when interacting with UP. These situations included microinsults, microinvalidations, and microassaults. Taken together these types of situations represent the daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities students have to face from UP in their PWI college context. These types of indignities can be intentional or unintentional in nature. One student describes an interaction with UP that exemplifies three of the main types of microaggressions listed here. Consider this experience she recounted:

A UP officer came upstairs looking for me. And the person was like “A UP officer is here looking for you.” And I was like, “I can’t hide tell them where I am at.” The police officer came down and was like, “Let me talk to you outside.” And the way in which he even said that was like authority, it was aggressive . . . You can’t fight with white people and win in a white town - you are just not going to win that battle. The police officer is like, “Where are you from?” And I told him where I was from, and he was like, “I saw the messages and you were very threatening. Like you are lucky I do not arrest you for being threatening.” I was like, “Did you not see that they say there were 25 of them?” And I was like, “Mind you it is just me.” And he was like, “They are not where you are from, so you should have known that they were not serious. You should know where you are from they really do that, but they are not where you are from. They are innocent, but you are an aggressive Black woman. I don’t want to remember you as the girl that is always fighting and always in trouble.”

One of the student-athletes had this to say about interactions with UP:

I think another problem is the UP’s sense of urgency in certain situations, if they hear a white kid having a problem their sense of urgency is pretty quick. They will be quick to pull up to the scene as opposed to a Black person. I am not going to sugarcoat it, you can tell a difference between a Black and white person, male or female. They will take a while to get to the scene for a Black person. I have seen it with my own eyes, I have been in that predicament.

UP’s delayed response time for needs pertaining to Black students compared to white students is an environmental cue or microassault in the campus context. This communicates to the students that they are not as valued or that their issues are not as important as those impacting white students.

Profiling

There was a consensus that the way in which UP interacts with Black students has to do with racial profiling. Generally, they are able to detect profiling when they are in the presence of both white students and UP. For example, one participant stated:

I know for me specifically, during the recent events on campus some of the buildings were [partially] closed down, but there were still some students in this one unit. It was me and then there were a few students and two officers walking around. The officers decided to follow me instead of them. When I realized it, in my head I was thinking you are about to follow one person going to the bathroom, rather than three persons by the bookstore which was still open at the time and no one was in there. They followed me and my goal was to use the bathroom and they kind of made me pissed off in reality.

Participants felt that when Black students are present with white students, UP will focus their attention on the Black students in the setting. The gaze of the police is often coupled with the assumption of bad intentions on the part of African American students. Another participant stated, “When my family or friends come to visit me at Northeastern University, I tell each one of them, they are going to pull you over because you are Black. And they have because that is what they do.”

Trauma

Trauma was discussed as a significant factor in how students experienced, interacted with, and reacted to UP encounters. Participants discussed the ways in which encounters with police nationally have left them traumatized. One participant made these comments, “We are coming from places where people wearing the same uniform as you brutalize us. You have got to understand that when we come up here, we carry that fear, that anxiety, and stress with us.” The lasting effects of the students’ trauma impact how they deal with and respond to campus UP. Two subcategories emerged that shared significant overlap with other categories: fear and hyperawareness.

Fear

A repeated refrain across all of the focus groups was that the students are afraid of UP. Participants discussed the national killings of unarmed Black men, and police violence in general toward the Black community. They do not see their college campus as being immune from abuse by police officers. In particular, they are afraid that if they call UP for a specific need it can go “sideways.” Here are comments made by one Black male student that is reflective of comments made by others:

To be honest I have a fear of them. I have a fear of the police in general. Any time I am walking I am thinking about what happened in the past with George Floyd. And as you know, UP has their guns on them. And I feel threatened by them even though they are supposed to be here to protect us. But in reality, I think they are not here to protect me.

A female student echoed these sentiments when asked about her experiences with UP:

I feel fear when it comes to them. And I do not think that they have done their best to try and create a good relationship with the Black and Brown students on campus. And, I would say that in my experiences with them, none of them have been positive experiences.

One final anecdote shared by a participant revealed how interactions with police on campus not only create fear but also undermine the perception of safety. The irony of the situation is that this reality arises from those who are supposed to engender the feeling of and promote safety for all campus stakeholders.

But, yeah, I mean, I know I’ve been pulled over by UP before. It was actually the first time I was pulled over ever. It was a lot. It was scary. It was a lot, too. It was something different, like a different type of scared I ain't felt since I was a kid. It was scary. But, it was crazy too, because they had an SUV, like the standard edition SUVs, and they had another one pulled in this way because I was speeding. I was just going 40 to 30. I didn’t know it was that bad. They had a dude with a flashlight in my passenger seat looking, and then they had a dude with a flashlight literally shining in my eyes while somebody was trying to talk to me. I’m trying to answer his questions and I can't even see anything. It was just, it was just, I don’t know. I mean, thankfully nothing happened, but still, it’s just that fear of anything happening at this point.

Hyperawareness

Connected to traumatizing encounters with UP that caused students to feel afraid, students also developed hyperawareness to deal with their PWI social context. Not all students used the term hyperaware; however, they were describing extreme measures to deal with a campus that is biased against Blackness. Students across all four focus groups talked about the intersectional nature of the experiences on campus. For example, one student made the following statement:

It has taken some getting used to, walking into a space and being hyperaware of your race, and being very self-conscious because of it. Even if no one has openly made a comment to you or said anything to you about it. You are still very aware of the fact that not only are you, Black, but I am also a woman in this space. Because of this, you do not know who has a bias or preconceived notions against you and it is just alienating.

The need for Black students to be vigilant encompasses interactions with UP. As one student said, “Yeah, I am avoiding any type of police officer. I do not care what the case is. I am not calling them for nothing.” However, being vigilant in one’s awareness is broader than just police encounters, as one student comments on:

It is definitely like you need to tread lightly and be very aware of yourself as a person. You must also be aware of the company that you let around you, because up here is very different than what you are used to. And not only do you get it from campus police, but you will get it from students too.

Discussion and Implications

The present study contributes to a small but growing literature that provides an understanding of the complexity of AAOBS’ experiences with campus police. Unlike the prevailing literature, this study suggests that AAOBS, inclusive of males and females, have conflicted relationships with campus police. Whereas some studies suggest that students only see municipal authorities as discriminatory (Allen & Jacques, 2020), students in the present study see both campus police and surrounding community police forces as being discriminatory. Additionally, extant empirical work focuses heavily on Black male interactions with campus police. This exploratory study sought to understand how the experiences of AAOBS, both males and females, with campus police impacted their involvement on a PWI campus. Conclusions drawn from the four major findings estrangement, cultural influences, racial oppression, and trauma are salient to the higher education literature.

The study demonstrates how the relationship between Africana students and campus police is one of estrangement. The focus group data demonstrates, that in response to their racialization on campus, inadequate campus DEI commitments, and encounters with racism, these Black students must negotiate being “on the campus” but not “of the campus.” The students felt as if there was a contractual relationship between them and campus police that they could not avoid as students, but one that did not benefit them as Blacks due to the lack of cultural competence by the campus police. In an effort to resolve this conflicting reality, they employed estrangement as a navigational strategy. Our findings lend support to scholars who have demonstrated the negative perception Black students have of campus police (e.g., Lewis et al., 2017) and the need to improve relations between campus police and Black students and between other campus agents and Black students (Dizon, 2023).

Of the two types of estrangement, isolation versus limited interactions, it was found that students who also worked on campus (e.g., resident assistants, teaching assistants, admissions ambassadors, student government leaders) tended to be more representative of social (i.e., limited) estrangement. Due to their positions on campus, they needed to have interactions with UP. Despite having to interact with UP, all of the students described their interactions with UP as problematic. In particular, resident assistants in their role were able to see how UP interacted in racially discriminatory or biased ways with students of color compared to white students on campus. The incidents would be minimized by campus police using color-blind discourse (Bonilla-Silva, 2022). The resident assistants did not wish to have any interactions with UP, but due to the nature of their jobs on campus, they could not avoid interacting with UP.

Those students who served the campus in other capacities echoed similar sentiments about the primarily white campus police force. They see UP as a “necessary evil” that they must interact with due to their positions on campus. Students who do not have campus roles described working to have no contact with UP whatsoever. Students clearly affirm that white supremacy and privilege structure their interactions with campus police. As Leonardo (2009) posits, central to any anti-racist project is the work of exposing the practices and consequences of whiteness. Although the students were? open to trying to repair the relationship, they do not see genuine buy-in from campus police to do the same (Holmes, 2020). This requires campus agents to consider and deal with the harm done by police to its minoritized student population (Dizon, 2023). In this campus context, the consequences of the racist environment are estranged relationships between Black students and the campus agents assigned to serve and protect them.

As with any research endeavor, this study had several limitations that we wish to highlight. First, due to the heterogeneous nature of the Black experience, the experiences of students who participated in the study may be different from other Africana students’ experiences with campus police at the institution. Moreover, their experiences cannot be generally applied to other Black students attending other PWIs. An additional limitation of this study is that most of the participants came from working-class backgrounds. Black students who are also from working-class backgrounds may face intersecting oppressions that potentially lead to cumulative disadvantages in their interactions with campus agents. Future research should examine the intersection of race, class, and gender among BIPOC students. Additionally, given that this study did not include participation from white college students, future research should examine white campus agents’ understanding of white supremacy, whiteness, race, and racism as a means of combating whiteness and white supremacist structures while supporting racial justice efforts (Matias, 2023; Matias & Boucher, 2021).

Conclusion

The current practices of white supremacy and racism that exist on college campuses, and in the larger US society, are rooted in centuries of oppression and exploitation toward Black people and other people of color. To achieve the fundamental shifts in social values, philosophical worldviews, and economic, educational, and governmental practices required to move toward a truly just society where equity in opportunity exists, the cooperation and collaboration of many are required. At PWIs, individuals at every level and in every office and department must recognize the harm and diminished opportunities that Black students face in participating in campus life and reaping the benefits of higher education. These same people should recognize the harm and diminished opportunities that white supremacy and racism yields for themselves in making all of us divided and less human. PWI administrators, university boards and state education leaders, PWI faculty and staff, campus police, white student leaders, and body are needed and invited to become intentional, proactive, and fully committed to UP upholding the social contract with Black students and to eliminating commodifying practices in all of their forms. This level of commitment is required to deconstruct white supremacy on the college campus and to uphold the social contract between Black students and campus police, which includes PWI leadership and all campus stakeholders.

Estrangement between campus police and Black students often results in Black students living in fear and feeling trapped in a compulsory relationship. Due to the inherent power imbalance between campus police and Black students, at times the relationship becomes abusive, resulting in the student’s highest priority becoming avoidance of any contact with campus police. There is a need for campus police and PWI leaders to be educated in other models of serving public safety than the authoritarian, militaristic approach. CRT provides a perspective that opens one to the humanity and shared values that exist among people of different races and backgrounds (Cabrera, 2014; Christian et al., 2019). Campus police are invited into dialogue with Black students about the social and safety needs and contributions often represented in Black culture. Such a dialogue can contribute to the changing identity of the police emerging in the larger society.

Given the challenges of getting people to be open to new information and to shifting their beliefs, movement toward collaboration and dialogue of campus police with Black students will likely take time to bring about. As the enforcers of white policies on the campus, campus police will look to PWI leaders for modeling of any genuine dialogue with Black students. Interest convergence refers to a view that those who hold power will only be receptive to eradicating white supremacy when this goal supports their own goals to maintain power, resources, and security (Harper, 2009b). Education of PWI leaders and campus police about the moral, economic, and personal costs they pay to maintain white supremacy is needed. Allies and Black students can offer to be sources of education for PWI leaders and campus police about social justice.