Q&A with President Conoley on knife incident

In the weeks following the Feb. 25 incident where a 20-year-old male student “displayed” a knife in a sociology class on race, class and gender, students have continued to protest on social media to criticize the university’s lack of communication.

Much of the criticism stemmed from the fact that the altercation was not disclosed to the campus community in a timely warning email, and that the incident was perceived to have been racially motivated.

The student in possession of the knife claimed that he was cleaning his fingernails.

University Police originally reported to the Daily 49er that the male student was a relative of a campus police officer, but campus Chief of Police Fernando Solorzano later told students the student is a CSULB Community Service Officer in a forum on Thursday.

The forum of about 150 was facilitated by Vice President of Student Affairs Carmen Taylor for students to “share [their] concerns with campus leadership,” but the forum ended in a walkout after frustrated students demanded Dean of Students Jeffrey Klaus’ resignation and the expulsion of the male student.

The Daily 49er sat down with CSULB President Jane Close Conoley yesterday to discuss the tumultuous events. [sidebar title=”Student list of demands” align=”right” background=”on” border=”all” shadow=”on”]

The Black Student Union at Cal State Long Beach have created a petition on change.org calling for CSULB President Jane Close Conoley to do the following by April 6:

1) Expel the student who pulled out a knife during a debate with a black female student in a Race, Class and Gender sociology course on Feb. 25,

2) Fire Associate Vice President of Students Affairs, Dean of Students and head of the Campus Assessment, Response and Evaluation for Students Team program Jeffrey Klaus for comments he made during a Sociology Student Association (SSA) meeting that were deemed insensitive by some, and

3) Establish a Student Oversight Committee for Risk Assessment.

These demands were also made at Thursday’s student forum, held by CSULB vice president of student affairs Carmen Taylor. 
As of 11:59 p.m. last night, 597 people have signed the petition so far. The amount of CSULB students who signed the petition is unknown.

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What are your thoughts on the recent drama surrounding the knife incident?

It’s a drama being played out on so many levels. We have, at the national level, concerns of black lives matter, concerns about the trustworthiness of some police officers, we have a national campaign at the level of presidency where issues of racism and national origin are being thrown around and kind of rule of law is being trashed from my perspective. We have drama now that is reflecting a national set of real issues – transparency, cover ups, unjust practices visited upon people of color.

And we can’t say, ‘Oh no, not us!’ We have to do our best to be mindful of the national situation. In a way, good for our students – they are tuned in, they’re not tuned out from what’s going on nationally.

I think the knife incident was a real trigger for people to kind of project some of those national issues. As I said in writing at least, if I had it to do over again, I would of figured out a strategy to get what facts I was allowed to say out in front of people.

What kinds of programs are in place to combat racial differences at CSULB?

The meeting I was just at was with the Steering Committee for this inclusive excellence thing we launched in January. So you’ll be hearing from them almost immediately about communication strategy and they’ve already been meeting with some groups in smaller groups. We have a student on that, a faculty member [and] a staff member, so we are trying to represent the sectors.

They are supposed to fan out and listen then come back with what they heard, then come up with suggested action steps, then come out with a document that would say: OK, not enough faculty of color, what are we doing about it? Not enough police protection or we don’t trust the police. What are we doing about it?

Was there a single person the knife was being pointed to, and is that person, Mutoni Ingabire, the girl who spoke about being a victim at the forum on Thursday?

Well, as you can imagine, there’s different interpretations. This young woman actually didn’t see the knife, only two people in the class saw the knife.

Imagine: the professor is walking around, there’s two groups working on different ends of the class, [Mutoni Ingabire is] standing there talking with her back to the class and there’s a back and forth of questions. The professor sees this young man holding the knife.

She rightly says, “A knife in class? That’s not OK,” and walks over and says, “Come outside with me.” And he does. She says something like, “You can’t have a knife in class.” He says, “Well I’ll put it in my pocket,” and she says, “No you can’t have a knife in class.” So he leaves. She goes in, she hands him his stuff, and he leaves. One other girl and the professor saw [the knife]. Toni never saw it. In fact, she only heard later when the professor walked back in, closed the door, said class is cancelled.

So the professor is really shaken because she’s done something — the right thing — but verbs have been used like “pulled,” “brandishing” but we don’t know that. We have the young man’s description of his frame of mind – that he didn’t mean it. But did people feel threatened? Yes they did. And that’s real. I can not intend something but I can still cause fear over it.  

Now that there’s a lot of people who imagine they were witnesses, they need to be talked to. So instead of it being just a three-person or a four-person issue, it’s become a much bigger issue.

Why are students calling for Dean of Students Jeffrey Klaus to resign?

It’s really odd to me because he’s such a positive force on campus. Jeff went to talk to the sociology student club, and I’m imagining that somehow in his presentation it was construed that he was minimizing and he’d already decided that nothing important had happened. And that made him the embodiment of male patriarchy in colonial society, which I haven’t experienced.

I actually haven’t had a chance to talk to Jeff directly. People in the sociology student club had an experience with him where he was perceived to say, “You shouldn’t be worried about this. We got it, we got it.” And maybe, as always when you’re speaking in public, maybe you wish you would have said it differently. It’s how you’re feeling that’s important.  

We are all learning, how do we create organizational change?

That kind of almost vigilante approach – that could be turned on anybody. So maybe if I’m a white student in a class and I have a professor who’s Native American and the professor describes genocide to the native people. So I say, I object to that and I get a bunch of white friends to do it and we say “You must fire him, you must fire him.” Well, we have laws that protect people’s employment and academic freedom laws. You might not like what you hear from somebody.

The first time I realized this was a problem, a social media problem, was when somebody tweeted me saying, “This is the third incident now, and you’ve done nothing.”

I read the tweet and moved my phone over to the chief of police. So he immediately followed up and said, “Who is this person, and called him and asked, are you aware of other incidents?” And he said, “No, no, that was here-say.” But then that gets re-tweeted.

Was the student with the knife white?

We are actually working on that. You know, his race is under FERPA [Family Education Rights and Privacy Act] protection, but it’s right for you to be thinking about it.

We are seeking the student’s permission about whether or not his actual status in terms of race or ethnicity can be shared. I don’t know now if that would make a difference. We hate to expose anybody anymore than is needed. Because the people who were actually involved, their personal information was revealed by other students, so now they’re getting phone calls, they’re getting emails. So they’re being re-traumatized — not by the person they think should be expelled — but by social media, by people who have decided that they know what the real story is, rather than the people who were there.

And that’s what I’m worried about. It’s their welfare and the safety of the campus that I care about. I get paid to take insults and threats of “you’re next. You’re resignation is next.” But they don’t. They are just trying to live their lives.

What will the next forum look like?

Well I think before there’s a next forum, there’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck meeting with smaller groups. I’ve issued an invitation to leadership of all the cultural — well not all the cultural orgs, but we’ll get to that — so the Black Student Union [and] Chicano Latino.

Let’s sit around the table and plan for what would work to move forward. I’m anticipating the students will come in, and they’ll just want to demand that this person gets fired and this person gets expelled or something.

OK, we’ve got that out, but now what do we do? How can we get students more involved in campus safety issues. I would be very open to a proposal that said why don’t we have a kind of student led council that gets regular reports from the police.

What if we made everything available to a student group? It’s not oversight, but it would be communication.

We had a meeting a couple weeks ago where the chief and other police displayed all the data associated with crime across the CSU system, so it’s one thing to see the numbers and to see that of the large campuses, we have the lowest [crime] rates. But it just takes one incident for people to feel it’s not safe. The average does nothing.

It’s sad that often we don’t know about this until something bad happens, but we’re ready to work on it if we can learn about it. It’s hard with this size campus, but I’m going to be here for a long time, so I’m going to work on it.