Race

white woman who called police on yale student is a researcher in study about “school to prison pipeline”

May 17, 2018
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It’s wholly unsurprising that the white woman who called the police on a sleeping Yale student has a personal and professional history of racism. Sarah Braasch, the white graduate student, had not only called police on other black students seen on campus (wtf), but she authored a research project proposal arguing that the “procedurally just treatment of adults by police has been linked to increased perceptions of institutional legitimacy and obligation to obey the law, as well as a decreased likelihood of subsequent recidivism” to support justification for exploring the “the effects of procedurally just treatment on juveniles.”
A position that hinges on the idea that all types of brutalization, if part of police procedure, is just and thus that heaving policing of students will condition them for good behavior when we already know it disproportionately conditions students of color for the school-to-prison pipeline.

The project reads: “Over the past decade, the presence of full-time, armed police officers in American public schools has increased exponentially. These School Resource Officers (SROs) are now installed in over two-thirds of high schools across the country. However, the duties of SROs are often poorly defined and vary greatly across jurisdictions. The impact of their increased presence is largely unknown. Do these officers effectively reduce school violence and promote student safety? Or do they feed the school-to-prison pipeline, responding with legal consequences to actions that might otherwise be considered minor offenses?”

What could she be trying to prove or observe here if not to make an academic argument for policing black children the same way she tried to police fellow student Lolade Siyonbola?

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