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Henry,
I've been imagining the possibility of student scenarios very much like the one you describe. It makes me ill that at a time when the SFU community should be drawing together to aid and protect our students, Campus Security called the RCMP on a student whose only "crime" appears to be that he already graduated, and thus by the strict letter of the law had no reason to be on campus. We need to think about this: A former student was violently arrested in an SFU cafeteria because Campus Security felt that it was appropriate to have the RCMP deal with the infraction of being a former student hanging around campus. I am disgusted by the degrees of callousness, insensitivity, ineptitude, and racism that led to this deplorable state of affairs.
Students have started a Go-Fund Me page for the student. I intend to contribute.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/black-alumni-arrested-on-campus-support-fund
Dr. Ronda Arab Associate Professor of English Simon Fraser University From: Henry Daniel
Sent: 15 December 2020 22:40 To: Ronda Arab Cc: Sam Black; David Macalister; Cynthia Patton; Paul Percival; James Fleming; Christopher Pavsek Subject: Re: Statement condemning violent arrest of Black SFU alumnus Henry Daniel, PhD Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts
www.henrydaniel.ca
I’m not speaking for, or on behalf of the Black Caucus at SFU here, or even the student who was beaten, pepper sprayed and violently arrested, i.e., completely traumatized, but I argue that Sam’s point should be listened to and even meditated on somewhat
if we are to understand some of the hidden issues that resulted in this situation.
Many of these current and recently graduated students are literally stranded. Some of them have no place to go to, little or no money for food, no family nearby and often no suitable accommodations.
Now imagine going all the way to the Burnaby campus where you’ve spent at least the last four years of your life. You feel that this is a safe place, the safest because you know people there, other students from your studies, friends even. The cafeteria
at SFU is an especially familiar place for you, one where you can at least get a meal and perhaps talk to someone from a safe distance.
But you are not welcome there any more. You are asked to leave. You are desperate and want to stay but because you are not currently enrolled in any course they call the police who forcefully drag you away. You are terrified and because if this ‘recalcitrance‘
they pepper spray you. Blinded and terrified, you continue to hold on to that cafeteria countertop as if it were the last bastion of your existence.
Is this another angry, violent and dangerous Black man or perhaps a hungry student in mental despair with a degree that gets him absolutely nowhere right now?
HD
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