Safety and Security

At the forefront of our minds are the safety, security, and well-being of our Black colleagues. In line with Objective Two of the BSU/BGSA recommendations, we strongly recommend reconsidering the nature of the MIT Police’s presence in Physics Department spaces to protect the security and well-being of Black physicists at MIT. We also make suggestions aimed to decrease racial stereotyping and profiling among non-Black members of our community to further well-being and mental health.

Recommendations

  • Recommendation 1 (Immediate action requested): Minimize armed police presence in physics research and learning spaces
  • Recommendation 2 (Immediate action requested): Change language used by the Department in suspicious activity reports

Recommendation 1. (Immediate action requested)
That the Department minimize and find alternatives to police presence in our community’s research, learning, and socializing spaces.

The presence of armed police in campus research, social, and teaching spaces creates a hostile and dangerous workplace environment for racialized physicists, especially our Black colleagues. Police presence significantly and negatively impacts Black physicists’ well-being and ability to carry out regular scientific activities (see @BlackInTheIvory on Twitter for anecdotal examples). It is unacceptable that we allow our colleagues to be placed into stressful and potentially deadly situations in our own department.

At the same time, we recognize that currently MIT Police carry out a number of essential roles that necessitate coming into Physics Department spaces. Police are often first responders to medical emergencies, which can be life-or-death situations. The popular conception of physics and MIT have made our Department a unique target of interest and in cases, obsession, among certain members of the general public; at times this has led to threatening behaviors and situations, particularly for our staff and faculty. The necessity of carrying out laboratory work at odd hours presents risks to women and gender minorities, and concerns of harassment, stalking, and violence, to the extent that the Department funds taxi rides home in the middle of the night. Many feel that patrols play an important role in mitigating risk for non-men in our department. 

It is a fallacy, though, to view this as an either/or choice that places the Department in the position of barring police from department spaces to protect one vulnerable population or permitting police presence in order to protect another vulnerable population. In particular, it is crucial to find a solution that does not harm those at the intersection of such populations, e.g., Black women. Armed, uniformed police need not play the role of the go-to resource for such a wide swath of issues. We should consider who is best equipped to respond to each specific situation—someone trained in law enforcement, someone trained in medicine, someone trained as a mental health counselor, or an unarmed person with no specialized skills.

For example, community members often must call the MIT Police when they have locked themselves out of their office, particularly after hours. A Black student could understandably feel uncomfortable doing so, as any encounter with the police runs the risk of turning fatal, something that the rest of American society has only truly begun to grapple with over the past few months. A better option might be connecting locked-out members of the community with nearby custodial staff. 

Another example is that of nighttime patrols. Unlike on the main campus, MIT’s dormitories have unarmed watchmen patrol the building periodically overnight. These university employees often develop friendly relationships with many of the residents, and are viewed by students as people they can trust with their safety. As these “community safety patrols” are not dressed in police uniforms and do not carry lethal weapons, they do not bring up historically entrenched (and ever-increasingly severe) anxieties regarding the relationship police have with Black and NBPOC (non-Black people of color) populations. 

It would be of great benefit to the community if the Department works to minimize the presence of armed and uniformed MIT Police from Department spaces unless specifically requested, and to ensure that these police do not linger beyond the duration of that immediate need. 

We recommend three concrete action items to the Department:

  • That the Department as a body or Physics Council sign the Support Black Lives at MIT petition that calls for MIT to investigate how current police funding “could be reallocated to other measures that increase physical safety and emotional well-being at MIT or educational purposes aligned with the institute’s missions.”
  • That the Department make a statement on behalf of students about our concerns and work with MIT and MIT Police to seek an intermediate option that allows vital tasks to be performed while minimizing harm to Black physicists. 
  • That the Department keep our community informed about police presence in our workplaces, including about the presence of regular patrols and any specific situations that may arise that are of interest to the general department population. 

 

Recommendation 2. (Immediate action requested)
That when reporting suspicious activity in a building, Department staff use language that does not invoke stereotypes and inadvertently cause harm to URM physicists. 

We recommend that the Department produce a set of best practice guidelines to be shared and discussed with staff and faculty who notify our community about suspicious activity in department spaces. In order to reduce bias in reporting concerning situations, emails to our community should emphasize suspicious actions as opposed to suspicious people. Emails should never focus on race or ethnicity. It would also be helpful were the Department to develop and disseminate a set of best practices for the cases of repeat offenders who have caused concern on multiple occasions over long time periods in department spaces. 

We also highly recommend that the Department build awareness among its members of the negative effects that police presence can have on underrepresented minority members of our community. This may be weaved into the implementation of Recommendations 23-26. 

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