In response to an outcry for allegedly stigmatizing minorities, the University of Minnesota announced this week that it will no longer include descriptions of suspects' race in crime alerts issued to faculty and students,
the Daily Caller reported.
Under the new policy, the university's police chief and other officials will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to issue alerts describing a suspect's race.
"This change supports our public safety goals while recognizing the harm that the use of race in crime alerts causes for some members of our community,"
the university said.
In the future, the school, which has 50,000 students and is located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, promises to use descriptions "only when there is sufficient detail that would reasonably help identify specific individual suspects or groups of suspects (e.g., some combination of gender, race, clothing, height, body type, build, accent, tattoos, hair color, facial hair)."
The change came about after an 18-month-long "campuswide conversation" in which members of the school’s community "raised concerns about the use of racial descriptors as part of Crime Alerts," officials said."
The university seemed to suggest that the need to know a criminal suspect's race was outweighed by other factors, including a history of racial oppression:
"For some, knowing they have all the information available about a crime, including the complete suspect description, makes them feel better informed and increases how safe they feel. But others – particularly Black men – have shared that suspect descriptions that include race reinforce stereotypes of Black men, create a hostile campus climate, and negatively affect their sense of safety."
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