Time to End Tensions

AN event last week should jolt all, whether Black, white or member of another minority, out of complacency about the implications of racism. Whatever exactly happened to two Black students who were taken off a shuttle bus and searched by police last week, the Black community has shown outrage at what they consider racist behavior on the part of Harvard and Cambridge police. Their response is merited by the larger systemic problem of which this incident appears only to be a possible example.

Most shocking for those who would not know better is the complete lack of surprise in the Black community that such harassment, if true, did occur. Black Harvard and MIT students have complained for years of being stopped on Mass. Ave. by police while simply walking down a sidewalk.

Specific measures can and must be taken promptly by the University and police to remedy an ugly state of affairs in the wake of an incident that has galvanized such a large portion of the Harvard population.

WHAT exactly happened to two Black Harvard students around 9 p.m. last Tuesday night remains muddled. Witnesses say the pair had run to catch a University shuttle bus when, upon boarding, several police cars blocked the van and a Black police officer shined a flashlight in their faces and ordered them to get off. The pair were then searched without explanation and, after officers found nothing, were left without notice of why they were stopped, the students say.

According to Harvard Police Chief Paul E. Johnson and Cambridge Police Lt. Donald Carney, the students were mistaken for a white suspect in a simultaneous nearby convenience store theft. It is unclear whether the searching officers were aware of the description of the actual suspect, who was arrested later that night by Harvard Police.

However, the two Black students say the police harassed them and singled them out in the crowded shuttle because of their color. Cambridge police declined for six days to comment on the incident.

THE students' allegations, while damning if proven true, have in the immediate confusion been overwhelmed by the storm of anger and resentment among the Black community. Outrage has taken the form of threatened appeals for legal action to the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Harvard and Cambridge Police departments and supervisory boards.

The uproar has indicated that the Black community on this campus feels that there is an issue of general police racism, which transcends this individual incident. A survey of upperclassmen last spring, for example, revealed that 45 percent of Black students responding said that they believed that minorities were treated differently by University police most or all of the time. No matter what happened last week, we must take advantage of this opportunity to discuss such concerns and seek possible solutions.

To start, police should swiftly disclose all details of this incident instead of dismissing students' outrage as it has done in the past. The year-old Cambridge citizens' Police Review and Advisory Board should closely review its first case of harassment complaints from minority students against white officers. The University and the office of Assistant Dean for Minority Affairs Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle should keep this issue central in the community's attention and in the police's until corrective action can be taken.

Publicity and pressure, if responsible and consistent, can do much to illuminate a complex issue and to ease tensions in an old problem.