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"Don't Become an Academic"

-- By ColeRiley - 07 May 2024

That was the one piece of advice I got from the organizing spaces I belonged to before going to law school. I had proven myself to be useful to community and could also contribute to scholarship. Their warning was simple. Don’t let one take precedence over the other. But you tell me; when the school is under military occupation during finals, do I stare through riot shields, or stare at the books that justify them being on campus? Which took precedence, a grade or a genocide? (a silly question truly)

The Paper

The last paper I wrote in college is the one I take the most pride in. It examined the differences in police presence on HBCUs and California state schools while controlling for the school size of and local crime rate. The results were damning. HBCUs had twice the police presence per student and the safest HBCU had a higher student/police ratio than the California state school in the most dangerous city. The police have an integral role in the daily operations of colleges and universities and have a disproportionate presence on Black campuses than non-black campuses. Smoking gun. But why do university police departments exist in the first place?

Calling the police on students is not a good look. The Dudley uprising is cited as the largest siege of an American college campus by armed forces in us history. That same campus currently has one of the largest university police departments in the country. That campus is my alma mater, the nation’s largest HBCU. That’s no coincidence. My experience with the university police is why I wrote that paper. When police climbed through the window of Hinds hall I knew what would come next. We have seen it before. The school raises the campus security fee, ups the number of guards, or simply creates an entire university police department. The optics of calling a foreign militarized force on your own kids look much worse than calling the in loco parentis university police department that wears the school's colors. This school just had the gall to invite the NYPD to be our de-facto University Police Department. The baby blue band that wraps around their riot gear helmets foreshadows what's to come. I feel responsible for ensuring that unfortunate fate does not come to fruition. Higher education in America today takes place under military occupation and it is funded by the potential future earnings of the children it brutalizes. It is plagued by hyper surveillance, and censorship, and ruled by a fear that students may commit the crime of actually using their education to better the world and not just get a job

The propaganda at A&T is Pride, at Columbia its prestige. I’m reminded that my purpose and passions don’t lie with these institutions but with my people. I can’t afford to lose sight of that just as much as I can’t afford to be at this school.

Love

These few weeks have taught me what love looks like in times of crisis. I treat love as a concrete feeling just as identifiable as I feel hot or I feel cold. It’s just as clear cut as I feel pain or I feel pleasure. So absent the romantic context, this form of love came to the forefront recently. Love is looking out for all my friends who were all legally practicing their First Amendment rights while also following the clear guidelines set out by the president of the university. Love is handing out umbrellas in the rain, coats in the cold, and walking each other home at night, scared the police get trigger-happy or power-hungry. Love was the grace given by professors and the support by peers. Love was the text messages from people from past lives making sure I was ok. There was nothing that the books or essays could have done in these moments that love did. Academia was of no comfort to me. Regardless of this fact, boy is it scary. Academia in many ways is safe. I promised my momma I’d be safe. But I promised my people I wouldn’t become that. A lawyer makes things happen in society using words but that path too can be dangerous. When it is scary and I struggle to know what path to take, I pray.

The prayer

Thy kingdom will come. Thy will will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. I’ll pray for that day, won’t wait on that day. For prayer without action is a trespass to faith. Horns from Jericho blow, columns will buckle, won’t ask the pharaoh to let my people go. He won’t have a choice.

Your earthly kingdom begins once the empire ends, but it won’t fall without some noise. Lead us not through perpetual subjugation, but deliver us from evil. My glass bottle runneth over, and ethanol stains my clothes. The flame in my spirit materializes. You promised not to bring water like last time but told us to bring the fire next time. As long as in this earthly body I dwell, I know the lord will guide me well. Can’t help but smile as I bless this cocktail. So every day I wake up, I’m raising hell.

Note: This is just a prayer/poem to encourage and remind me to fight for what is right every day and should not be interpreted as a call for violence. The gist of the entire essay is me trying to balance academics with activism. My need to clarify that echoes my exact sentiment about hyper surveillance. Forgive me for sometimes diving back into my slam poetry past when writing about empire. I promise the symbolic Molotov cocktail thrown at the unnamed amorphous idea of empire is less violent than the real bullet holes the actual empire put in this school's walls. Some write to prove something. I write to make you feel something. You tell me which one will make you move.

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