UW-Madison Police
The arrest of an African-American student on the UW-Madison campus Thursday has prompted a swift and damning response from university faculty, staff and students.
Denzel J. McDonald, 21, was arrested by UW-Madison police in connection with 11 instances of graffiti on buildings across the university’s campus, according to a release from UWPD spokesman Marc Lovicott. The graffiti, which took the form of anti-racist messages signed by “God,” appeared over the course of six months and caused more than $4,000 in damage. McDonald is also charged with disorderly conduct for threatening a bystander who tried to stop him from tagging a building.
A social media post on Thursday by UW-Madison student Hannah Frank detailed her eyewitness account of the arrest, which took place outside of the Humanities Building. She says UWPD officers entered the Afro-American studies class where Frank was working on a group project with McDonald, asked him to step outside and then put him in handcuffs.
According to Frank, the officers said of McDonald, “He's sent his message. Now we are sending ours.” Frank and others have criticized the arrest tactics as inappropriate, intimidating and intentionally humiliating.
“It was such an obvious power trip for them, it was really ridiculous,” Frank tells Isthmus. “They’re just making him an example.”
Frank’s post has been shared more than 730 times since Thursday afternoon, with many on social media expressing dismay that the officers would target a student during class. Others questioned why police would pursue charges against a student spreading an anti-racism message while perpetrators of hate and bias incidents have gone unpunished. A letter from UW-Madison faculty and staff posted on social media Thursday night denouncing UWPD’s tactics has been signed by more than 500 people.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank was among those upset by the incident, posting a statement on Friday vowing an “immediate review of these practices to ensure that classrooms are preserved as a productive space for learning and educational inquiry.”
UWPD said that officers tried several times to contact McDonald but were unsuccessful, which was why the classroom visit was necessary. Such visits are uncommon, UWPD Chief Sue Riseling in a statement. The typical procedure is to wait until the end of class to “minimize disruptions and not interfere with our campus’ learning environment,” but Riseling said the officers on Thursday mistakenly thought that class had not yet started.
“I extend my sincerest apologies to the students and the professor who were in this class and witnessed this interruption,” she said.
Karma Chavez, an associate professor in the university’s Communication Arts department, spearheaded the faculty and staff response after hearing about the arrest. She says the incident differs from other recent race-related dustups on campus in that this time, the university itself was the perpetrator. Though response to previous bias incidents has been strong, she believes the outrage caused by this arrest is a "tipping point" in the campus-wide fight against racism. She hopes administrators will listen.
“If you want a campus that has faculty and students and staff that understand power and issues of race, put resources into people who are trained to teach that,” she says. “It’s not about diversity training. It’s about having a deep culture [of anti-racism] that’s supported by research and people who’ve committed their lives to that at the heart of campus.”
