MCLA Beacon Online

By Cody Romano

Features Edoitor

Campus experiment targets blue-shirted students

The first trial of the Manhattan Project produced a boom that sent shockwaves through a secluded desert in 1947. Now the arid plateaus of Arizona have become a modern testing ground in which sound bites have replaced atoms. Many assert that the outcome of the explosive debate there will set precedence for America’s perspective on immigration. The immigration bill enacted in Arizona two weeks ago is among the strictest in history: it gives police authority to demand licenses from people whom they suspect are illegal immigrants. Supporters deem it a necessary response to Arizona’s growing problem, while critics say it constitutes racial profiling. Rachel Seklecki, a junior, conducted a social experiment on Tuesday to put MCLA students in the shoes of Arizonians.She strolled through the sunny campus quad in a pants suit (per the author’s request) and told a group of women on a picnic blanket that she was enforcing a new policy requiring people on campus to show their student IDs. “Why should I need to show you my ID?” said student Chelsea Crowe, lowering a book in her lap. “I live here and go to school here.” Rachel told Karolyne Symonds, Chelsea’s friend, that she didn’t need to ruffle through her bag for an ID.

“Don’t worry,” Rachel said to Karolyne. “You look like an MCLA student.”Rachel approached 21 students at MCLA, each of whom were then interviewed. Fifty-seven percent said the fictional policy was prejudiced, while 43-percent said they didn’t mind showing their ID. Fourteen percent of people stopped weren’t carrying any ID. Typifying the appearance of MCLA students is tough because their looks vary. Similar ambiguity in Arizona’s bill, which calls for officers to stop people whenever there is “reasonable suspicion” of their citizenship, has led critics to argue that officers could stop people because of their skin color. “It brings us back to the issue of race,” said Justin Vanderpoole, a senior. Richard Taskin, a practicing defense attorney and MCLA professor, says the term “reasonable suspicion” can’t be defined without racial classification. “They’re going to get sued to death,” said Mr. Taskin.

“Some jarhead who’s been in Iraq and Afghanistan comes home and they ask for his papers – I mean, are you kidding me?”But state Representative Brian Bilbray, who supports the measure, said that police have non-racial methods of profiling."[Officers] will look at the kind of dress you wear,” said Bilbray, during an interview on MSNBC. “There is different type of attire, there is different type of -- right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes.”Taking Mr. Bilbray’s logic for a test drive, Rachel stopped every person she saw wearing the color blue. Hannah Andrew emerged from Bowman Hall, donning blue and holding a textbook. “Are you serious?” she responded to a request for her ID, which she rarely carries. “I’m a paying student here.”Student Jessica Fratus and her friends were eating lunch at a crowded table when Rachel entered the cafeteria and asked only one member of the group to identify herself. “I think it’s stupid,” said Jessica, in defense of her blue-shirted friend. Student Ashley Tremblay was walking back to the townhouses area in sweatpants with blue markings when she bumped into Rachel, who was guarding the path.

“If I had to show my ID around campus I would be in trouble all the time – just like with hall passes when I was in high school,” Ashley said. Some participants were asked to compare the faux policy to Arizona’s bill. Jessica Fratus, for one, thought it targets people based on skin color. Chris Satterlee, another student, said he strongly disapproves of the state’s decision and would protest such a law if it were enacted at MCLA.“I think [racial profiling] happens more than we want to accept, even here in the heart of Yankee New England,” said student Brandon Clinton.Responses, as a whole, were divided. Shea Carlson, a student wearing blue baseball gear, twirled his bat while he explained that he didn’t mind Rachel’s request. Students Gabby Fernandez and Rob Dalby, among others, said the policy seemed surprising but they were willing to accommodate it.Students unanimously disapproved of the mandate in variations of the experiment, during which they weren’t told what criteria had been used to profile them.

Jane’s Exercise

A third-grade teacher laid the foundation for experiments in discrimination – but before she became a civil rights activist with a PBS special, Jane Elliot, 76, was a kid who played in the creek near her family’s farmhouse in northeast Iowa. Surrounded by maple trees and vacant acres, she and her six siblings fished, swam and explored for fun. They coped with the grueling poverty of the 1930s by sharing a single bicycle and burning candles when they couldn’t afford kerosene. Jane Elliot traveled by dirt road to a rural schoolhouse, where she earned stellar grades, but only through pressure from her father did Ms. Elliot herself become a teacher. A string of events in the 1960s led her to pioneer one of the most groundbreaking exercises in educational history: she first grewpassionate about her job after colleagues inspired her to emphasize teaching through experience; then she lived in Waterloo, Iowa, where people of color couldn’t walk through store aisles without being followed; finally, an assassin gunned down Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of a hotel in Tennessee. Ms. Elliot walked into her classroom the next day, following a night of bloody riots across American cities, with a plan to permanently alter the mindsets of white third-graders in Iowa. She separated her class into two groups based on eye color. Brown-eyed students are smarter and more capable than blue-eyed students, she told them. During the exercise brown-eyed students flaunted their superiority, using “blue eyes” as a derogatory nickname, while blue-eyed students suffered academic setbacks.

“Teachers are doing this exercise using skin color every day just by teaching kids differently,” said Ms. Elliot.The controversial lesson won her appearances on national television, her own PBS special, and a place in many education textbooks. Now retired as a third-grade teacher, Ms. Elliot runs diversity-training workshops. She argues that the prejudice of the 1960s manifests itself in the immigration debate. “A fifth generation person of color doesn’t have the same freedoms as a recent immigrant who’s white,” Ms. Elliot said. “If you walk a mile in the shoes of an immigrant of color for an hour—or for a day – or for one brief instant, you will soon decide that no one should be treated that way.”

Mike’s Fight to Rebrand the Bill

The immigration debate has ruffled feathers in a place far away from Iowa and North Adams: in the digital world of Facebook, opposing activists have created groups to champion their cause. Mike O’Leary is a 40-year-old electrician from Chicago and creator of a Facebook group with 48,738 members called, “It's not racism stupid! You are here ILLEGALLY!”

After he learned about Arizona’s law through a television in his gym, Mr. O’Leary created the group in response to longstanding criticism – mostly from by his wife’s friends – that he was racist for advocating stricter immigration policies.“Half the girls I know on Facebook call me racist,” said Mr. O’Leary. “I’m not a racist. I got black and Latino friends all over my Facebook page.”

Ulisses’ Effort to Boycott Arizona

In the opposite corner of the ring stands Ulisses Sanchez, whose Facebook group, “Boycott Arizona NOW That SB1070 Is Law!” has also attracted thousands of members.Mr. Sanchez is a California state legislator whose parents emigrated from Mexico. He says he’s familiar with profiling because people are sometimes visibly surprised to see him, a person of color, wearing a suit and tie. “It doesn’t matter to them if I’m a college educated young man without a criminal record,” Mr. Sanchez said. “The real problem is ignorance.” So far, Mr. Sanchez has helped to coordinate phone calls to other legislators and to boycott baseball games in Arizona. “This group has a real sense of purpose and it’s not to analyze or make comparisons – it’s to say, ‘this is how we feel and how the bill will negatively impact our communities and this is what we plan to do about it.’”Nearly 3,000 miles away, at the MCLA campus, Rachel found the pulse of the student body. Her results reflected the divergent opinions of Americans like Jane, Mike and Ulisses, but also a common passion for debating an issue that calls into question the moral and legal traditions of a nation.