Charles H.F. Davis III speaks with the Chronicle of Higher Education about campus safety measures and the role parents’ groups play

Groups of parent activists have sprouted up as many cities experience higher rates of violent crime since the pandemic began, and amid a national racial reckoning, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. “Like their kids, parents are increasingly connected online, with much of the organizing happening in private Facebook groups and on other social-media platforms,” writes Kate Hidalgo Bellows for the Chronicle. 

At the same time parent-activists are advocating for increased safety measures, institutions face a tide of complaints from students, faculty members, and others on campus about unjust policing and racial discrimination. 

Charles H.F. Davis III, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, said that the parents’ groups advocating for more police officers tend to promote the voices of white parents.

“What white parents are partially saying … is, ‘You need to protect our students, which is us, from them, which is the community in which this institution resides,’” Davis explained. “[As] opposed to saying anything about how the institution’s relationship with that community creates the conditions and the climate for which gun violence is made possible.”