Student says Harvard is wrongly linking her to campus murder

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
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<p>“it risks bringing all the pathos of modern day America into its quadrangles”</p>

<p>Give me a break. Places other than Harvard have experienced much more student-on-student violence than it has, without any of it being connected to poverty, or Bedford-Stuyvesant. One of my classmates at Yale was beaten to death during our sophomore year . . . by her middle-class, deeply religious boyfriend, then a senior. Virginia Tech wasn’t about poverty, and neither was the recent killing of a Wesleyan student on campus. A classmate of my child’s found herself on the phone with a fellow student as he hung himself. Plenty of America’s pathos is already there in everyone’s quadrangles without getting all upset about THIS particular example.</p>

<p>This whole story doesn’t make sense yet, and probably won’t for a long time. The shooter wasn’t a street thug, and neither was the victim, and neither were the two Harvard students. We are all filling in the blanks to fit our own prejudices here.</p>

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<p>As for who can commit crimes, look at the purported craigslist murderer:

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<p>I’m an undergrad at Harvard. Basically, why she is suspended from ceremonies is the fact that she gave her ID swipe card to the shooter, so he was able to enter another building and hide out while the police were looking for him. This is electronically recorded by the Id card readers at each building on campus. Giving your card to another individual (esp. considering he had just shot someone on campus) is expressly forbidden.</p>

<p>The campus was on lock down and students were encouraged to stay indoors, which was actually more dangerous considering the shooter was hiding inside. If another student had discovered him, who knows what would have happened.</p>

<p>It is due to this that she was barred from ceremonies. While most students know she also deals drugs, none of that has been proven (as far as I know) and had no bearing on why she was suspended. It was the fact that she let the shooter into Harvard buildings to help him escape from the police.</p>

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<p>^^^ Is that based on inside information about the case that you somehow gained access to, or conjecture based on University policy? If the former, how did you hear that?</p>

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<p>The New York Times’ new story on Chanequa Campbell:</p>

<p>"During her spring break in March, Chanequa Campbell, a Harvard senior, traveled to Milan for at least the fourth time in two years.</p>

<p>In all, she had been away from Harvard for the better part of her junior and senior years, studying for four months of her junior year abroad in Italy, where she also took most of her vacations during her senior year. This was partly wanderlust, partly a long-distance relationship and partly survival. She was, she says, “burned out” by pressures in college: the grueling work, continuing health problems and a lingering feeling that some of her peers judged her — for being a loud, proud native of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.</p>

<p>“Italy was a place I could be without all of the pressures,” she said in a series of telephone interviews this week. On her latest trip, Ms. Campbell, 21, looked for a place to take language classes and an apartment, hoping to return to Italy after she graduated in June…</p>

<p>Prosecutors said that Mr. Copney and two men intended to rob Mr. Cosby, whom they called a local drug dealer, and that Mr. Copney knew Mr. Cosby through two Harvard students. Though the authorities did not publicly identify them, the news media soon reported that they were Ms. Campbell and a close friend, Brittany Smith, also a Harvard senior, who was dating Mr. Copney.</p>

<p>“Conversations that occurred between at least those four people led Jordan Copney to believe he could rip off Justin Cosby,” said the Middlesex County district attorney, Gerard T. Leone Jr. He also said that the Harvard students had provided the three men access to the campus…"
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/nyregion/04campbell.html?hp[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/nyregion/04campbell.html?hp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>The article also comments that both the senior girls with ties to the shooter will not walk at graduation or receive their diplomas…</p>

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<p>

Am I wrong? It seems to me that Ms. Cambell has been provided information about what she has done wrong and why Harvard has chosen to bar her from graduation and remove her from campus.</p>

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<p>From the above-referenced New York Times article:

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<p>Campbell tried to play the race card while holding a pair of 2’s. FAIL.</p>

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<p>Campbell obviously lied when she said Harvard officials had not told her why she was kicked off campus and wasn’t allowed to participate in graduation.</p>

<p>It isn’t clear to me whether she will still receive her diploma, but just not via the graduation ceremony. Especially if she will still receive her diploma, Campbell has made a HUGE mistake in publicizing her role in this tragedy and in charging Harvard with taking these actions against her only because she is black and poor.</p>

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<p>"We write to you today as concerned alumni, students, friends and family who are saddened and distressed over Harvard University’s recent treatment of our peer and friend, Chanequa Campbell. "</p>

<p>I would bet lots of money that most of those 100 signees are friends and family of Chanequa, not Harvard alum and students. Trust me: If Harvard alum and students were on Chanequa’s side, one would be hearing from them in full force. Harvard folks are not people to go gently when they feel anothers’ rights are being violated.</p>

<p>There’s every evidence that Chanequa has been misrepresenting why Harvard barred her from graduation. She seems like a person who had been given many wonderful opportunities, blew them and then cried victim.</p>

<p>I’m angry that she is becoming the poster child for black, disadvantaged Harvard students, the overwhelming majority of whom gratefully use Harvard to rise above their disadvantaged circumstances without complaining to the media or getting hauled before an administration board on theft or other charges.</p>

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<p>If all that’s happening is barring Campbell and Smith from participating in the graduation ceremony, but mailing them their diplomas, then this is an enormous tempest in a teapot. I have been assuming that they were being suspended or expelled as a disciplinary matter (and thus not receiving degrees) – that at least would be worth paying attention to. Yes, I know that their families want to kvell as they walk across the stage or whatever, but their presence would be a HUGE distraction to everyone (and unpleasant for them), and, really, the ceremony is not that important.</p>

<p>The funniest line in the NYT article is where Campbell says that she’s not letting reporters see the letter because she doesn’t want to antagonize Harvard. That’s credible! She holds a news conference with her attorney claiming that Harvard is mistreating her because she is black and poor, that Harvard has refused to tell her why she is being disciplined, and that she has done nothing to justify discipline, but other than that she doesn’t want to antagonize Harvard?</p>

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<p>And what she said at that news conference was picked up by media around the world. If you Google “Chanequa Campbell,” you’ll find articles even in Chinese and German that repeat her allegations of mistreatment by Harvard due to her race and socioeconomic status.</p>

<p>Interesting that a young man was murdered on Harvard’s campus, but somehow that story has become all about her.</p>

<p>I would like to know more about the young man who was killed. His mother seems to have had no clue that he was drug dealing. What caused a guy from Cambridge, who seems to have been a mama’s boy, to have dropped out of college and ended up being shot dead at Harvard in what seems to have been a marijuana deal gone wrong. </p>

<p>While there has been lots of attention on Chanequa as a “shining star from the hood”, sounds like the young man also had been a shining star, though the media and others didn’t notice it. The high school drop-out rate for black males is sky high: nationally, 40 percent drop out of high school. Many of the black males who graduate from high school don’t make it to college, but the murder victim did.</p>

<p>I’d like to see articles that focus on him. I wonder if he had been given the superb opportunities that Chanequa had, if he still would have ended up shot dead in a drug deal.</p>

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<p>I have no inside information, but I interpret not receiving the diploma as not graduating, period. That’s what I would expect from Harvard, anyway – freezing the status quo while the investigation continues. I can’t imagine any circumstances where they would award the degree but not let the student participate in ceremonies. They let non-graduating students walk with their classes all the time.</p>

<p>I agree with Northstarmom that this is going to make things even harder for poor minority students who enter Harvard and its peers. Human nature being human nature, it’s going to influence the perceptions of some middle-class students and faculty when they meet next year’s group of students “from the 'hood.”</p>

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<p>Here’s a new article that touches on some of the things people have been saying: [Why</a> Black Harvard Won?t Speak Up For Chanequa | NewsOne](<a href=“http://newsone.blackplanet.com/nation/why-black-harvard-won’t-speak-up-for-chanequa/]Why”>http://newsone.blackplanet.com/nation/why-black-harvard-won’t-speak-up-for-chanequa/)</p>

<p>"When campus police profiled Black students, Harvard’s Black undergraduates protested.</p>

<p>When Harvard’s president soured on legendary professor Cornel West, prompting West to take a job at Princeton, Harvard’s Black students petitioned for him to stay.</p>

<p>But in the wake of the suspension of two Black students, fallout from a current on-campus murder investigation, the typically vocal Black student community at Harvard has remained curiously silent.</p>

<p>… “People are pretty sure she did something, they just don’t know what,” said a Black classmate in Campbell’s graduating class, who requested anonymity. “We can’t rally behind somebody we don’t necessarily believe in.”</p>

<p>Black students are a particularly visible group on campus. But because two of their own have been associated with the murder, the community is squirming under the increased scrutiny. And some resent that Campbell blames her current predicament in part on racial bias.</p>

<p>“Students feel, to some degree, like she’s trying to sell Black people up the river,” Campbell’s classmate said. “It’s like she gets busted, and suddenly it’s a fight for freedom."</p>

<p>… </p>

<p>“The fact that there’s been such a big focus on the race of the women involved is allowing people to leap to conclusions,” said Kaya Williams, who graduated from Harvard in 2007. Williams points to much online commentary that depicts the botched drug robbery and resulting murder as a result of affirmative action gone wrong.</p>

<p>Brandon Terry, a Black student who graduated in 2005, also recognized the slant the discussion seemed to be taking, and worries about the consequences.</p>

<p>“It would be a shame if this situation kept students from a similar background to Chanequa’s from being admitted in the future,” said Terry."</p>

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<p>I certainly hope that the article quoted below is wrong about the reasons why black students aren’t supporting Chanequa. I hope their reasons are not that they are concerned about their own career prospects.</p>

<p>I’m a black alum who won’t sign petitions in her support because her story simply doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t believe that Harvard would bar her graduation without good reason. The fact that she previously was brought up on theft charges adds to my unwillingness to go on record to support her against Harvard. I also don’t like the way she’s playing the race card while appearing to distort information about what happened.</p>

<p>"Despite the considerable influence that Black students wield on campus, none of it has been used to help Campbell. Since she was barred from graduation, friends of Campbell’s from outside the campus Black community have started a petition on her behalf, addressing the president of the university, and asking for Campbell to be told why she has been barred from campus. Although a link to sign the petition was forwarded to the email lists of at least two Black student groups, only one of the 133 signatures appears to be from a Black member of her graduating class.</p>

<p>Another Black student, who hasn’t signed the petition and also requested anonymity, explains what appears to be widespread reluctance: “Some of us are still looking for jobs, some of us still want to have a future,” he said. “We don’t want our names affiliated with this.”"</p>

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<p>… “People are pretty sure she did something, they just don’t know what,” said a Black classmate in Campbell’s graduating class, who requested anonymity. “We can’t rally behind somebody we don’t necessarily believe in.”</p>

<p>Sounds like the students are acting like a jury, and they don’t find Campbell as credible as Harvard.</p>

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<p>The students are in a position to personally know Campbell, and that counts for a lot.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom, BRAVO! I completely agree with you that Harvard would not be taking such a firm stand on this if they didn’t have solid evidence of her guilt. There is so much more that is not being said in the media as to not jeopardize the case.</p>

<p>Things about this girl are surfacing against her. Sounds like she’s taking desperate measures to try to not make the last 4 years at Harvard a waste.</p>

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This is a quibble (as with many of my posts), but this student means DOWN the river. You sell people “down the river,” as in selling slaves to big plantations down the Mississippi. That’s what happened to disfavored slaves, and it was a very bad thing for the slave. Going “up the river” refers to going to prison.</p>