U of M President Eric Kaler’s new policy on reporting crime on the U of M campus is fairly straightforward:

The University of Minnesota plans to reduce the use of suspect descriptions, including race, in crime alerts sent to the campus community. President Eric Kaler described the new approach in an email sent to students, staff and faculty on Wednesday. Kaler said suspect descriptions will still be included when they help identify a potentially dangerous suspect, but that when the description is too general, the university will “note that only a limited description of the suspect(s) is available.”

If that sounds foolish to you, check this out:

The decision came after a dialogue about the issue on campus, which included a student-led occupation of Kaler’s office earlier this month.

I wouldn’t call it a dialogue as much as it’s President Kaler caving into the demands of some overly PC students:

Thirteen demonstrators were taken into custody Monday night after staging a sit-in at University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler’s Morrill Hall office to complain that the university is not committed enough to diversity.

The protest, organized by a group that calls itself “Whose Diversity?”, ended just before 8 p.m. Monday. A tweet from the Twitter account for Whose Diversity, @WhoseDiv, said all 13 were released by 4:37 a.m. Activist Tanja Andic said protesters believe that the university merely gives lip service to the idea of diversity on campus. “They talk about investment in diversity,” Andic said. “They talk about having it as something that benefits the university rather than something that is about basic ethics, and justice and serving everybody.”

That’s proof that the inmates are running the U of M asylum. It’s also proof that Kaler doesn’t have the spine to stand up for common sense. This tells me that President Kaler doesn’t have much in the way of common sense himself:

“We have heard from many in our community that the use of race in suspect descriptions in our Crime Alerts may unintentionally reinforce racist stereotypes of Black men, and other people of color, as criminals and threats,” Kaler wrote. “That in turn can create an oppressive climate for some members of our community, a climate of suspicion and hostility.”

That isn’t the worst news. This is:

Tori Hong, who helped organize the sit-in Feb. 9, called the decision a good first step. “We do think that it’s not enough, and that the university it still being somewhat superficial about it,” she said. “So we’re going to keep pushing the administration to think harder and keep engaging in these conversations.”

Ms. Hong thinks that this is just the first step. She’s probably right because President Kaler doesn’t seem to have the will to fight for common sense. The thought that the campus shouldn’t include a person’s race “when the description is too general” is foolish. It’s insulting that these student activists pushed President Kaler into this decision based on the thought that suspect descriptions “may unintentionally reinforce racist stereotypes of Black men.”

Technorati: Eric Kaler, University of Minnesota, Political Correctness, Crime Alerts

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