On September 13th, the chair of the Campus Safety and Health & Counseling Center Committee sent out an email notifying the student body that the Knox County Sheriff will “start issuing citations to jaywalkers, especially on the roads parallel to Middle Path.” Before I talk about my feelings on this issue, I want to say that I am not trying to “shoot the messenger.” Bob Hooper and the Chair of the Campus Safety and Health & Counseling Center committee did not make this decision: the Sheriff did. Bob Hooper is a wonderful, kind man doing his best to keep the students safe. The email was sent out in the interest of transparency. While most students spent the afternoon complaining about the inconvenience and how it would be a hard habit to break because they are from the city, I spent the day worrying.
This Policy Will Affect Minorities Differently
I want to take this time to remind everyone of the racial profiling incident that occurred last year. For those who don’t know, three black high school students participating in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop were stopped by the deputy for walking in the street. The situation escalated when one of the students chose to walk in the grass instead of Middle Path. The deputy saw this as an act of disrespect and after demanding to see the student’s ID, he threatened to write the student up for jaywalking. If you want to see the original Collegian article, it can be found here. The students felt that they were being targeted for their race, and I think that they are correct. This is not the only incident that I have heard of where a Knox County deputy has pulled over a minority student for “suspicious behavior,” and I fear that it won’t be the last. The hard truth of this new policy is that it will most likely affect minority students disproportionately. Knox County is not a diverse place, so it’s easy to imagine that some Knox County deputies (like the one previously mentioned) may have racial biases that they have never had to confront before and therefore don’t know that the biases exist. That’s not to say that all Knox County police officers are racist, but some might be more likely to pull over minority students than white students. For more information on “Walking While Black,” check out this article co-published by ProPublica and the Florida Times-Union. In Jacksonville, Florida, more black people were more likely to be cited for tickets, especially erroneous tickets, such as “failure to cross the road at a right angle or the shortest distance” or jaywalking. While the discrepancy may not be intentional and black people may not be consciously targeted, the financial impact that it has on black citizens is very real.
This Policy Will Affect Students From A Lower Socio-Economic Background Differently
Tickets cost money. For me, if I get a fine over $100, there is a good chance that I will not be able to afford tuition for the next semester. While I could not find the exact fine for jaywalking, minor misdemeanor traffic violations are around $140. Reasonably, I am terrified of being pulled over. You better believe that I am now taking every single crosswalk regardless of the inconvenience. However, it might not be that extreme. For some students, a ticket might mean that they can’t afford all their books for the next semester, or that they won’t be able to go to the VI with friends or grab snacks from the Market. For some students, this ticket will be hard to avoid. Students from cities see jaywalking as second nature, and to call back to the last section of this article: minority students may be more likely to get pulled over. There are many Kenyon students who are not in my situation and don’t have to care much about this new policy, but there are also students in my situation. There is more to this policy than increasing safety. I am not convinced that it’s anything more than a power move.