Fenton Johnson’s letter to University of Arizona President Robbins regarding #TheArizona3

31 March 2019

Dear President Robbins,

I write in vigorous disagreement with the University Administration and UA Police response to the incident you describe in your campus-wide email below, which I believe is based in an incomplete analysis of the events.

I am the university professor whose class (ENGL 310, “Survey and Practice of Memoir”) may have been, after the criminal justice class itself, the most directly impacted, since my class meets in MLNG 301 from 3:30–6 p.m. Tuesdays, directly across the hall from the room where the Border Patrol officers were invited to speak.

I assume you are in possession of the memo that I wrote the next morning to Prof. Aurelie Sheehan, my department head, describing the incident, but I will cut-and-paste it below my signature block.

On March 19, my class was discussing Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s memoir The Periodic Table, devoted to his years as a chemistry student in northern Italy, just prior to World War II. Levi interrogates his experience, at various points asking at what point between 1937 and 1941 ought he to have realized that he, an assimilated Jew whose family had been forcibly evicted from Spain centuries earlier, would become the targets of the men in uniform. The March 19 demonstration created a superb pedagogical opportunity that I took advantage of the following week, when I posed Levi’s situation and question to the class. Is it possible that some years hence we might look back and see these Border Patrol officers appearing in the University hallways as harbingers of a similar movement? Let us hope not, but the asking of that question, and the effort to prevent the repetition of similar events, is why we study history.

As I came to reflect more on the events of that afternoon, I realized that my concern — not much shy of panic — originated from seeing the uniformed Border Patrol officers in the hallway. With no advance notice, preparation, or guidance from the administration as to how I, as a faculty member, should respond to the situation, I was thrown on my own devices.

However I disagree with the immigration policies of the current U.S. presidential administration, I support the right of the faculty member leading the criminal justice class to invite officers charged with carrying out those policies. But given the widely-publicized incidents of Border Patrol abuses, and the legitimate tensions and concerns among University of Arizona students, staff, faculty, and support personnel, the Border Patrol officers were irresponsible in appearing in a classroom building in uniform. They, and/or the faculty who invited them, should have been sensitive to the predictable and distressing impact of their appearing as a uniformed phalanx. Having been given no context for their visit, I immediately and reasonably assumed they were on campus to detain students whom they believed to be undocumented. I retreated from the hallway to my classroom because, in effect, I decided that was the best way to protect students who might be their target.

I don’t know what I would have done had the officers knocked at my classroom door, but it was that prospect, not the demonstration, that distracted me from teaching my course. I was wholly preoccupied with imagining what I would do if that knock at the door came. Demand paperwork? Bar the door? Cooperate under protest? What were my rights? My responsibilities? What are my students’ rights?

As an older gay man who had good reason to fear and mistrust uniformed officers for nearly half my adult life, I am well aware of the visceral reaction inspired by a group of men in uniform. I experienced that reaction when I first saw them in the hallway — and I am at least protected by the all-but-invincible color of my skin. I can well imagine the response of any dark-skinned person, even those who are documented U.S. citizens. Given the University’s newly-established designation as a Hispanic-serving institution and our commitment to creating a safe and welcoming learning environment, the University of Arizona has a responsibility to counter the ignorance-based rhetoric that characterizes the current national debate on these issues. As adults in higher learning with, one hopes, the perspective of time, knowledge, and experience, the faculty and administration have a responsibility to act in ways that anticipate our students’ reactions to that fear-based, grandstanding rhetoric. Rather than prosecuting the students, we should be grateful to them for drawing attention to a serious lacuna in University policies and procedures.

The officers should have been well aware of the reaction to their uniforms and should have known to conduct their classroom visit in plain clothes. In the best of all worlds, they and/or their teacher would have anticipated as much — but I am a teacher with decades of experience, and I know how impossible it is to anticipate every outcome of every action.

For the University police or its administration to prosecute the demonstrators in any way is, in my judgment, overreacting to a situation that the officers and the teacher in question created, however unwittingly. Far from defending free speech, it sends a message that students may voice their opinions only in circumstances and under conditions dictated by the police and the Administration. It runs the risk of elevating a misunderstanding and error in judgment to national attention. It runs the grave danger of giving the appearance of the University allying itself with anti-immigrant prejudices.

Your earlier email presented a more appropriate administration response than prosecution: Clarifying under what conditions, if any, uniformed Border Patrol personnel may be invited onto campus, what advance notifications should accompany their appearance, and what should be the appropriate faculty response to a Border Patrol attempt to interrogate or detain a student.

I welcome the opportunity to speak about that afternoon. I include my cell number below my signature block, as well as the text of my original, 3/20 email to my department head.

Yours,
Fenton Johnson
Professor, Creative Writing Program
University of Arizona

20 March 2019

Dear Aurelie,

As we discussed this morning on the phone, I’m writing to describe an incident that happened yesterday afternoon, Monday, 3/19, in the 3rd floor classroom wing of the Modern Languages Building.

Around 4:45, in the course of teaching undergraduates in MLNG 301, I had assigned my students several in-class discussion questions when I stepped into the hall for a drink of water, to find four uniformed US Border Patrol officers gathered outside a classroom door (MLNG 302?). Because I have at least one student of Latinx origin who happens to appear scruffy, I thought it best to return to my classroom. I supervised and discussed the completion of the exercise, then announced our customary ten-minute break, though I notified the students collectively that there were Border Patrol officers in the hallway.

As the students returned from break, I could hear the voices of a small group of demonstrators, chanting and cursing the officers, alternately in Spanish and English. I did my best to resume our discussion — of Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz — but the noise from the hallway was distracting, to put it mildly, for both students and me (maybe me more than the students, since I made the inevitable association between the literature we were discussing and the action in the hallway). Finally I ended class early, around 5:30. As we were gathering our materials to leave, I could hear the demonstrators — presumably following the Border Patrol officers, though I don’t know this for sure — leave the building, cross the breezeway, and proceed, or so I assumed, through the third floor of MLNG to the north exit.

That’s as much as I know. I don’t know if the Patrol was looking for a particular person, or if this was part of a more general operation. The Border Patrol officers did not knock on my classroom door; I can’t say if they did so on another door, or entered another classroom. But this is the first time in my 19 years at the University that I have experienced a police presence in the hallways that did not seem to result from a specific incident — that seemed, as best I could tell, proactive on the part of the officers.

I report it to you because I question whether this is a one-time incident or whether this is, under the terms of the “national emergency,” the new normal. What are our responsibilities and rights as faculty? May we forbid Border Patrol officers from entering the classroom, or request that they produce documentation or evidence of administrative or legal authorization? Can they arrest and remove students while a class is in session? Does the university have / should we develop a policy surrounding cooperation with, interrogation of, or resistance to Border Patrol personnel?

I’d like to think my questions, though to me self-evident, may be unnecessary, but given national and international events, I believe they’re worth consideration and perhaps attention.

Feel free to forward this to Dean Jones or other authorities, and/or to our colleagues as you think appropriate. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.

Yours,
Fenton Johnson
Professor, Creative Writing Program
University of Arizona