Chief Cheesebro and WMPD host open forum to discuss campus safety

Arrest statistics, Good Griffin policy, general safety covered in presentation, officers share thoughts on emergency management

Thursday, Feb. 16, the College of William and Mary Police Department hosted an open forum in Sadler Tidewater A. Associate Vice President for Public Safety, co-chair of the Emergency Management Team and Chief of Police Deborah Cheesebro, Deputy Chief of Police Major D on Butler and other WMPD officers gave a presentation on general safety, the Good Griffin policy, the mass notification system and WMPD statistics.

After a round of introductions, Cheesebro and Butler started the forum with a discussion of WMPD statistics on arrests and traffic stops in recent months.

“Because what you can see in that time period, which is just short of two years, we’ve made 31 arrests,” Butler said. “Now, we’ve certainly apprehended more people committing crimes than 31, but as Chief Cheesebro mentioned, we have other ways of dealing with them other than arrest. And, you know, there’s some cases, [like] a felony case, we’re required to make an arrest, so we do so.”

Butler emphasized the department’s collaboration with the Dean of Students Office.

“The vast majority of our cases are referred to the Dean of Students Office, [and the

Department of] Community Values and Restorative Practices, so that you’re not going to court,” Butler added. “We’re not spending a lot of time in court. You’re getting educational materials from the Dean’s Office, and you’re not living with being arrested or jailed or locked up for the rest of your life.”

Sergeant Carlos Moran, who supervises the WMPD day shift, said students should not be afraid to reach out to WMPD for assistance.

“If something happens on campus, don’t feel as if you’re about to walk away in handcuffs or get a ticket or anything like that,” Moran said. “Don’t ever be afraid to call us if a friend had too many to drink. We’d rather get you first fast and get them to the hospital right away so they can get taken care of.”

Butler then discussed the College’s Good Griffin policy. The policy provides academic and conduct protections for students and witnesses if medical assistance is sought for the consumption of alcohol or other substances.

He noted that a similar policy has been enacted statewide and addresses situations that require bystander intervention policies.

“Good Griffin, it’s not called that, of course, but there are laws now in Virginia where if you’ve got basically bystander intervention and trying to get someone life saving help and that includes alcohol overdoses, drug overdoses, etc., the commonwealth exempts those folks from prosecution.” Butler said. “William and Mary has been doing that for a long time.”

Butler was referring to a section of the Code of Virginia that mandates legal protections for individuals who seek out medical assistance for individuals experiencing an overdose of alcohol or marijuana and remain on the scene.

Butler then laid out how WMPD has been navigating both the state and College policies.

“We used to put out, and this was many years ago, just to clarify with students, that Good Griffin didn’t apply to the police department,” Butler said. ”And now we can’t say that anymore because the commonwealth of Virginia requires that and our folks support it and always have. So we’ve been doing it longer than most agencies. Good Griffin applies administratively for criminal charges for us and administratively the university.”

As part of an effort to tackle substance usage issues, Butler said WMPD officers carry NARCAN nasal spray, which can be used to treat overdose emergencies. Butler said they have not had to administer the medication so far.

Cheesebro then discussed the mass notification system, which the WMPD utilizes to relay crucial information to the College community.

“What happens when we have something that we think is an emergency, and we have a very specific idea of what that means: What that means is there has to be some sort of threat that we think is imminent on campus. And then, the timing of giving that out is going to vary a little bit because we have to make sure that the information we send to you is accurate,” Cheesebro said.

Under the Clery Act, federal law requires the College to notify the community of certain incidents through timely warnings. According to Deputy Chief Butler, crimes covered by the law are called “Clery crimes.” These include generally serious offenses such as criminal homicide, sexual assault, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft, aggravated assault and others.

For a timely warning to be issued, the crime has to have occurred on campus.

“The last thing we want to do is constantly be putting out stuff and then have to retract it and say, ‘Oh, that wasn’t real,’” Butler said. “You know, you get the cry wolf thing where people think it’s probably not real anyway. We want it to be when you see it, it’s real. You know it’s real.”

Cheesebro emphasized the need to be careful and not tamper with any ongoing investigation that other jurisdictions are handling.

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Fire in ISC lab room promptly extinguished

Tuesday, Jan. 14 at approximately 7:29 p.m. a small fire occurred and was promptly extinguished in the Integrated Science Center. According to the Collegeʼs Emergency Management Team, the exact cause of the fire is still under investigation. The Collegeʼs police department, the Williamsburg Fire Department and the York County and Newport News Hazmat Material Response Team units all responded to the incident.

“ISC 1 is all clear this morning except for room 2070 following a small fire in there last evening,” the Emergency Management Team wrote in an email to the College community. “The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Though there was minor damage [to] the lab space, we are thankful no one was injured.”

Emergency Management Team Co-Chairs Ginger Ambler and Deb Cheesebro sent two emails.

Lemon Project Director Jody Allen re ects on career

EMMA HENRY // FLAT HAT NEWS EDITOR

Dr. Jody Allen Ph.D. ‘07 originally thought she was on her way to a career in social work when she received her undergraduate degrees in criminal justice and political science at the University of Delaware and her masters degree in criminal justice from Michigan State University. What she did not expect, however, was to end up as an assistant professor of history and Robert Francis Engs Director of the Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation at the College of William and Mary.

“I realized that I’d always wanted to study history, but I had been guided away from it by my high school guidance counselor because, at the time, I didn’t want to be a teacher,” Allen said. “She said, well, if you don’t want to be a teacher, that’s all you can do with a history degree, which now, of course, I know you can do many more things.”

Originally from Hampton, Virginia, Allen moved out of the state for her undergraduate and graduate studies and later took a job at Stony Brook University in New York. As time went on, she found herself ready to return to Virginia. Allen began working at Virginia Commonwealth University in their Residence Life department then took on the role of Acting Director of Minority A airs. Following her career at VCU, Allen attended the College to pursue a Ph.D.

In 2007, the College hired Allen as an assistant professor. In 2010, she became the rst director of the Lemon Project, an initiative which began a year earlier after students and faculty demanded that the College reckon with its past, speci cally its involvement with slave labor and segregation. e Lemon Project is part of the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium, which includes nearly 100 educational institutions across North America, Europe and the West Indies. e Lemon Project is named after a man who was enslaved by William and Mary in the late 18th, early 19th century,” Allen said. “ e idea was for it to be a kind of archival research project. But we gured out early on that it needed to actually not just be in the archives, but we also needed to get out into the community and work in the community and do some research.”

To Allen, the Lemon Project is an opportunity for the College to improve its relationship with the broader African American community within Williamsburg, as well as a chance to begin to answer questions about the College’s past.

“There’s this understanding that slavery is really at the foundation of this country,” Allen said. “A lot of institutions, even if they never owned or enslaved people as an institution, most institutions in this country have somehow benefitted from that labor source. So Lemon is William and Mary’s answer to this question.”

Allen also highlighted the Lemon Project’s genealogical initiative under the direction of Postdoctoral Research Associate Jajuan Johnson. Allen mentioned that the Lemon Project has received an extremely positive response from the student body and Williamsburg community.

“One of the things that we heard from a lot of people was this one phrase, that if you were Black you couldn’t be on the William and Mary campus unless you were pushing a broom,” Allen said. “And that was true. You know, you couldn’t, the campus was segregated. And so now you see all kinds of people from the community walking across campus with their dogs or just taking a walk or whatever. And Black people couldn’t do that.”

Allen mentioned that though she believes the College is developing a better reputation within the community, she recalled moments when she heard from students that guidance counselors would not encourage Black students to attend the College due to a concern that they would have an uncomfortable experience.

“What we’re responsible for now is what we do moving forward,” Allen said. “And I do think there’s a genuine desire to repair those breaks, those feelings, and to replace them or add on better experiences, positive experiences.”

Outside of the Lemon Project, Allen is working on her first book, as well as teaching a graduate course titled “The Miseducation of America.” Her inspiration for the course came from a t-shirt she saw in 2015 when local officials took down the Confederate flag outside the capitol building in South Carolina. The phrase on the shirt stated: “If you think this is hate, you don’t know your history.”