B.O.M.B.S issues follow-up statement about security harassment

Following multiple abusive incidents by an Event Security Staff (ESS) worker at a party hosted by Brown’s Organization of Multiracial and Biracial Students (B.O.M.B.S), the B.O.M.B.S Executive Board issued an additional statement on Monday discussing further action and responses to the situation. The E-Board pledged in their initial statement that they would be filing charges against the ESS officer in question and would be having conversations with Brown officials about how to prevent incidents like this from happening in the future. This recent statement details the results of those discussions.The B.O.M.B.S E-Board met with both the Interim Director of Student Activities and the Director of Residential Life on Monday afternoon. Perhaps the most immediately urgent issue addressed was ensuring that this specific ESS worker is no longer permitted to work security for student events on Brown’s campus. ESS workers are hired through an independent contractor, meaning they are not direct employees of Brown. The Student Activities Office (SAO) reached out to the contractor and made clear that this worker’s actions were extremely inappropriate and unacceptable on Brown’s campus. This worker will no longer be allowed to staff any student activity events at Brown. However, Brown Athletics also uses security from this contractor, and SAO cannot control their hiring process, but SAO is in contact with the Athletics Office.B.O.M.B.S is aware that the problem extends far beyond this one specific occurrence. In order to truly prevent something like this from happening again, it is not enough to prohibit one person from entering the campus. The E-Board addressed this in their meeting by calling attention to the tensions and power dynamics that come with security staffers at Brown student events. While it is impossible to completely prevent an imbalance of power between security staff and students, it is crucial that security is aware of the complexities of this relationship and understand how to approach it with tact and sensitivity. This is of particular importance for campus events that focus on creating welcoming spaces for students of color. Every ESS worker at the B.O.M.B.S party was white. The E-Board noted in their statement the additional dynamics at play due to the racial disparity between security staff and the students attending the party, and they urged the Brown officials they met with to push SAO and ESS contractors to consider diversity when bringing ESS workers onto Brown’s campus. The Interim Director of Student Activities and the Director of Residential Life are conscious of this issue and stated that they are working to combat it by talking with ESS contractors and requiring the contractors to be mindful of diversity when hiring staff for campus events.Finally, the E-Board talked about the “implementation of mandatory diversity/anti-bias training for the ESS staff.” While it is only in the early stages of development, SAO stated their plans to include specific training for ESS workers for SAO events in their portion of the Diversity Inclusion Action Plan.Although this particular incident spurred these actions, this discussion is underscored and supplemented by conversations that have been going on and will continue to go on between Brown students. The primary purpose of security staff is to create a safe environment for students. We can and should hold them to that standard. What is most important is to do what the B.O.M.B.S E-Board is doing now: to continue to problematize these intolerable and hurtful events and to take concrete, immediate action against them.The full statement can be found on the B.O.M.B.S Facebook page. Image via