Good evening. I would like to call the Wednesday August 9th RTCC meeting to order our first order of business welcomes and introductions Look to you Nika to kick us off. Okay, great. Thank you. Are there folks there too? Only Lance. Oh, hello, Lance Okay, so my name is Nika Oaks, and I am the new director of our TCC And it would be incredibly helpful to have all of your names again now that I'm not as nervous Sam Cooper Brookfield work down here in Randolph. I'm Ashley Lincoln. I work in Randolph Center I live in Randolph Center and I work at Gifford Nathan Wright I live here right in Randolph, and I work for the radio Vermont group. Thank you Alright, are there any petitions to come before the board? Hearing none, we will move. I think go directly to you Nika again for the staffing update Thank you so I wanted to let everybody know that Stopping is going as I can say it really well At RTCC we had several openings and in the last three weeks We've been able to fill or be in process to filling several positions and currently the only position that I Do not have at least a viable candidate for is the paraprofessional position in the special education department So I'm very excited about all the new people that have come on board Will you just go over the programs that will have new teacher leaders this year? Yes so some of these people like I said are still in process and have not been fully hired yet, but We have you let me say names just say the name of the program the name of the program automotive diesel health careers Thank You pre-tech we also have a new curriculum coordinator a new school counselor and two teachers aides that'll work throughout the building And I think that's new math and every oh my gosh, right that was a lot of good because there's that's right additional staff Thank you. Yes. That was a couple months ago. And I thank you. I can't have them Yes, so we have One new math teacher and two new English teachers So thank you for that Two math classes So we basically Cut that cut that teacher to student ratio in those two fields Well, we had talked to because you're actually doing really well, so but we had talked to the Previous times about the fact that One of the pieces where the state is taking a look at the CTE centers is kind of basic skills for students You know making sure that they've got this foundational knowledge in those areas and it's it's weak across the state It's been weak here. And so they are recommending increasing the number of Poor discipline teachers that we have which is the purpose So in the old days when we just had the one math and the one ELA teacher, right? If you got a hundred and forty three students there, they've got that full workload themselves And that's not going to be an effective way for them to be able to connect and communicate So yeah, you hit it exactly on the head They cut the cut the student to teacher ratio in half and hopefully it's And our curriculum coordinator is going to be working very specifically with looking at each student's levels and deciding Instead of just them being in the overall math class or the overall ELA class They'll be looking more at or do they need a more advanced curriculum or do they need to learn some basics? and that will give sort of a range of opportunities for students to to move throughout that as they grow and change and also to have Teaching that is appropriate to where they are at their level. I Would say you can just keep on moving. Just keep moving. Yeah, that'd be great Robin the piece about current enrollment. Do you have the correct number? Thank you Okay, so yes, our current enrollment is hundred and sixty students right now. Thank you for that Do you want it broken down by each program? Is there any program of concern that doesn't have enough filled that we should be looking at? Not at this time Not at this time Like all together we'd have to count all those. Oh, okay. I mean if we just look briefly Otto is full Otto's full auto ag and video or full Construction currently has six students criminal justice has nine Culinary has eleven dental has seven diesel has 13 digital film has 19 Diversified has 17 Education services has seven Electrical has 10 Health careers has nine Manufacturing and fabrication has 14 and pre-tech morning class has 11 in it and pre-tech afternoon class has 12 So programs can have 16. Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry for speaking correctly. I'm curious like with your overall cap 16 right, so I just didn't count all those programs So how many students can you have in total I mean your facility what's the difference between kind of your number of programs multiply? Yes, so there's 12 programs. That's why I just didn't know. Okay. Thank you Well, yeah, but then you could that's pretty easily have another 32 and on half-day program in Pre-tech feasibly, but so there was would protect they count as half. Thank you 192 students if every program had 16, okay, and then pre-tech would be 12 in the morning 12 in the afternoon And you said we're currently at 160. Yeah Historically, of course COVID was a little bit weird You know going way back, you know 130 135 were good years. We had a couple years over like 143 So, you know what 160 is a healthy. Yeah, compared compared to what we've had in the past Typically we start out a Little bit higher. It'll it'll drop a little bit, you know, if it's if it's in the 155 157 range Are you going to be accepting any more students or is that just the number that you're starting off with Be getting into the school year. Are there any more students come between now and then? Okay? Okay I agree with you. Oh, okay. We're just trying to be protected Let's see any other questions about enrollment The next thing that I wanted to talk to you about in that packet that I gave you all Unfortunately, it's not in the It's not the first thing so you have to go to the last item the R2CC cell phone expectations So new this year we have purchased these clear boxes They're about 11 and a half by 10 Boxes and they have locks on them and so they're like a bike lock like the kind that you do with your thumb And so they're clear so you can see through them But when students come into the room we're going to ask everyone to put their phones into the box And then the teacher will close the lid They will be locked Leave it on the desk so students can see their phones because sometimes students get anxious if they can't see where their phone is But it stays there during the learning time and during class time They get their phone back when they change classes. So when they're in the halls walking to another class or when they're at lunch But the classrooms are treated just like any work Situation where your phones are away and quiet Um, so that is new this year So i'm just going to read the cell phone expectations here All students are required per R2CC school expectations to place their phones in the clear locked box provided by their classroom teacher Students may access their phones during lunch and passing times only Non-compliance with this expectation is a level two violation on the R2CC rubric titled refusal to follow phone expectations Any student who violates this expectation will receive the coinciding consequence on the progressive discipline rubric and i'll go over the rubric with you in just a moment But i would like your feedback on that and i'm wondering How you feel I applaud you for this. It's bold. Um, I agree a hundred percent with what you're doing My only concern would be are you ready to set parent Expectations and I and make sure we're ahead of it that they know You're not gonna text your kid during the day and he's not gonna or she's not gonna respond, right? So not till passing I agree with us a hundred percent because I think even in the real world in the workforce This is a big issue that I've seen a lot with businesses in vermont and throughout the country that I deal with Um And it's setting good expectations and focus for the students. I just want to make sure we're ahead of the curve With the expectation of the parents sort of sending the kids here. That's a really good point and and to that point I did send a Letter to parents and I outlined the expectation and I talked about the box. Hopefully It's understood by parents, but it was in the letter And it will be in other things as well and with the Reasoning that I hear a lot is well if there's an emergency I need to get hold of my kid blah blah blah blah So do you have those procedures in place where if there's an emergency it's clearly lined out how the parent can get hold of the student and I think we we're gonna have to go old-fashioned on them and say call the school and we'll find your student We know where your children are. Good. I just want to make sure that's very clear. Yeah Thank you As well, but a lot of times they still just reach them by phone. We've struggled In the last year with kids just texting their parents. I'm sick. I want to come home And the parent calls and says my kid isn't feeling while they're going home Well, have they gone to the nurse because protocol in the school is they go to the nurse So they need to see the nurse before they're permitted to go home So like we've had to have that conversation with parents several times And I think this policy also brings up what ashley brought up in the last meeting is more accountability Um being held more accountable not only students but parents that send their their children to the center So I really think that this is a great step in the right direction. Thank you. I appreciate that feedback And I like to we're not taking it away all day. They can check in between classes and see if there was some sort of Family emergency that could only be said through a text message. They'll see it And and then, you know, should they have an emergency? Of course It's in a clear box and yeah in their reach. It's just not accessible And I think that's a great compromise to make sure nothing's gonna happen. Thank you. Yeah Yeah, I would say I've always support that. I think that's great. Um Just be prepared for when you get One parent who's ready to rock and roll. We've seen this exact topic hit national headlines in florida dc and pencil and that philadelphia, so It won't it's not like no one's pushing back against it. So, um Just have those ducks in a row. I think I don't know what the emergency procedure is if there was a lockdown or a shooter in on the premises What we probably wouldn't have time to distribute the phones But the thing is about the phones is parents aren't supposed to be calling students phones Anyways because it interferes with the police and everything being able to communicate with the school and it causes chaos The parents show up where there shouldn't be parents in the middle of a situation So it actually would help in an actual lockdown emergency and an emergency the first priority is the children's safety Absolutely, not if they can get hold of their parents, right? So make sure they're in a safe spot You know exactly keeps them keeps the the people in the classrooms or wherever They are hiding Aware of what's going on around them right if you're on the phone you're less aware But it also usually when the shooters are walking through the hallways. They're in a little bit of a heightened state They're not quite rational They are drawn to noises So if people are chattering on the cell phones or the cell phones are clicking and beeping and then that's going to attract attention So, yeah, it's good. It's probably even better that they're out of their hands I think this is great. I wish this was in place A long time ago. I think it's fantastic My question though is are your colleagues in the field and their adherents to this Consistently in the classrooms that is my expectation and that will be followed up with By me if the teacher decides that they're not supportive of this, but I don't see that being a problem It's great Thank you. I have a question Sometimes Students will go out in the field so wondering Are the cell phones going to be left in the classroom when they're going on? I imagine that they're going to take the box with them. Okay Great. So it's totally portable not too heavy. It's very small. Okay. Yeah, it's really it's it's as big as my Box, yeah, it's as big as my computer. So I think there's no reason why the box couldn't go with them Great. I think it even has a handle. I remember correctly. But you bring up a good point. Does that include smartphones? smart watches Because you can access your phone through your watch without it actually being it needs to include that. Thank you So we got to make sure that this policy includes any smart devices that are connected to the phone Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah I had not thought of that. I get a lot of hate email for bringing that up you watch I will put that up to you But it's nice to share I don't have kids or anything right. I mean I know how that works. So yeah, I would put smart watches Or any connected devices to your accounts on your phones Also doing that block and it sounds big enough to hold it would hold watches Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah Yeah, and the other choice that they can leave it on this or in their car sure can Yes Okay, perfect. Good job. Thank you um Okay, so from there the attendance policy Or expectations not policy so That is The page before the last page All right, so I hope this makes sense and is really clear But let me know if if you find it confusing So I began with this I began this whole process with the unexcused absences because I I believe those to be the biggest problem You can have 18 absences unexcused Before you are No longer a student at rtcc But there are many stop gaps before that so that we can hopefully Um mitigate this from happening So at three unexcused absences, we will make a phone call home and send an official letter saying that your student has now had three absences unexcused At five unexcused absences they'll have a meeting with their school counselor to see if maybe there's a reason why they've been absent so much A phone call home and again a letter sent to document that they're not five At eight unexcused absences They will no longer be eligible for the national honor society or eligible for work-based learning going out on co-ops Of course, we'll call home and send another letter to document At 12 unexcused absences They will meet with the entire team all of the people that work with them So myself The school counselor if they have a 504 or an IEP that would be christie argwin Their program teacher and anyone else that may work with them such as their math or ela teacher Or a paraprofessional that works with them that we may invite their family And the student Then we would send notification to the sending school Of course, we'd make the phone call home because that's how we're getting everyone here and then send a letter home At 17 unexcused absences we're meeting with the entire team sending notification To the sending school and a letter sent home And that is the last stopgap before the 18 unexcused absences Which would result an excusal from rtcc in loss of all credit It wouldn't be eligible for recognition night or and sending schools would be notified And the final meeting would happen with administration before being Um Requested to return to their homeschool I think that This is a very forgiving Amount of unexcused absences. I think it's too much. I kind of do too And can I just interrupt real quick? There's certain classes that have a waiting list or people that didn't make it in This is a long time to figure out someone doesn't want to be there or another kid could really benefit from the program It is a long time. Is this a state mandate or is this our own mandate that we saw The previous Last year we allowed 22 unexcused absences So this is a cut from that And it is the maximum I believe lane when we looked it up the maximum allowed by the state of ramon so they the With the state of ramon what it says is that students can't miss more than 10 percent of the total number of fees In high school or at rtcc to actually have it count as them earning credit for a year And so the 18 is about that 10 mark. It's here. It certainly can be more restrictive There was a discussion A little bit in terms of The idea that here we are, you know, we're trying to prepare students for the next stage of their lives. This is the Students a lot of will be going out to the workforce. What does the workforce expect? And shouldn't we be setting, you know standards and expectations that coincide with what the workforce is going to expect of them? I don't know. He's been doing a good job of that. That would allow 18 unexpected Absences installed the employee I don't know. I mean you shake your head not too actually so usually 10 in primary, right? Yeah Three strikes you're out kind of thing. I mean I'm talking about total assences.  It's going out.  Hey Williamstown on South Royalton, Rochester, wherever We've already got eight on excuse absences in the first month Or in the first two months. We this is a waiting list to get into this class I would like to contribute that. I think that every time a letter is sent home the sending school should be notified I think that's fair. I mean documentation Yeah documentation and it will also give the sending school the sense that they're being included in the problem Well, you know the stigma Tech schools, right? Yeah for years. We're trying to break that stigma. This isn't a place you send kids I don't want to learn like we want to There's a different type of learning and we want to Build that culture and foster that interest but at the same time we don't want We're not here to send troubles or Uninterested kids into trade just for a place to go Right. This isn't a place for kids to go. This is this is a place to grow in a trade and become valuable outside of school So are we saying that expectations with the schools that send their kids here that We're tightening the reins because we're really Focusing on what's beneficial for the students that are here I'd like to respond to you because I I'm going to be very honest and say that my first draft of this had 10 absences Like you're saying and In a conversation with my husband who was an educator. I said, do you think 10 absences is too little for For being excused from school and not being allowed to come back and He thought about it and he said I do because we have a mental health crisis going on with kids And there are kids who may feel like Like they're they could be being bullied or they could be very depressed Or maybe they have a parent that they rely on to get them to school And that parent is unable to get up in the morning and get them to school In those cases if that was a situation 10 absences could happen very very quickly and we may not fully understand The the difficulty that that student is facing Until it gets to a greater extent And being a licensed school counselor myself that really appealed to me because I know that there are people that are struggling with things like that and so I then wanted to extend it I was just gonna say that only with a doctor's note Only with a doctor's note So again, and I and I understand I'm not saying it's right And and my compassion side's like oh god, I feel for those kids But taking my compassion and my personal feelings to the side What do we want to set for expectations of rtcc? We don't want to not support those kids but after 10 absences that you know I think after eight you got to look at a pattern and be like, okay, what's going on and then start your investigation right like really Get mental health professionals to come in somehow or or have that connection or really start talking to a student be like What's going on? Are you having a hard time getting to school because of transportation if you don't have to get into family? What is your obstacle sooner? Because then we can maybe come up with a plan like do you need a bus route? Do you need a ride? Do you know be more progressive earlier on how to help the child instead of Waiting to 12 or 17 because they're already suffering for And they're already so far behind in the class. I mean, they're really far behind after Right by us. We're talking unexcused like not doctor's appointments or having mono or getting cova right like that We're talking unexcused after five. They're probably They're already a week behind class time Like should we jump on it sooner? Like a bigger meeting Sooner like at a like do we do the five we have a meeting with the school counselor and that is the point of it Is to find out what do we bring in the parents at that time as well at five? We certainly could be like, hey, we're just concerned Here's our expectations.  We've already got five on excused. We just want to open a conversation And just move it down That's my thought is just more proactive. I don't know what everybody else I'm curious about other thoughts and I thank you for all of that. Yeah Sorry, go ahead I agree. Um, I also think we should take into consideration that they are still All children 100. So, um, I think yes Um 18 is a lot, but we have to think about Um, you know, it could be on the parents end as well And not holding the student 100 percent accountable for something that may be going on at home Because they are still children. Yeah, that was my like real concern um, just if They get a ride to school and their parent is not able to drive them for whatever reason And then they get There's every little thing that's not so cookie cutter, right? Yeah Oh, my my mom's car Died and we can't get here. But being that we have that conversation at five Okay, can we help in some way more of like a Early concern check in But this gives the opportunity for the administration to approve an absence like that's based on neglect or homelessness On yes towards the bottom toward the bottom. So excused would not count on this rubric. Is that correct? Excuse does not count on the rubric. It excused absence. No, it doesn't count. No, we just haven't made it down to the I haven't gotten past that. So it's just the unexcused Yeah, if you didn't meet the definition of what's excusable, then right, this is the category, right Maybe I should continue with the parts below it just and maybe that'll explain a little bit more So, um at the asterisk there, it's two unexcused tardies and or early dismissals will equal one excuse unexcused absence And then we have here attendance along with other professional skills will be assessed in every program and will impact rates Both excused and unexcused absences impact credit attainment. Please be present on time and attentive Examples of excused absences from rtcc would include a medical or other required appointment with an official note required A religious holiday a court date bereavement or other reasonable absences as approved by the administration So my car broke down on the way to school And we needed to wait for triple a would be one of those reasonable Absences approved by administration quick question. Yes, what is considered a tardy? Is coming in at two in the afternoon and getting out at 2 20 Right a tardy Or is that a full day of missing so that's that's skipping a whole bunch of classes So that you missed the day 9 o'clock in the morning When class starts at 8 30 we haven't gotten that far in discussing, but I would say no later than five minutes past the start of class Um something around that but I do need to discuss that further Perfect I mean some of our teachers in the past would take attendance right at nine o'clock because that is when class started And so anybody who came in after nine o'clock in those programs was marked tardy because that is how that teacher felt Other teachers wouldn't take their attendance until 9 15 So linda and I would see people come by at 9 0 5 9 10 And we would write them down as tardy But then when the attendance was taken and it came up When the teacher took attendance they were in the classroom. So they weren't marked tardy So does that need to be a policy right? Yes? We will have a specific time that will be that attendance must be taken by this time Yeah, okay, I think that's vermont defines that a minimum of four hour day To count as a day Four hours like if you try to have a half day, you need to have four hours. Okay There's also language in there for a minimum per week, but let's just stick with that. Yeah, like um as great Do you have to eat lunch as well? No, they they usually just call that um you can I would say You know if they're not here probably by 11 That's that's a full day you come in But then the problem that you get in doing that is if the kid comes in at 11 30 and is getting docked for the entire day They're going to say screw it. Why do I come in at all? So there's that that balance point Yeah, so if the kid comes out at 11 30 to get me more of a distraction to the classroom Then if he doesn't come in for a whole day and disrupt the other students, that's a hard Yeah, but it's it's kind of funny because the rules rules can dictate what behaviors you can expect So if a student knows that if they come in after 11 30, they're not going to get credit for any part of the day Then the majority of them are going to say then why bother coming in? And that's even if it's excused Uh, no, not excused different ballgame. Okay, just on excuse Turning from tardy, you know at the at what point in time does the tardy turn into a full day? Okay Yeah, and will you check to see if taking away work based learning is allowable under act 177 Which gives students access to flexible pathways for learning Like is it allowable to take that away? I'm not sure if I don't know So I'm asking 177 act 177. It's like flexible pathways multiple pathways to learning. It's a whole big Vermont act Okay Yeah, uh This isn't draft form, right? Yeah, this isn't public I guess In my hearing of the different concerns in the room I like kind of the left half of it Um With maybe a little bit more engagement Uh With parent and counselor involvement earlier on Okay, um I think the 12 17 18 If you were to shave each of those by two I think you'd get into a I think it would be More appropriate Yeah, so it'd be 16 15 and 10 so you run it you run a business if somebody is chronically absent at one point in time Are you going to tell them? Right, so that's that's the yeah, that's a big question. I I'm talking unexcused on it. Yeah unexcused for me it would be Depending on the value of the employee Would be six or eight Um You know people have their stuff, but obviously the pandemic has upended a lot of that And created a lot of wiggle room. So I guess I'm in favor of being more rigorous on the latter half Maybe shave it by three But I also recognize this mental health issue I recognize the inequities in enrollment and You know family dynamics For one person Well, and then you get into excused absences and somebody can call triple a each time or Figure that figure out how to gain that system. Then that's a whole other thing. So I think getting a little bit more rigorous on the second half of it would be good And a little bit more involvement on the front half to Nathan's point about Uh Waiting lists and just people's eagerness to to be in the learning environment Thank you It might not be a bad thing either. This might be the automotive wasn't it's not their thing They're not engaging. They don't want to come to class. Okay. So is that is that an issue? Is that like It's not what I thought it was. Okay. Well, let's get let's get ahead of it But there's a there's a good reason, you know in the way that this was modeled for the check-ins that that they developed And that's so that you read that stuff out, you know Is is is the kid getting bullied not telling anybody is that why they're not showing up? Is that you know, is that why we've got an excused absences? Are they not? Um engaged in the program do they have something horrible going on in the home life that nobody knows about Nobody's helping them with you know, those are the things that can get revealed when those conversations happen with the students You know, they're approached in a in a good way, which I know they will be So I think we've had some really great conversation and I my two cents on this is I think the max should be 10 Okay, um as unexcused in that again These groups these classes are very small and intimate in size with 16 students So I'm going to assume that there is going to be a real quick understanding from those teachers as to the The students that they're with And the involvement could have been much earlier on with that student if they foresee an issue I think you've done a nice job rounding out your program with having more resources within the technical center Where there's going to be people who can quickly react if there is an issue Um in my opinion if you put this in front of a student and they see 18 they're going to go to 17 And I think that that is only setting not only the program of for failure It's the other classmates who are showing up and are engaged and are trying to actively Receive an education that's going to set them up Because I'm not scared until I hit 18 And the exact same thing to me this morning. I mean we have had students in the past who have been like Oh, okay, so I'm only at 14 absences. So I've got like six or eight more that I can go I've got plenty of time. I think that's a culture of people coming into the workforce. How much eto do I have? Oh, I can okay. I got two hours. Okay. I'm not there yet to the right up. Okay. I think you've been given Um Really, this is a gift in that you get to start with a clean slate on at the end of this month when you welcome students into the technical center And you're setting the stage that these are the expectations moving forward and have that very Clearly documented like you have done, but I think it needs to be stricter. Okay. Thank you And I also encourage talking to the teachers and getting feedback that will happen Because I think a lot of people like man 10 I'm ready to jump out my window at by time. I hit 10 You know, like really get because you want your employees happy too, right? You want to find that balance where you don't want to have turnover in staff? So, you know, get feedback from them too and just kind of see where they're at. That will absolutely happen I definitely wanted to hear your opinions First before, you know to present my best Version. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Did you want to add anything? No, okay. Thank you Thank you for all your feedback um, okay now with that being said here is Our proposed behavior rubric so with this rubric The point of it for me as the person that will be handling the discipline in the school is to Have a very clear way to discipline students Without having any bias or any unexpected consequences for the student This will be given once complete and and Perfected to families. It will be present within the school teachers will have it and students will have it They will be able to identify the action that they did And locate the consequence that's associated with their action without me having to give them The consequence they will be able to identify it um So for an example level one behaviors, I gave some examples so that people can kind of understand what does a level one behavior look like Being inappropriately dressed for a program like coming in with sandals when you know, you need steel toe shoes something like that Being late for class or having inappropriate interactions with other people Within the class or interrupting the learning process like someone who just keeps yelling out You know those basic things that you see in a classroom that that disrupt So the first offense is just going to be a conversation and processing with the present adults Whether that adult is the classroom teacher Or it could be the counselor who's coming to do some scl. It could be that the teacher was absent It's a sub whoever that is is going to Have a conversation and process with that person and it's their first defense. So it's not getting documented It's just a conversation if it happens again They will create an incident report made by the person who witnessed the event and then have a conversation with me If it happens a third time They will create an event an incident report made by the person who saw it happen A conversation with myself and the school counselor and then I will call their parent or guardian Um and discuss what's going on If it happens a fourth time We'll again make an incident report. We'll have a conversation between myself the student and the school counselor and the parent and the guardian will meet in person with me Additional consequences could go along with all of those things such as in school suspension Required community service potential lunch detentions or potential removal from rtcc depending on What the situation is So that is level one level two We're looking at things like drinking and possessing Energy drinks in school any kind of a safety violation excessive swearing skipping class vandalizing Recording or photographing others without their consent refusal to follow those phone expectations I talked about with the box in appropriate use of the school property or refusal to follow any of the directions by rtcc staff If they do it the first time they're going to have a conversation and process with the adult that saw them do it They're going to then have a conversation with me and then there will be other consequences that will be determined by me so those consequences There's a whole list and that's basically Many of the things that I just read the iss the oss the community service lunch detention Meeting with outside resources police involvement if necessary drug and alcohol counseling Depends on what the situation is and it's progressive So it gets more serious as the number of offenses go on you get to your second offense And you have all of those same things except that you're going to have A parent and guardian phone call and meeting as well as a meeting with me If you do it a third time there's going to be other consequences as determined by myself From my menu of consequences being appropriate to what the situation is And the fourth offense and it will go Progressively through so if it's a first first time offense We're going to look at it a little differently than if it's a third time offense. This is a third time We've had this conversation. We've documented it three times. We've talked to your parents This is now what's going to happen But it won't be a surprise to the student because they will see that it's moving in such a way that there will be a more severe consequence and then finally level three Is on the last page I'm backwards. It's not in the last page. Sorry Any bullying harassment a safety violation vaping use distribution possession of drugs vapes or alcohol Verbal or written threats to the safety of the school including the students and staff or repeated interruption of the learning process Physical fighting and disrespect to adults and repeated inappropriate behaviors of any kind theft and plagiarism So again, this is progressive um With all of each consequence being laid out by the number of offenses and with the addition of the additional possible Consequences at the bottom you see The asterisks if multiple actions occur at once the consequences will be based upon the highest level infraction Reports of bullying and or harassment are subject to additional consequences And the rtcc director reserves the right to amend the final consequence decisions Can make a suggestion. Yes, please. I would move vandalizing to level three It's a very illegal thing to do when you're outside of school to vandalize public property Good point. I would say the level ones are right on point with the offenses as you get to level three I wouldn't give them so many chances Well, let me ask you a follow-up question. Yep Vandalizing could be something very dramatic like spray painting a wall or it could be Writing your name with pen on your desk So that is why I put it in two because it depends on I guess it's the destruction of Private property and you have to do different levels of vandalism if you're ripping off bathroom stalls and making it unusable for other students That is a lot different than lg heart exactly on a desk, but it is a different series of Vandalism, so maybe we just need to be maybe minor and major. Yeah If you're vandalizing a student's car on the parking lot, that's a lot different as well, you know, like absolutely Different levels. So maybe yet just make that thing um, and the only reason I'm worried about the fourth offense third offense and even like In the second offense on level three is I'm thinking of the people that are getting hurt if there's fighting Are they not going to want to come to school because this kid has another three chances to Oh, so they wouldn't have another three chances. So let's say someone hit another student They would have an incident report by the adult that saw it They would have a conversation with me and the school counselor at the parent and guardian Would be called they would come in for a meeting and then you see other consequences as determined by rtcc director They would have five days out of school okay That would be the other consequences which is in the last column the iss or ss community service all of those things That's where I would tack those on possibly on first defense. It should say which may include removal from the program Yeah, like expulsion could happen on the first offense if it's serious enough Right if it's a serious enough. Okay. So that is that's other consequences and then removal from rtcc You want me to actually write it there? If they knew that on the very first defense that was a possibility It takes away a misconception that you'd have to do it four times to be removed. Okay Such as removal Got it. I don't even say anything with drugs alcohol fighting vaping safety violations I wouldn't hesitate to get the police involved just as a enforcement and I would say that this is What's going to happen in the real world if you do these things so I'm not saying you have to be arrested but just getting them involved and explaining to the People like this is not okay. Like and this is why and and really I don't want to strike fear but educate these kids that are That are doing that I want to be cognizant of time. Yeah I also want to point out that this has been a very good process And this is what an advisory team is supposed to look like in the sort of discussions that they should be happy Very helpful. Yeah. Thank you. And so, you know, that's hopefully going to become more and more the norm This team had always existed But across the district, you know, that was one of the focuses last year for getting the advisory Councils at every school so that they can have these discussions as they're Touching on these thorny topics that are really important. Yeah So Really good job I've made all the notes that you have suggested to me and I will make those corrections And I really appreciate you being here and just listening if you have any Concerns that you want to voice to me, please feel free to email I'll just throw in two six throw I'd get rid of fourth offense on all three levels. I agree And I don't notice cheating anywhere in level three. It it is See plagiarism is would cover would cover everything. Yeah, because you would be plagiarizing someone else's answer Just do like a dash cheating. Just okay to make it clear. You know what I mean? Yep Academic dishonesty, but I would agree with sam and I would remove fourth offense across the board Yeah, okay Okay, thank you very very much. Thank you. We'll make those edits. Thank you. I think this is On level two in additional consequences doesn't list any of the consequences It's a it's a title Thank you So in your packet we had the May 10th minutes Are there any corrections or edits? Hearing none, I'll take a motion to accept the minutes as presented Second All right, the minutes are approved as presented and There's no further business we will close and look forward to the next meeting Thank you so much


So thank you everyone for joining us. I'm so excited for this event. I'm so excited that y'all can be here today and so excited for our guests, Etienne Tocant and Bennett Capers and our fantastic moderator and fellow Iltaf Balas. I'll turn it over to them in a second. But I just wanna sort of situate this event a little bit to say that, you know, we're really excited at the Initiative for Representative First Amendment where I'm the director to sort of host events that sort of push our thinking of what constitutes the realm of the First Amendment. And that's one of the reasons I'm so excited to have this conversation today that's focused on sort of policing and the future of policing, specifically thinking from sort of an Afrofuturist lens on how that blackness sort of experiences of blackness more generally interact with the ways in which policing regulates our lives and our speech. So with that, you know, I'm gonna turn it over to our fantastic guests and get out of the way. But we're so excited to have Iltaf who's one of our fellows and now I guess a rising 2L at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and spending her summer at the Berkeley, hopefully learning all kinds of cool things about both the First Amendment and tech and policing who will be sort of moderating our conversation, asking some questions. And then about, you know, probably with 15 minutes left, we'll sort of turn it over to audience Q&A. So yep, thank you. Thank you again for joining us and Iltaf, take it away. Hello, everybody. So I'm really excited to be here having this conversation with you all. We got a lot of interesting discussions planned. So I'll just go ahead and jump on right to it and introduce our special guests. So first we have a professor at Janet Hussot who was born and raised in the South Bronx and is an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law starting this fall where he teaches various business law courses. His scholarship employs critical race theory and social and political philosophy to study community development, economic and environmental justice, contract law and legal history. He has a developing interest in the intersection of the First Amendment and critical race theory inspired by the Trump administration's violent response to the Black Lives Matter protest this last summer. He previously taught at UDC, Davis A. Clark School of Law and at the George Washington University Law School. Professor Tussant is also a graduate of MIT where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering and he went on to get a master's in environmental engineering at the Johns Hopkins University and his JD at Harvard Law School. And today we'll be discussing his piece, Blackness is Fighting Words. So please welcome Professor Tussant. And next up, we have Professor Capers. So in fall 2020, he joined Fordham Law School where he teaches evidence, criminal law and criminal procedure. He's also the director of the Center on Race, Law and Justice. He's a former federal prosecutor and his academic interests include the relationship between race, gender, technology and criminal justice. His articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in and this is a lot. So hold on tight. The California Law Review, twice. The Columbia Law Review, Cornell, Fordham, Michigan, Minnesota, NYU and the UCLA Law Review, among others. His thrice been voted teacher of the year and is an elected member of the American Law Institute, director of research for the Uniform Laws Commission and has served as chair of the AALS criminal justice section and chair of the AALS law and humanity section. Governor Cuomo has appointed him to serve on the judicial screening committees and he's also served for several years as commissioner on the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board. He is the author of Afrofeuturism, Critical Race Theory and Policing in the year 2044. So please welcome Professor Capers. And it would be great for both of you to give a brief background on your piece so everyone gets kind of an idea of what they're about and with this we'll start with Professor Toussaint and then we'll go back to the future and have Professor Capers talk about his piece before we move on to the question. Fantastic. Well, good afternoon everyone. I am honored to join this distinguished panel at my alma mater alongside my dear brother, Professor Bennett Capers who is a true role model for me personally and also a tremendous asset to the academy on issues of race, criminal law and social justice. I'm humbled to have this opportunity to share a few insights from my essay, Blackness Says Fighting Words in which I explore the issue of police violence during peaceful public protests through the lens of the First Amendment. If I were to summarize the focus of the exploration in a single sentence, it would be this, are there aspects of the First Amendment to the US Constitution that legitimate, promote or in the worst case justify police violence during their encounters with public protesters? Let me begin by describing my own introduction to Fighting Words. Where I grew up in the South Bronx, the wrong words could turn an innocent sparring match on the playground into a full out asphalt brawl. We were naive, young black boys in acting tropes of hypermasculinity. Often we would form a circle around the contenders laughing as they hurled jokes back and forth about athletic ability or sneaker selection. But inevitably as soon as someone uttered that dreaded phrase, yo mama, the playful exchange always took a turn for the worst. We all knew there was no turning back at that point. In the Bronx, the phrase yo mama was Fighting Words. As a black youth roaming New York city in the 1990s mastering the nuances of such Fighting Words is critical to maintaining friendships and keeping potential enemies at bay. However, during the presidency of Donald Trump, Fighting Words is seemingly taken on new meaning. Whereas the Fighting Words of my youth reflected bruised egos and differences of opinion, the Fighting Words of Donald Trump have normalized racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic rhetoric that too often has fanned the flames of violence, especially between citizens and police. The resurgence of protests by Black Lives Matter activists and their rallying cry, Black Lives Matter has ushered a global reckoning with the meaning of this violence. This project then considers the implications of this generation's acclimation of black humanity amidst the social tensions exposed during COVID-19. What has the Trump's administration's militarized response to public protest meant to a world still battling the scars of racial oppression, a wound laid bare by America's racially biased, aggressive and supervisory culture of policing? I would argue that black identity itself or blackness, whether articulated by the pure speech of racial justice activists who affirm black humanity or embodied by the symbolic speech of black bodies assembled in collective dissent in the public square has become Fighting Words in the consciousness of America, a type of public speech unprotected by the Constitution. What do I mean by Fighting Words? Well, let me begin by clarifying a few points about the contours of freedom of speech in the United States. In 1989, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan declared in Texas v. Johnson that if there is a bedrock principle under the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. Since 1791, white citizens of America have been empowered to peacefully march and demonstrate on public lands to petition the government for redress grievances. However, the Constitution and its bill of rights have maintained a complex relationship with its minoritized citizens, beginning with the Africans who were enslaved as the chattel of many of the Constitution's writers and continuing with their descendants who frequently live as nominally free but substantively second-class citizens. Prior to the Civil War, enslaved Africans were prohibited from assembling for education, for leisure, for worship, or for collective expressions of dissent in the public square. Slave patrols, precursors to modern American policing that comprise white men deputized to prevent rebellions by stopping any enslaved people who happened to be on the roads, searching them and preventing them from congregating, enforce these slave codes. When uprisings of the enslaved occurred, black men and black women were met with lashings, lynchings, and ultimately legal holdings that sought to perpetuate and justify their debasement. Yet even after slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, black codes were enacted across the United States to restrict the freedom of black citizens from restrictions on their right to assemble for leisure, to restrictions on their right to assemble for public protest. Although black Americans were granted access to the Constitution's bill of rights during the Reconstruction era, the rise of racial terrorism in the form of the Ku Klux Klan coupled with the refusal of law enforcement to protect black lives from the Klan's acts of violence stifled the First Amendment rights of black people. As scholars such as Brandon Hasbrook have argued, America's modern system of law enforcement then emerges as a badge and incident of slavery. In our modern age, little has changed as we've all seen as the constitutional rights of black and other minoritized protesters has increasingly come under attack. So where do fighting words come into play? It is important to remember that the rights granted by the First Amendment to the Constitution are not unconditional. And here I wanna drop a footnote for later discussion because the notion of what rights citizens should be granted by the state or what rights are inherent and should be recognized as absolutely central to the critical race theory and the Afrofuturist Project. In the United States, while the federal government cannot generally regulate speech based on its content, it can enact reasonable content and neutral restrictions on its time, place, and manner. Additionally, some categories of speech are given limited or no protection under the First Amendment. For example, some kinds of speech are considered so harmful, so injurious by themselves, they're very utterance, tending to incite an immediate retaliation or breach of the peace that they are deemed outside of the Constitution's protection. Such words are called fighting words. The fighting words doctrine originated in 1942 in the case of Czaplinsky being New Hampshire. Mr. Czaplinsky, a Jehovah's Witness, drew several complaints from the residents of Rochester, New Hampshire after defaming various religious sex while proselytizing. After calling the city martial a, quote, goddamn racketeer and a, quote, damn fascist, end quote, Czaplinsky was arrested and convicted under a state law that made it a crime to address any offensive, derisive, or annoying word to any other person who was lawfully in any street or other public square. Czaplinsky appealed his conviction and challenged the law, arguing that the city ordinance violated his freedom of speech under the First Amendment. However, in a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court held that Czaplinsky's, quote, fighting words incited an immediate breach of the peace and consequently they were deemed unprotected speech under the First Amendment's freedom of speech clause. The court considered Czaplinsky's words, quote, of such slight social value that any benefit that may be derived from them was clearly outweighed by the social interests in order and morality, end quote. Although Czaplinsky has never been overruled, the Supreme Court narrowed its scope in later decisions. Still in matters involving public protests toward the perceived racist actions of police officers, the fighting words doctrine raises important questions about the limits of constitutional protection for black and other minoritized citizens. Some courts have overturned convictions based upon local laws prohibiting the interruption of policing work with offensive language, affirming a sense that the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers. However, other courts have held that public expressions of dissent to law enforcement can constitute fighting words. Even more, some state and local governments have responded to such concerns by simply limiting the range of public speech that can be criminalized to only include fighting words, effectively granting police officers discretionary authority to determine what kinds of activities or public speech amount to criminal conduct. In other words, legislatures have bypassed wrestling with the racial tensions between law enforcement and minoritized communities by avoiding acknowledgement of the prevalence of implicit racial bias among police officers altogether. Rather than question why police officers routinely use pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, and other violent policing tactics in response to peaceful public protests about racial injustice, the doctrine threatens to publish people who anger police officers with their free speech. As a result, in my opinion, a sense of confusion remains, especially regarding public speech that decries racism at the hands of the police. Could the phrase black lives matter and similar expressions of speech that affirm the dignity of black lives or decry the injustice of institutional racism be deemed fighting words by police officers because they disturb the peace? Here I will serve a second footnote. Both critical race theory and the Afrofuturist lens would urge us to question, what do we mean by peace and for whom? The difficulty that courts have faced in determining whether the constitution protects public protests of perceived racist policing suggests to me that the notion of anti-racist speech as fighting words is still up for debate. Perhaps one reason for such ambiguity arises from the very concept of this orderly conduct, which I would argue is an inherently racist idea in the United States. When anti-racist speech threatens the commonplace in nature of police supervisory authority, even when delivered in response to unjustified, yet ubiquitous police aggression, it is reasonable to presume that police officers will perceive such language as fighting words that incite an immediate breach of the hierarchical social order. Another reason for the ambiguity of anti-racist speech as fighting words arises from the criminalization of disobedience to police orders. Not only do citizens struggle to determine when policing tactics are lawful, but they also face the risk of bodily harm or even worse death if they disobey a police order to challenge perceived unlawful conduct. Further civil rights lawsuits alleging violations of constitutional rights by police officers must confront, as we all have learned, the blue wall of silence, the weaponry of indemnification policies in police unions, and the protective shield of the qualified immunity defense. Maybe it is the very idea of blackness as something other than property that becomes fighting words in the eyes of American exceptionalism, a type of symbolic speech so harmful to white supremacy, so capable of inciting imminent lawless action, so disruptive of order maintenance policing, that it is deemed a peril to the veil of white supremacy that looms over the American constitutional order and consequently is prohibited from the public square. Maybe this explains why police officers arrive to be able to protest with guns and tanks and shields and gas long before the first stone has been thrown or the first rallying cry has been sung. The very utterance of the phrase black lives matter tends to incite imminent violence and unbridled rage from police in the city streets across America because if black lives matter, if black lives truly matter, well, so much of our so-called social order must be called into question. If the words black lives matter in the peaceful assembly of protesters also encapsulates the righteous indignation of minoritized citizens, discussions of black lives matter by activists and scholars evoked what Cornell West calls the prophetic pragmatism of the black radical tradition. Here I would drop a third foot note. If CRT reveals our current version of political economy as merely a genre of modernity, one shaped by a Western conception of what it means to the human, then in an Afro-futurist discourse about liberty, we must ask what does it mean to be free? This dynamic to me reflects unresolved tensions in the First Amendment's treatment of race relations in America. Such tensions, masked by seemingly neutral constitutional constructs rationalize the iron fist of the penal state in response to peaceful public protests, smothering the constitutional rights of black and other minoritized citizens by legitimating violence, not to quell social disruption, but rather to reinforce social control. In closing, I believe these racial tensions in the First Amendment reveal three insights that are important to the ongoing discourse on policing in America. A first unresolved racial tensions in the First Amendment, focusing here on ambiguities in the fighting words doctrine, perpetuate the racially biased, aggressive and supervisory culture of American policing. Such challenges are laid bare in peaceful assemblies of BLM protesters who petition the government for redress of racial grievances are deemed disturbances of the peace by police officers and met by violence police force. Actions that implicate the fighting words doctrine and call into question the contours of unprotected speech. Importantly, such discretionary authority reveals the misplaced focus of the fighting words doctrine or the First Amendment more generally on the inability of the recipient of fighting words to restrain themselves from violence and not on the actual substance of the word spoken. This framing renders the police officer as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to interpreting the meaning of black and brown protest speech. Second, such unresolved tensions in the First Amendment as conveyed by racially biased and aggressive police culture cast a dark shadow over the liberty of black and other minoritized citizens who experienced racism at the hands of police yet avoid acts of protest for fear of bodily harm or arrest resulting in a chilling effect on free speech. To be sure, modern courts rarely enforce convictions based on the usage of fighting words to disturb the peace. Notwithstanding does the existence of a legal regime that threatens to criminalize anti-racist public speech if it harms its target and incites an immediate breach of the peace even if such arrests are routinely unenforced by courts constitute a culture of suppression that silences dissent with fear of police retaliation. A rule of law driven by fear of the police not only distorts the ideals of liberty that underscores liberal democracy but it is also eerily reminiscent of the culture of slave patrols that threaten the lives of defiant black Americans and antebellum American. Third and finally unresolved racial tensions and the fighting words doctrine illuminates the embeddedness of racism in American police and culture more generally as critical race theorists have taught us this culture not only constructs and reconstitutes the social order by perpetuating stereotypes of minoritized communities as sites of disorder that require constant supervision but it also degrades the dignity of black and minoritized American by treating them as second class citizens unworthy of private autonomy while hindering the broader policing goal of minimizing crime. If I could ask one question of Afrofuturist that would be this, what does human dignity mean in a future version of these United States that has been rested away from a racist misogynist and settler colonialist vision of human being? Taken together, I think these insights suggest that until we as a nation wrestle with the racial subtext of modern policing a culture woven into law that silences the public protests of citizens in violation of their first amendment rights and rationalizes violence at the hands of law enforcement black America will remain at peril to the veil of white supremacy that looms over the American constitutional order. Importantly on note, this is not a call to transgress race or usher in an era of post-blackness and other scholarship. I note the importance of embracing the cultural specificity of blackness to dislodge the perceived neutrality of whiteness nor is this an attempt to essentialize black identity or black performativity as something to be pity. As Professor Imani Perry eloquently retorted I must turn the pity and gaze back upon any who offer it to me because they cannot understand the spiritual majesty of joy and suffering. Rather than simply this project for me seeks to bear witness to the absurdity and perversity of state-sponsored violence at any and all affirmations of black humanity and beckons America to a moral reckoning, a willingness to embrace anger, embrace rage, embrace the normality of fighting words and use it as a catalyst for change. So I suppose I'm up next. So I wanna start off by thanking Kendra and the other organizers for inviting me and Ilta for that great introduction. And I just have to say I'm so excited to be in conversation with Etienne and his exploration of blackness as fighting words. I will say in full disclosure I'm not a first amendment person. I'm a policing person, but just being at this event has gotten me thinking more about the intersections between the first amendment and policing. So for some years now I have been thinking and writing about police technologies especially with respect to their potential to make policing more efficient and transparent and also their potential to deracialize policing and make it more egalitarian. So my plan today is to revisit some of my thinking and build upon it. So specifically I want to build upon the article I wrote feels like a decade ago, I guess it was just a few years ago titled Afrofuturism Critical Race Theory and Policing in the Year 2044. So that project was inspired by projections that by the year 2044, the United States will tip from being majority white to being majority minority. So the project sort of allowed me to ask what the future could look like in 2044 when people of color make up the majority. And really in the ensuing years when people of color obtain political and economic power to sort of match their numerical power. And more specifically, how could some of the problems we've been wrestling with from mass incarceration to over criminalization to police violence be addressed when people of color hold the keys to both the courthouses and the prisons? Equally important, how could people of color harness technology to make policing both more efficient and more egalitarian? So to answer these questions, I looked to see how artists, cyber theorists and speculative scholars of color, i.e. Afrofuturist and critical race theorists have imagined the future. And with that said, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time in my brief time talking about Afrofuturism or critical race theory. I'm happy to talk more about that in the Q&A, but suffice it to say that they both have certain principles for Afrofuturism and embrace of technology for both Afrofuturism and CRT, a goal of disrupting hierarchies along lines of race, gender, sexuality, class, whatever, that lend themselves well to my project of imagining policing in the year 2044. So in my article, I suggest that in a future informed by Afrofuturism and critical race theory, technology itself would likely contribute to reduction in crime. So consider the technologies we already have and the future technologies we can imagine. So for existing and emerging technologies, think of the likely exponential increase in the use of surveillance cameras and eye in the sky technology. Think of the perception of facial perfection, I'm sorry, think of the perfection of facial recognition technology and other biometric technologies. Think of the likely instantaneous access to big data, the use of remote scanners to detect unlawful weapons, the widespread availability of short-range communication devices to obviate the need for traffic stops or even the availability of self-driving cars that obviate the need for traffic stops. Think of the potential likely collection of DNA data from every newborn or machine learning. All of this I argue can contribute to deterring criminal activity and improving apprehension. So first things first, it's just imagining what the future holds as we embrace more technology. We also make the argument that such technologies can even reduce unequal policing. And I'm just gonna focus right now on unjustified police violence, especially as it impacts black and brown communities. So increased surveillance alone is likely to deter some police conduct violence, but it could more importantly document police violence on the back end. And even more importantly, I argue in my paper that technology has the potential to reduce the use and need for excessive force. So scanners, for example, could tell police whether suspect is armed or not. Facial recognition technology combined with access to big data could tell the police whether somebody has a history of non-violence or not. And that's reducing the risk of escalation. We could even imagine technologies that allow police to disable weapons from a distance. Beyond this, I argue that technologies might be our best hope of overcoming the human biases we all know about. So we can imagine technologies that move us closer to real reasonable suspicion so that looks encounter stops and frisk turn on actual reasonable suspicion rather than the proxy of race or even the bubble from Etienne of the proxy of blackness is, you know, fighting words. So as I've written in my article, you know, you can imagine weapons scanners potentially telling the police that a bulge in a black teenager's pocket is nothing more than an old fashioned cell phone. But the white tourist who looks like he's from Texas really does have a gun. Facial recognition technology with access to big data could tell the police that the round driver repeatedly circling the block, in fact, works in the neighborhood and is probably looking for a parking space. And that the clean gut guy sitting in the park is in fact a registered sex offender too close to the playground. So in a way that's not intrusive, it would tell the police whether somebody's a troublemaker casing a neighborhood or a student returning home with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea, a burglar about to commit a home invasion, robbery or Harvard professor entering his own home, a thug with the gun or a police chief or trespasser attempting it into the Capitol building or a U.S. Senator, a mugger looking for his next victim or future U.S. Attorney General. And all of these are based on actual cases. It would also tell them that the white kid from Jersey who's driving around Holland is not there to score drugs but to see his black girlfriend. So the technologies I'm referring to, I think could be embraced in a future informed by Afrofuturism and critical race theory. These technologies that I'm referring to are likely to be consistent with Afrofuturism, some race of technologies that disrupt hierarchies along lines of race and gender. And they can certainly help to racialize policing and the kind of discretion that has long been a concern of critical race theory. So I'm gonna say a few words right here about policing and technology because usually this is where I get pushback from audience members. And the first pushback I usually get is why should we trust technology when the technologies we have seem to replicate and even exacerbate current racial inequalities. And people like refer to facial recognition technology or risk assessment algorithms. And I can see that point. Let's be honest, the current state of technology has a race problem, which is not surprising bias in bias out. And I also readily acknowledge that technology has been anything but an innocent bias standard when it comes to things like mass incarceration. So there's a cultural critic and digital artist by the name of Neatrice Gaskin who says historically people of color have been casualties of technologically enabled systems of oppression, a quote that I like. And I also like a quote from Ruha Benjamin, the sociologist and futurist at Princeton who's coined the term the New Jim Code, a player Michelle Alexander's the New Jim Crow to warn that technologies can perpetrate and exacerbate inequalities, especially when they have the veneer of being free from human influence and bias. But none of this suggests the bias technology is inevitable. Biases can be identified and eradicated or at least minimized. And I'm happy to talk more about this when we get to questions. So, but I will say it like just common sense, cameras do not automatically have implicit biases or suffer from unconscious racism, but people do. So that addresses the first pushback I tend to receive. Point two is this, my project is not only about imagining technologies that have been purged of biases, it's also about imagining more diverse people at the table in creating technology and in saying what kind of technology we want. It's about imagining a bottom up approach to technology rather than a top-down approach. It's about imagining the benefits that will flow or could flow when racial minorities have the agency to actually produce technology. The create code, recode, drop of remix. So to again borrow from Ruho Benjamin, what interests me is thinking about how techno science can be appropriated and reimagined for more just ends. Point three is this, I know I'm suggesting more surveillance and more technologies at the time in black and brown people are already heavily surveilled. I know this project may sound privacy diminishing, but what's often missing in discussions of privacy is that privacy has never been equally distributed.   So at least we'll go from hard surveillance by police to soft surveillance by cameras. So I know I'm leaving a lot of questions unanswered. I admit that in my paper, it sort of concludes with an acknowledgement that I'm leaving a lot of questions unanswered such as how do we map a way to this future? How do we make sure black and brown America does not simply replicate the inequality in policing that exists now? How do we gird ourselves against resistance for people who want to maintain the status quo? How do we prepare for the long game? These are questions I left open in 2018 when the article was published and these are questions I'm still thinking about now. And I will add another question prompted by this whole event. How do we think about the future of policing and the First Amendment? This is another reason, I'm so glad I'm in this conversation with Etienne. So I'm hoping we'll talk more about that during the Q&A. I'm also hoping we'll talk a little bit about the storming of the US Capitol on January 6th. So somehow that seems to be in the background of everything we're talking about today. But I will say the first step in thinking about all of these questions, at least for me, is thinking about the long game. If we said to every black and brown and white parent out there, your children and grandchildren are going to live in a very different world, one that is far more diverse, where they have the potential to make the world a better place, where they truly have the ability to create a new country, where they have the ability to create and harness the technologies they want. How would we prepare our children and grandchildren differently? Like how would we prepare them now to be ready to inherit that future? So that's my big question. So I will end there and I'm looking forward to this conversation. All right, thank you so much. Speaking of questions, I do have about four of them prepared. And if we have some time at the end, we can always try and throw some other ones in from the audience or if you'll have other things. So this first one, this first question here is about protesting and it's directed more towards Professor Capers. And this was inspired by last summer's anti-police brutality demonstrations and how white protesters were visibly treated differently than black protesters. And it's interesting to think about what this dynamic looks like in this very colorful future that you described, and especially with January 6th and all of those events that you've mentioned as well. So for you, what do you think the right to protest looks like in the future through your line? So, and when you say the future, I'm gonna jump ahead to my imagined future 2044 and beyond again, when the script has flipped, people of color have numerical power, economic power, social capital power, what have you? So let me say upfront that in my article, even though it focuses on policing, one thing I do say in the article is I try to encourage, I throw out something where I'm encouraging other scholars out there to apply Afrofuturism to other areas of the law. So I'm loving that Etienne is willing to engage in not only a First Amendment scholar, but also talking about Afrofuturism because I would love to see like how an Afrofuturist sort of imagines the First Amendment, including the fighting words doctrine and how that might be different, especially if they imagine a future where the Supreme Court looks different and Justice Sotomayor is now Chief Justice Sotomayor and the Supreme Court is made up of justices who are very diverse in terms of race, sex, class, disability, everything. But that being said, I think if I imagine sort of a future of protest in this imaginary world, this future world, I also have to bring up technology. So again, if we're thinking about people of color harnessing technology, we're also sort of thinking about how that technology might be more egalitarian when it's being used by the police and also useful when it's being used by other people. So if I could say something about technology in my answer, Etal, again, I've already mentioned we tend to view often technology, especially surveillance as a negative, but we have to remember it also brought us the power of sous-faire lens, the power to look back, to record what we see, the Harvard Critical Race Theory scholar, Lelita Buckner, in his calls the equivalent of a white witness like somebody to vouch for people of color and said that's what really happened. And so I think tech has pluses and minuses. I just want to emphasize that. And clearly with the protest we saw last summer, we saw the government using technology, we saw them using drones to surveil and track protesters. We saw presumably the use of facial recognition technology, but we also saw technology being wielded by protesters and the media and other everyday citizens to record police behavior during those protests. So one immediate thought is on the policing and on protestants, everybody will be recording everyone and that in itself might be a positive because that's going to reduce sort of like FDAP behavior on both sides and also create a record for review later on. But the other thing I have to say is in my future world, keep in mind there are fewer police officers defunding the police has sort of happened, there's more income inequality, there are actually fewer things to protest. So it's sort of interesting imagining a future world like what happens, how bad a protest gonna be when there are fewer police and fewer things to protest, which might seem kind of polyannish, but that's the world I'm envisioning. And the last thing I will say is my hope in this future world is that people of color, and I promise this is my longest answer any of your questions I hope, my hope is this in this future world, people of color who've experienced unequal policing will now be champions of equal policing. So the goal of critical race theory is eradicating sort of racial subordination. It's not enacting racial comeuppance. Similarly with Afrofuturism, it's imagining a future free of hierarchies along multiple lines. So I think all of that will sort of benefit sort of how we think of protest and rather we even need protests going forward. Sorry to be long winded. Oh, it's okay. We love long winded answers here. So thank you. Our next couple of questions get a little spiced here. So this first one has to do with respectability politics and how a lot of conversations about policing involve a very whitewashed perspective of what behavior is appropriate, quote unquote. And it sounds like respectability politics both supports blackness being seen as fighting words or is a go-to logic for proving why a victim deserves to be treated like a human being. So this one's more so for Professor Toussaint. How do we look critically at police interactions with black people without using respectability politics and what does that conversation look like? Yeah, that's an excellent question. Thank you so much for asking it. I think it begins by clarifying both the role and purpose of police officers doing so in conversation with communities and democratic discourse and then using insights from those conversations to drive policy and reform even when reform, and this is perhaps a hard pill to swallow for some, even when reform means abolishing some kinds of policing as we know it. Currently, and this is how many of us experience policing growing up, we understand police as individuals who show up in our communities to enforce the law, to promote peace, to further quote unquote stability, to remove unwanted or dangerous people or kinds of behaviors, and to begin to disentangle how some of those dimensions are connected to respectability politics. I think we need to connect issues of race to issues of political economy, because racism does not exist by itself. And I think this is a really important point because it means when some people say we need to have a moral reckoning, we need to have some conversations about race and if only everyone can understand how bad racism is, we can move past some of the issues that we face. The reason why that falls flat and most people don't see that as the final solution is because there's a tight connection between racism and our political economy, which is, you know, which some might describe as sort of a racial capitalist economy. There are ways in which racialism serves to perpetuate modes of labor exploitation, modes of property expropriation in subordinated communities, modes of policing that serve economic goals. And so I think that is an important conversation to have. And I think that then would pull us into a much larger and more imaginative and perhaps more radical conversation that begins to challenge the economic conception of man that sort of shrouds how we understand the US political economy. And for this, I think it is important, although many politicians would have us not dive into history using lenses like critical waste theory of the 1619 project as just two examples, I think it's really important that we revisit history because we will see that this economic conception of man that is the sort of predominant framing of what it means to be human in these United States, is a more recent invention, so to speak, it came about during the Enlightenment period supplanting what was then a more theological conception of what it means to be human. And I only raise these because I think then that conversation allows us to question a lot of our conversations around policing use economic language like efficiency, cost maximization or minimization and there are other conceptions that are equally important to democracy that should also be on the table, words like equity, words like dignity, words like morality that are harder to fit into that economic sort of secularized framing of human being, thinking about human being as a kind of praxis. And so I think having that more imaginative and broader conversation, one that might even push back on capitalism as we know it, so to speak, right? And think about the ways that capitalism as we know it perpetuates what many would call a genre of human being, right? A one vision of what it means to live in relation to one another. I think then we can get a little bit deeper on the conversation about respectability and social order and peace and freedom and think a little more imaginatively. I think in that conversation, technology could be used as a lever for good, but unless we go to that point, we're gonna continue to run into challenges where technology continues to just reify the same conversations that we're having. Thank you for that. I actually, since we have like a few minutes left, I'm really curious to hear Professor Capers' thoughts on this as well and then we can maybe try and squeeze in one more question, so please go ahead. So that was just such a great answer from Etienne. I will just add to the aspect on respectability politics. I think it's sort of interesting how much that, it seems like there's already been a shift in just the last few years. When we think about the response to George Floyd, it's sort of interesting how even though the police were responding to the idea that he had a $20 bill that wasn't legitimate, there wasn't the same demonization that we are used to with respect to black and brown people who have victims of police violence. So I think already people like, okay, well, everybody deserves to go to what Etienne was saying. So the dignity, it doesn't matter whether you're middle-class, it doesn't matter whether you're Henry Skate, Louis Skates, like anybody deserves basic dignity. I will also add, I think one thing that might be contributing to moving the needle on this is just we have become a society that polices so much that it is hard, it is hard for anybody to sort of have sort of this respectability, not anybody, but basically it's of one in three Americans has been arrested at some point. So it's very hard now, like almost everybody has the sort of taint of being arrested. So I think the idea like, oh, well, this person doesn't deserve protection because this person has a criminal history might also fall to the wayside simply because now everybody has a criminal history. All right, thank you. So for our last question, I'm gonna shift gears here and talk a little bit about critical race theory and gender differences and the fact that a lot of conversations about policing and police brutality is centered around black men. And as someone who is not a man and for others who aren't men in the room, I'm interested in hearing about how both of you thought about other genders when you were writing your pieces or imagining the future. Yeah, I'll just, I'll just share briefly that it's such an important point. It's an important point not only for policing but also thinking about the First Amendment because I think in many ways, the concept of speech, right? Whether it's pure speech or symbolic speech is gendered in the United States. The notion of what it means to speak freely, I would argue stemming from the Constitution's origins and the First Amendment was written through the lens of a dominant white male gaze. And so I think when we talk about policing the public square almost on an unconscious level in ways that we don't fully grasp, our minds immediately shift to thinking about a male experience of speech in that public gaze. When we think about policing speech, we think about encounters between men. And to be sure, there's a large percentage of police officers that are men. But I think that also pulls in dimensions of masculinity that become enacted in speech, in communication between police officers and citizens. But I think it is an incredible point to raise and to think about because the experience of women or the experience of different genders is silenced. Certainly in my piece is something that I thought a little bit about the way masculinity colors the way that police officers in particular male police officers interpret hostility, interpret defiance, interpret fighting words, so to speak, from citizens. And so the ways that gender and masculinity shapes how police officers interpret whether there has been a disturbance is incredibly important. But I think it's also important on the flip side, how do women experience that, whether it's a female police officer or a female citizen. And so I think it's an incredibly important point, stemming from Kimberly Crenshaw just thinking about the intersectionality of these issues. And I hope that we continue to discuss it. And I will say, so I sort of take on a little bit gender issues and sexuality issues and class issues in my piece. As I say in my piece, it's a reason why Alondra Nelson describes Afrofuturism as a feminist space. And of course there's a similar commitment I think you could find in CRT. So in my future world, there's lots of diversity on police forces and police forces sort of look more like the country does. And they also sort of receive training on biases as virtual reality simulations where they get to experience being different. That being said, I don't mean to suggest that I think if you add a few black or brown people to police forces, they're gonna be transformed. Or if you add more women to police forces, they're gonna be transformed. All of those people can engage in police abuses. All of those people could participate in sort of the blue wall of silence. But I do think if we imagine like a whole scale like reimagining a policing, then we can sort of capture sort of what we're interested in. There's one last thing I will say, just because it's something I was not thinking about when I wrote my piece, but I'm thinking about it now. Because of my piece, the word policing is in the title. And now I'm wondering, well, if we imagine a future where black and brown people really do have control, might they even retire the term police or policing? Given that the police owe their sort of existence, their lineage to sort of slave patrols, to subordination, that might be that in this imaginary idealized future world, we're just creating whole new forms of ways of keeping everybody safe, ways of public safety. It might just be simply changing the name might be something more dramatic than that. But given the baggage that even the term police has, that might be in my future world, we're not even saying police, we might be saying something else. All right, thank you so much. So we are really running short on time and I wanna be respectful of everyone's time. But there was one question that I wanted to ask from the Q&A real quick. And this question is what will be the future for the intersection of Afrofuturism and First Amendment scholarship? If and when different states succeed in banning critical race theory and make case law and jurisprudence about it? So I know we don't have a lot of time, but if y'all could just give your thoughts briefly, that would be great. I'm gonna let Etienne go first. Yeah, so I guess to speak specifically to your question, if and when there are bans on teaching or discussing critical race theory, I think Afrofuturism as a discourse, I think will help us to think creatively about what that looks like in the future and perhaps help to warn us about the dangers going down that route, but also help us to imagine a very different future where critical race theory is a welcome part of schools of learning, experiences, public discourse. And so I see Afrofuturism continuing to play an important role there. I think also Afrofuturism in so doing, I think Afrofuturism also provides a different, and especially when we get to a point as Professor Capra says, where we are a majority minority, helps us to think about a future where culture can help to shape how we think about and experience our political economy and the choices that we make and perhaps how critical race theory plays a role in articulating what those different choices or different policies or different approaches would look like in practice. And I will just second what Etienne said, so. All right, thank you all so much. So that brings us right at time. Again, thank you everyone for participating. This was amazing. I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to get through all of the questions, but yeah, thank you so much. And I'll go ahead and turn it to Kendra in case they have any last words before we close. Nope, just a seconding ill-topping, thanking Professor Tasant and Professor Capers for coming and joining us and for all of y'all for listening in true IFRA advertisement fashion. I have dropped the Twitter account and the newsletter link in the chat, so feel free to sign up. And also to follow, we've retweeted Professor Tasant and Professor Capers to follow them on Twitter if you wanna hear more about the work that they're developing. And thank you everyone and have a happy Juneteenth to those celebrating. Thank you so much. Thank you.