At the Nov. 15 demonstration in front of University Hall led by the Coalition for Police Accountability and Institutional Transparency, students from Hope High School joined Brown students to call for more police oversight, accurate crime reporting and an end to racial profiling. Co-PAIT member Dara Bayer '08 estimated that between 10 and 12 Hope High students attended the rally.
High school students' participation in the rally is one byproduct of Co-PAIT's relationship with Hope High, which has been relatively informal so far but is becoming more structured, Co-PAIT member Josh Teitelbaum '08 said. He said the group's community outreach committee is attempting to strengthen its relationship with Hope High students.
The committee is currently try to organize community outreach meetings that are more accessible to Hope High students. Accordingly, it has scheduled those meetings at the end of Hope High's school day, said Bayer, who serves on Co-PAIT's outreach committee. Bayer said the committee wants Hope High students to begin attending its meetings next semester.
Co-PAIT has also conducted workshops at Hope High and at the Met School, and has discussed the possibility of forming a student club at Hope High that will focus on the issue of police accountability, Bayer said.
A relationship with the Providence community has been thought of since the "inception of Co-PAIT," she said.
"Co-PAIT was envisioned as a coalition of Brown students with community members as equal partners," she said. "Part of our idea was to create education and engage young people in what we were doing. ... We wanted (Providence youth) as co-organizers, as members of Co-PAIT."
Teitelbaum also said Co-PAIT members had community outreach in mind when they founded the coalition, calling these efforts "something we established very early on." Its initial rally after the Sept. 10 incident of alleged police misconduct against Chipalo Street '06 GS was "not because a Brown student was harassed, but because a person was harassed," he said.
"Issues of police brutality and racial profiling affect everyone. We can't separate our struggles from the struggles happening in the community," Teitelbaum said.
Co-PAIT initiated its relationship with Hope High students by using contacts that members of the group already had with staff, faculty and students through other community involvement and mentoring programs, he said.
Co-PAIT members began by going to Hope High's campus after school and talking with students, Bayer said. They discovered that Hope High students had little information about policing at Brown - for example, many were not aware that Department of Public Safety officers were armed.
Yet Hope High students interact with DPS officers regularly. Many walk through campus on their way home after school, often as a shortcut to Kennedy Plaza, where they take the bus home. "They had plenty of stories about walking through campus and feeling like they couldn't stay, not feeling safe," Bayer said.
Co-PAIT members have also gone to Hope High during lunch to talk to more students and hand out flyers.
The group has also conducted classroom workshops at Hope and at the Met School, where they were met eagerly by teachers, Bayer said. During the workshops, Co-PAIT members talked to students about their rights when interacting with police and went over scenarios demonstrating how to behave in interactions with the police in order to avoid conflict.
Co-PAIT members also encouraged students to talk about their own experiences with DPS and the Providence Police Department, according to Bayer. She said many of the students have stories about questionable conduct on the part of the PPD.
Ariana Perez was one of the Hope High students who spoke at the rally on Nov. 15. "I think it's wrong when (DPS and PPD officers) discriminate against us, especially when we mind our own business," she told the crowd. "They treat us like dirt. If you see from our eyes how they treat us, it's not right. Today, I don't want to see that again."
Because DPS's policies and conduct affect Hope High students, Co-PAIT members believe the students "should be notified of and allowed to participate in policing policies at Brown," Bayer said.
Co-PAIT's community outreach efforts will soon extend beyond students at local high schools. It is holding a community SpeakUp event Dec. 4 at the Providence Black Repertory Theater downtown as a part of its effort "to create a dialogue with the Providence community."
