Michael J. Sorrell President of Paul Quinn College

Educators At Loss To Explain Judicial Betrayal

I am the president of Paul Quinn College, a liberal arts-inspired, four-year college in the southern portion of Dallas. We are viewed as one of the most interesting and innovative small colleges in the country. Our campus is a beautiful 146 acres of rolling hills, blooming flowers, mature trees and manicured lawns. We have an organic farm that provides food for both our neighbors and the Dallas Cowboys. Our students are amazing and from all over the country. They are smart and strong. They are also mostly black and Hispanic.

As a member of the faculty at Paul Quinn, I join the other professors and staff in teaching our students to lead. Leadership to us means that we honor our obligation to leave places better than we found them; that we challenge ourselves to “choose the harder right over the easier wrong without apparent regard to self-interest”; and that we select the needs of our communities over our individual desires.

Most of all, however, leadership in our world demands that we be men and women who are unafraid to heed Teddy Roosevelt’s call of entering “the arena.”

Guiding an institution that places such a premium on creating fearless leaders was a joy until Feb. 26, 2012. That was the day a vigilante killed Trayvon Martin. As a result of Florida laws, his killer was permitted to go unpunished. It was difficult to explain to my students, many of whom looked and dressed like Trayvon Martin, how a man could pursue and kill an unarmed person and face no reprisal. It was even more difficult to explain to them that due to the laws in Texas, it could happen to them here, too.

Almost 18 months later, we watched Eric Garner die on YouTube. Think about that for a moment.

Anyone with an Internet connection could hear him utter his last words while a team of police officers applied a lethal and illegal chokehold to his neck. Several months later came the verdict that his killers would see no discipline at the hands of the justice system. I had no lecture for that outcome. After all, what could I say? I watched the same video and sat speechless when the decision not to indict the officers was announced.

After Eric Garner, the victims started coming at a pace that overwhelmed any lesson plan or town hall discussion: Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Anthony Hill, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray.

All of these black males were betrayed by a system that was supposed to protect them. The solace offered to my students by their country amounted to a brief hug, followed by a few sympathetic looks, and then a return to the status quo. Only, there was no return to the status quo for the students. They were left traumatized by the idea that, for them, there is no safe quarter. Worse, no one seems to really care enough to do anything about it.

But then came Dajerria Becton. She was a 15-year old girl in a bathing suit at a pool party. Dajerria Becton was such a menace to society that a 200-pound McKinney, Texas, police officer felt the need to place his knees in her back and neck while she cried out for her mother.

Dajerria Becton might one day be my student — an opportunity that Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice will never have. She deserves a different lecture than the ones that I used to give about being strong and speaking truth to power.

I now realize that Dajerria and current students like her will need to be taught more Sun Tzu and less Chaucer. We must create lesson plans that can answer both “why do people hate us so much?” and the importance of “I, Too” by Langston Hughes.

I will need to hold my students close and tell them that I love them every day. But I will struggle with telling them to have faith in a system that I know might very well betray them one day.

I will wonder how to tutor them to find peace in places where there is none. And I have no idea how to teach them to close their eyes and pray when I close my eyes and all I see is Emanuel AME.