Article was updated at 6:07 p.m on March 6.
Vice President of Student Affairs Carmen Taylor invited Cal State Long Beach students in an email Friday to an open forum Thursday to discuss campus safety concerns after a student brandished a knife in class.
The forum will be the first in a series, Taylor said.
The administration’s effort to reach out came after students took to social media over the last several days to criticize the university’s lack of communication regarding the Feb. 25 incident in which a 20-year-old male student “displayed” a knife to a female student in a sociology class on race, class and gender.
Much of the criticism stemmed from the fact that the altercation was not disclosed to the campus community in a timely warning email, and that the incident was perceived to have been racially motivated.
“A careful assessment of [perceptions of race in] the reported event bears further scrutiny,” CSULB President Jane Close Conoley said Sunday in an email.
The student was asked to leave, and the rest of the class was cancelled, according to Terri Carbaugh, a university spokesperson with the Office of Public Affairs.
Whether the student is still on campus remains unclear.
According to Conoley, who addressed the incident at last Thursday’s Academic Senate meeting, a timely warning was not issued, but she acknowledged that there should be a system to present the information to students. She refuted claims on social media that there was another incident with the same person last week.
“The timely warning was not issued because according to the protocol of the threat assessment, there was no clear and present danger to this campus,” Conoley said at the meeting. “This is based on a protocol we use in every single incident on campus.”
Conoley said University Police cleared the student to carry the knife on campus.
“That doesn’t take away from the perception the people in the class had,” Conoley said. “This student did go and ask: ‘May I carry this?’ And he was told ‘Yes,’ so, in his experience — that’s what I’ve been told; this will be investigated.”
Campus standards of conduct section 41301: b, 13, state that students may not bring knives to campus unless they are approved by the campus president. However, the president said she has delegated this task to CSULB Chief of Police Fernando Solarzano.
“I’ve done this so the police can investigate the situation that might be causing a student to feel unsafe,” Conoley said in an email. “I’m not able to do that with any expertise, but our University PD can accomplish this with great skill. When the police chief works with a student about a unique situation, he can better assess whether the student should be allowed to have a weapon. He can also offer advice, protection, and prevention efforts to keep the student safe.”
Conoley said she regretted not sending an email out right away and called it a “lesson learned.”
“I would say to any student, you don’t need to bring anything that looks like a knife, acts like a knife to a class, alright?” Conoley said at the Academic Senate meeting.
Timely warning emails are sent in accordance with the Jeanne Clery Act, which requires federally funded colleges to share information about crime in or around the campus to students, faculty and staff.
University Police, which initially reported that the incident took place in the psychology building but later confirmed it took place in the LA-5 building, referred the call to the Long Beach Police Department due to a possible conflict of interest. The male student is related to a member of the campus police.
“The Long Beach Police Department is assisting in the investigation,” LBPD Public Information Officer James Richardson said.
Gissela Chavez, president of the Sociology Student Association, said Jeff Klaus, associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students, came to speak at the weekly SSA meeting.
“We invited him to learn about the CARES protocol, but I made it clear that we were going to be asking him questions about the incident during the meeting as well,” Chavez said.
The Campus Assessment, Response and Evaluation for Students Team, which Klaus chairs, is an organization at CSULB that “identifies, discusses, investigates, evaluates and monitors student behavior which poses a concern, potential threat or actual threat to self or others,” according to the CARES website.
According to Chavez, Klaus said at the SSA meeting the student was using the knife to clean his nails.
Klaus declined to comment.
Conoley, who described the students in the class and professor as “shaken,” said Sociology Department Chair Kristine Zentgraf will take over the class while the professor takes a leave of absence.
She said the investigation is still ongoing, and that no decisions regarding discipline have been made at this time.
Conoley said via email, “We are balancing our constitutional mandate: ‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ with our deeply held value: protect the campus.”
The following reporters contributed to this story: Miranda Andrade-Ceja, Greg Diaz, Matt Simon, Brooke Becher, Antonio Henriques and Riva Lu
Original story attributed the student with the knife as a white male. The ethnicity of the student has not yet been confirmed.
I think that he should have been suspended for his actions. Pulling out a knife in class is just thoughtless. However I don’t understand why people are bring race into this considering the guy with the knife was black himself.
Current state law research:
(cut/paste) Penal Code 626.10b Any person… (various exceptions)… who brings or possesses any dirk, dagger, ice pick, or knife having a fixed blade longer than 21/2 inches upon the grounds of, or within, any private university, the University of California, the California State University, or the California Community Colleges is guilty of a public offense, punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170.
Folding knives are not included above like they are for K-12 schools in 626.10a. The school’s websites referred to by LBC above might be outdated as are many others or ambiguous unless they are specifically defining knives. The unambiguous passage above is what will probably be used as a legal standard in a court. I see a lot of men walking around campus with clip knives on their pockets almost everyday. They should be careful when/where they think they need to use it for something, but they are all over campus most days. If the clip knives are over the legal size limit, those guys better consider no longer bringing them.
Does anybody else feel there is more to this story? Why would a student care enough to go to campus of & ask to get a knife approved? That is really bizarre. I wonder if Prez Conoley would think it is acceptable if everyone just carried weapons to class!!! This is NOT Texas.
Seriously, how do you people get out of bed in the morning? How do you make it through a meal that you can’t eat with your hands?
What an astounding degree of cowardice and hyper-sensitivity. You children are in for a rude awakening.
As an alumnus who donates to the baseball team and the csulb foundation, I will not be making annual donations this year. I will have to reconsider if I make them again in the future.
This was not handled appropriately. The student should be dismissed from the university.
President Conoley:
Knives are prohibited at this university and have no place in any classroom, especially in classes dealing with issues of diversity!
According to the Standards for Student Conduct on CSULB’s website, ALL knives are banned without PRIOR approval from the president. This knife was never approved by the president, but instead supposedly approved by campus PD (which is not in the policy).
http://web.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/catalog/current/general_policies/standards_student_conduct.html
Also, read the Policy on “Drugs, Alcohol, and Weapons”. Why is the campus NOT enforcing these policies? Everyone, take the time to look up these policies and hold the administration accountable. The police are on record stating that the knife is the type with a “lockable blade”. Why has the president not discussed the “type” of knife? How can she make the statement that a locking blade knife is NOT a weapon?
https://daf.csulb.edu/offices/ppfm/police/drug_alcohol.html
Both of these policies have been ignored by the university. The university also ignored requests from concerned faculty to alert the campus community on the day of this event transpired.
As an alumni of CSULB, I feel extremely disappointed of president Coloney’s reaction to this incident. It is obvious she was trying to hide the incident and protecting tis guy. I believe regardless the etnicity he MUST BE banned from our campus.
As a concerned parent of two students on campus, one of which is a sociology major, I am distressed that I had to find out about this incident via facebook postings nearly a week after it happened. Where is the communication from administration to parents????? Any student brandishing a knife in class should be expelled immediately. Universities are supposed to be a place for debate, discussion and free exchange of ideas. There is no place for this type of behavior- even if it was a “small 2.5 inch knife.” Are you KIDDING me???? What’s NEXT?? If it’s a small gun that only shoots small pellets, is that ok to brandish and qualify as not posing an “eminent threat?” Do we have to wait until this student’s behavior escalates to the point where he thinks it’s ok to threaten classmates with a ‘larger” knife??? The fact that the student in question was a white male, and the student threatened an african-american female, only makes this all the more disturbing! One has to ask themselves if this had been a black male brandishing that small knife at a white female, would the reaction and response have been any different??? Would that knife-brandishing person of color still be allowed to walk around campus?? I am extremely disturbed by what appears to be a cover up. The fact that the student is related to a member of campus police makes things all the worse.
Time to step up and face the music CSULB administration. To say that this was handled “poorly”
is an understatement. ANY student that thinks it’s ok to pull a knife in class has NO business being a member of ANY university student body. FUERA!!
We should all have been informed about this incident. A friend who works in mental health in the U.S. military told me that brandishing a knife and then pretending to “clean one’s nails” is a well-known tactic of intimidation. He had the authority to have soldiers who did this immediately returned to the U.S., where they were promptly discharged.
Additionally, this administration has long covered up and turned its back on racist incidents all across this campus. This is a pass-the-buck, let’s-pretend-it’s-not-serious response, typical of bad leadership skills. No woman, no minority should feel safe on this campus. Just look at all the white administrators they’ve hired in the last few years. Not a single minority among them. Great way to serve a diverse community, Beach.
According to President Jane Close Conoley, the knife was 2.5 inches long and was cleared by police prior to this incident. It seems that if a student notifies University Police of the knife in advance, they will be allowed to carry it while on campus.
So it seems the knife was not a butter knife. What do you think about that?
“The knife that was visible had been approved by the campus police and was not a weapon.”
WTH is this BS? Was it a butterknife? Because if it wasn’t, it most certainly should be considered a weapon.
Also, if the guy was related to a member of the Campus Police, this shows clear favoritism. There’s clear conflict of interest there due to personal connection.