Leadership Amid Racial Trauma and Unrest: UNC Charlotte’s Response to the Shooting of Keith Scott

Case Narrative

On the afternoon of September 20, 2016, police arrived in the village of College Downs, an apartment complex, looking for someone with an outstanding warrant. During their search for the wanted individual, they observed Keith Lamont Scott sitting in his vehicle. Stories vary regarding what happened next. Some residents and eyewitnesses claimed that Scott was sitting peacefully in his car reading a book, waiting for his child to arrive home on the school bus. However, police officers assert that, while Scott was not the person of interest, he was seen smoking marijuana and stepped out of his vehicle, holding a weapon. At 3:54 p.m., Officer Brentley Vinson, an African American male who had joined the force in 2014, shot and killed Scott. Around 5:00 p.m., Scott’s daughter began recording her response to the news of her father’s death on Facebook Live. Within hours of the shooting, news of the event spread throughout the city of Charlotte and across the country.

Later that evening and every subsequent night that week, protesters gathered in Charlotte to demand the arrest of the officer who shot Scott and the release of all videos taken by police body and dash cameras that afternoon. Initially, protests took place in University City, the area where the shooting occurred and where the main campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) is located. Subsequent protests took place in Uptown Charlotte, the financial center of the city. In each location, police officers arrived on the scene in riot gear and used rubber bullets, flash bangs, and tear gas in an effort to disperse the protests. During the commotion, a peaceful protester was shot and killed. According to some eyewitnesses, police officers shot the protester; according to the police, the protester was shot by a civilian. After the murder of the protester and the vandalizing of several buildings on the evening of Wednesday, September 21, the government declared a State of Emergency, placed the city of Charlotte under a curfew, and called in the National Guard.

Initial Reactions of Faculty and Students

At approximately 5:30 p.m., on the evening of the shooting, Alexander Jutila, a history graduate student at the UNCC, sat in Atkins Library on campus preparing for a class. He received a text from his partner who was concerned about his well-being because of the heavy police presence near their shared apartment. Jutila remembers, “From where I was in the library, I looked out of the window towards the area and I saw two helicopters flying around.” He quickly packed up his things and headed toward the door to go home. On his way out of the library, he recalls, “I got a text message from [another student] who immediately told me there was a police shooting.”

While Jutila was in the library studying, Ashley Myers, an undergraduate Africana studies major at UNCC, was at a local department store shopping for an outfit to wear to a concert scheduled for 8:00 p.m. that evening. After missing several calls, she finally answered her cell phone. Her sister immediately informed her that “somebody got shot off of Old Concord Road. He’s dead.” After leaving the store near the site of the shooting, Ashley recalls, “I called my mom and dad to tell that them I was okay.” On her way home, she remembers thinking to herself, “I grew up right across the railroad tracks. I’ve lived there my whole life. I go to school off of Old Concord Road.”

The same night, Jordan Brusso, an undergraduate student majoring in communication studies at UNCC, was sitting at her desk in her dorm room. She remembers learning about the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott from Facebook Live feed posts. She recalls,

I felt shocked because the Village of College Downs is right across the street [from my dorm]. Just right down the street and across that intersection is where the Village of College Downs [is] . . . just feeling that closeness was a huge shock to hear and feel how close that one was.

Vanessa Drew-Branch, a Lecturer at the School of Social Work and the Director of the Baccalaureate School of Social Work Program, expressed similar sentiments. She remembers,

I was at home and all I kept thinking was I have students there and one of our administrative staff lives not too far from there. I [was thinking], “Where are the people I care about that live in these areas?” I knew it was going to turn ugly quickly and it did.

Chancellor Philip Dubois was at his campus residence, the Sara H. Bissell House, when Keith Scott was killed. He recollects,

I knew there’d been a shooting because I was having a major dinner at my house with former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, as part of our fundraising campaign celebration that was going to be announced later in the week. I knew there’d been some kind of incident but I didn’t know anything after that.

In hindsight, Dubois recalls,

I don’t think we really thought of it as a racial issue at that time. I didn’t know enough until the next day. I mean, when I was told about the shooting, I didn’t know anything about the color of the officer or the color of the victim, I just heard there was a shooting in the neighborhood and traffic is being disrupted because of the response of all the law enforcement vehicles. And, at that point, all of my guests had arrived at Bissell House so we could go on and have our dinner.

Police Brutality and the African American Community

Keith Lamont Scott was the 173rd African American to be fatally shot by law enforcement in the United States in 2016 (Craven, 2016). During the months preceding Scott’s death, several high-profile shootings had taken place in various cities, such as Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and 14-year-old Tyre King in Columbus, Ohio (The Associated Press, 2016). Four days before the shooting of Keith Scott, on September 16, Police Officer Betty Shelby shot 40-year-old Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after his SUV stalled in the middle of the road. Outrage spread across the country as the videos released captured a police officer in an overhead helicopter asserting that Crutcher looked like a “bad dude” and appeared to show Crutcher with his hands in the air when he was killed (Craven, 2016).

Student and Faculty Responses to the Shooting

When she heard the news, Ellen McIntyre, Dean of the College of Education, recalls, “I guess my first thought was anger that again, another Black man has been shot by a police officer.” Nancy Fey-Yensan, Dean of the College of Health and Human Services, explains, “I know this sounds trite, but, ‘oh no, not again!’ was my first reaction, just as a citizen, and then I went to worrying about our students.” Shawn Long, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recalls, “It wasn’t that surprising because something like this has happened before [referencing the 2013 fatal officer-involved shooting of 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell in Charlotte].” Jordan Brusso also said of the shooting,

It was shocking, but at the same time, not shocking at all. I sort of felt like it was only a matter of time before this happened in Charlotte. We’d just got to bed hoping it’s not tomorrow . . . but, of course, it happened.

During conversations recalling the civil unrest following the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, Dean McIntyre, Provost Lorden, Associate Dean Long, and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Art Jackson mentioned a 2014 Equality of Opportunity report that ranked Charlotte the lowest, 50 out of 50 cities, in intergenerational mobility (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, & Saez, 2014). Dean McIntyre referred to this study as a “wakeup call,” explaining,

if you are born poor in Charlotte, you stay poor. It’s not unrelated that we have racial strife as well as social mobility strife because so many of the people that are poor in this city are people of color.

Provost Joan Lorden also referenced a 2001 study by Robert Putnam that ranked Charlotte almost last, 39th out of 40 diverse cities, in interracial trust. Associate Dean Shawn Long and Africana Studies student Ashley Myers mentioned a specific incident in Uptown Charlotte, the site of the majority of the protests, demonstrating the tense race relationships prior to the shooting. Myers recalls,

The weekend prior to the shooting, there had been an incident at Kandy Bar [a local bar in downtown Charlotte] where they weren’t letting Black people in under the rules of “You have to be a member. You have to have your membership card to get it.” But, in the video [recorded by a patron who was turned away], they were not asking White people for a membership card.

Race Relations at the University

The UNCC has an approximate enrollment of 23,500 undergraduate students and a little more than 5,000 graduate students. The students’ racial demographics consist of approximately 61% White, 17% Black, 9% Latino, 6% Asian, and 7% other races. As of 2016, the 1,142 faculty members at UNCC are 64% White, 7% Black, 3% Latino, 9% Asian, and 10% other races or unknown.

During conversations about the nature of race relations on campus prior to the Keith Lamont Scott shooting, Provost Lorden notes that people are impressed by the diversity of UNCC students; students of color are retained and graduated at rates slightly better than White students. Associate Dean Shawn Long likewise observed that UNCC is “one of the more diverse campuses in the UNC system.” Both administrators emphasized that there had been “no major incidents” related to race relations at UNC Charlotte prior to the shooting. Art Jackson, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, elaborated that

we [UNC Charlotte] and UNC Greensboro are the most diverse predominantly White institutions in North Carolina. [Students of color] are probably somewhere around 37-38% [of the student population] and most of those being African American students. So, we have over 5,000 African American students at UNC Charlotte, that’s bigger than some of the HBCUs.

However, Jackson conceded that certain challenges come from having such a diverse student body. He observed that students are typically coming from racially homogeneous backgrounds, so when they arrive at the University, it is often the first time they have had to interact with people of different backgrounds.

Graduate student Matthew Mills states that “from the outside UNCC looks like a very beautiful campus with a lot of different people where things are fine. Things aren’t fine for a lot of individuals . . . very similar to Charlotte.” Yvette Huet, Professor of Kinesiology and the Director of the Advance Faculty Affairs and Diversity Office, explains, “We have almost 29,000 students. When you look around campus, we do see diversity . . . but what you see is there is a lot of groups that hang out together that are more homogeneous.” Huet expounds,

If you go into the [student] union on a given day there will be a group of students in there and the majority will be Black . . . go in another day the majority of them will be White. It isn’t that you see this intermixing of these populations on our campus that happen organically.

Provost Lorden and Chancellor Dubois made similar observations about the lack of diversity in student social interactions. Describing the homogeneous nature of most student organizations, Lorden said that “[Students of color] are trying to have a party and not everybody is coming.” Dubois likewise stated,

We were all aware, even before what happened here in Charlotte, that there was a certain amount of self-segregation that occurred on campus, in terms of the ways in which student organizations were populated or even things in patterns in gatherings around campus. So, for example, when you went to look at who was eating with whom, they tended to be sort of monocultural.

Responding to assertions that the university needed a Chief Diversity Officer, Chancellor Dubois states,

I think I’m the Chief Diversity Officer. I’m principally responsible for making sure this campus is fully reflective of the communities we serve and that we’ve created an environment where everyone will feel that they can be productive and effective in pursuing their education or employment.

The Chancellor cited the Council on University Community, a seven-member committee comprised of members of the Chancellor’s cabinet tasked with developing the diversity plan for the university, as a mechanism for oversight on issues of diversity. Nevertheless, he believes that “everyone needs to take responsibility for diversity, not just one person.”

However, Dean Ellen McIntyre “believe[s] strongly that we need a Chief Diversity Officer on this campus. This is the person we would look to and, say, guide us on how to have discussions in our classes.” Dr. Vanessa Drew-Branch states,

[The] decentralized way of handling diversity and inclusion does not work. When there is no one accountable and no place to call home it does not work. You have to have someone and an entity or home that is responsible for monitoring and advancing diversity and inclusion. You can’t have an all-White, old, rich cabinet and think that anything is going to work.

Dr. Huet recalls,

Last spring, the Chancellor had an open forum [in response to the concerns of some Black students] where basically they said, “We are here to answer your questions,” but then it became more of “let us tell you what we have been doing.” It didn’t go over as they expected. I felt that the students walked away from it [feeling] like you talked at us a lot, but you didn’t really hear what we are saying . . . and I think the administration [felt] like “we are doing a lot of stuff but you clearly don’t know what we are doing . . . it’s not that we are not doing anything.”

Similarly, graduate student Alexander Jutila, who characterizes the overall racial climate at UNCC as “tense” and “uncaring,” cites a recent incident on campus where

some advisor said something like he was worried that there wasn’t enough White leadership or opinion being taken into consideration with the homecoming dance and that kind of sparked a response because of how just completely racially insensitive [or] just unaware the comment was.

Jutila continues, “Seeing how administration handled [the homecoming incident] made me only want to get more involved. To me they just came off completely uncaring. They were completely not transparent on how they handled it.”

Jutila describes this attitude as typical of the University’s response to concerns about diversity:

Anytime something happens an administrator will approach us [and] say “this is interesting” and “we’ll look into it” but we do not ever see anything happening. The Council for Campus Community is a group set up to focus on diversity on campus. It is seven members, all administration, seven members, and six of them are White. Dubois, when approached about a Chief Diversity Officer, he said “I see myself as a Chief Diversity Officer.” To us he’s kinda like a Marie Antoinette character in his views on race. He seems very detached.

Social Media Post

On the evening of the shooting and amid University-area protests, an unidentified White male student at UNCC posted a picture of himself on Instagram, holding a rifle, with the caption “Those protesters better not bother Hunter at UNCC tonight.” Chancellor Dubois reports that “our police contacted him [the student] that night, our police chief saw it [the post] and they went to his house.” According to Dubois, the police chief thought that the student “could put himself in jeopardy” and that the post “was just going to inflame things.” Provost Lorden remembers that after identifying the student, he was brought in, along with his parents, to discuss the incident.

Art Jackson, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, explained the procedure for handling such threats. “We try to keep it as low key as possible but every case we get, we investigate. We usually get legal advice on what we can do or can’t do.” With regard to this specific incident, Jackson believed it was essential to communicate that there was no “legitimate threat” against the University community. He explained,

He basically made a suggestion about they better not come to campus or they better not come here . . . he wasn’t making a threat to campus or our students; he was making an implied threat to other people . . . When he said “them,” I think we knew who “they” were.

In response to the Instagram post, one Afro-Latina student, Bianca Reyes, sent the following email to some of her professors, attaching a screenshot of the post:

Due the events that have taken place within the last 24 hours, I will not be attending classes today. After the killing of the man in the apartment complex directly behind me, there has been multiple threats from White students to shoot and kill Blacks. I am fearful for my life right now. I will aim to, if possible, make up any assignments missed. Attached is a picture of one of the threats I’ve seen so you can have some sort of evidence. Be safe today if you didn’t know what was happening. Its [sic] a shame that right across the street where we are SUPPOSED to be getting educated, we experience police brutality . . . and the school hasn’t even sent an email to the students. Hopefully an administrator or faculty member will feel some empathy for some of their students and push the issue on this tragedy. He was disabled and reading in his car while waiting on his child . . . and somehow the student in the attached picture thought this was “funny.”

An African American student and Charlotte native, Ashley Myers, recalls “When I come to school Wednesday morning, I’m in the library doing work, there’s a group of [White males] . . . their conversation was like, ‘Did you guys see the post from hunter’ and they were laughing.” She explains, “I packed up my things and left. I don’t really feel safe right now.” Myers continues,

Within the week we got a very soft e-mail from the Chancellor. He pretty much was like, “I’ve been made aware of a social media post and we’ll investigate it, but you guys have a great day in class today,” is kind of how the e-mail read. There was never really a follow up to let us know anything.

Myers was referring to an email that Chancellor Dubois sent in response to the Instagram post which said, in part,

Rumors circulated via social media that an individual with a weapon was present on campus were immediately investigated by campus police and were found to have no basis in fact . . . In the aftermath of the protest activity that followed the shooting of Mr. Scott, we have become aware of some irresponsible social media postings that have intimidated or threatened individuals or groups. I commit our staff to a thorough investigation of all unacceptable behavior by any member of the campus community.

University Communications

Despite several mechanisms, such as text, email, social media, and the LiveSafe app, through which UNCC issues alerts and advisories to the campus community regarding crime, severe weather, and other significant events, no communications were issued to students, faculty, or staff the evening of the shooting. The first communication that the University released about the shooting or the protests was an email from Chancellor Dubois on the morning after the shooting, Wednesday, September 21 at 10:17 a.m. In this email, the Chancellor extended his condolences to the family of Keith Scott and assured faculty, staff, and students that there was no threat to the campus. He also indicated that classes and other activities would continue as scheduled.

The Chancellor explained that the University Police Chief was responsible for making a decision about university communications on the night of the shooting and “took the position, rightly or wrongly, that it didn’t warrant an alert to campus because it didn’t happen on campus.” He continues that

the police chief was not wrong because the Clery Act [a federal law which requires universities to report certain crimes and issue alerts to notify students of situations that pose a danger to them] . . . only applies to campus.

Dubois explains that “the shooting itself was not an issue . . . the shooting was a mile, mile-and-a-half from here,” and “we have things that happen in University City all the time and we don’t send alerts about them.” However, with regard to the University-area protest, Dubois reflects, “even if it might not be reportable under Clery, it could have been reportable to the administration.” He says if the police chief would have informed him

there’s this group of people moving up Harris Boulevard, I would have put out an alert [because] there was the potential that the people in the group could have come across people trying to get back to campus to the residence halls or it could have influenced traffic patterns going back to campus.

Expressing concerns about the process of notifying the campus about the shooting, faculty member Yvette Huet states,

We get information all the time about bad storms and flash flooding. [The Keith Lamont Scott shooting was] less than a mile from campus and no information came out about that from police and public safety immediately in the aftermath. There wasn’t anything until the next day from the Chancellor.

Graduate Student Matthew Mills agrees, “There seemed to be no more urgency about addressing this issue than a football game, actually less than that because I get a ton of emails about football games.”

Classroom Policies

The morning after the shooting, Dr. Huet recalls that, before the email from the Chancellor, “[some faculty] did not have an awareness that this was a really big deal.” In his initial campus-wide email, the Chancellor stated that university administration “support[s] faculty members who wish to dedicate class time to discuss [the] incident . . . ” The following morning, the Chancellor’s next email contained a similar message. He wrote,

Although some have encouraged me to cancel classes, I believe that the unique power of the University as a place for education, dialogue, and reflection is a compelling reason not to do so. I encourage faculty members who wish to dedicate class time to discuss the events of the last few days in Charlotte or the larger national issues with respect to racial equity to do so. I also encourage them to exercise flexibility with respect to their class attendance policies to the extent that circumstances allow.

Ashley Myers remembers that some professors mishandled these discussions while others refused to speak about the Scott shooting. She states, “In my predominantly White classes with White professors, they completely ignored it. There were no conversations. It was supposed to be business as usual.” Dean Fey-Yensan questioned her students on Thursday evening, 48 hr after the shooting, and found

not a single student had had one professor in that two-day period offer them the opportunity to talk about it, reference it, to see how this was affecting them. I really did look around and said can you tell me where you’ve had these conversations . . . not one student . . . I was appalled by that, I was saddened by that, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by it . . . No professor even said, “I don’t feel qualified to hold a discussion about this but I’m here for you, you can come and see me, Nothing. Frankly, I was disappointed.”

Undergraduate student Jordan Brusso states, “My teacher opened the class for discussion, [then quickly] cut me off, [and] decided against opening it up for discussion. [I think] she did not realize that someone in her class could have been [at the uptown demonstrations].” Brusso found it

more discouraging to hear about professors who just refused to talk about it . . . to continue status quo. I can’t even imagine the students who didn’t want to come to class who ended up coming to class and were faced with that. Students weren’t given the chance to mourn what happened literally across the street.

Dr. Vanessa Drew-Branch recalls having “students in class literally having panic attacks.”

Graduate student Alex Jutila reported,

I had one class Wednesday night, the following day. Our professor immediately opened the class and says, “Did anyone want to say anything or talk about the shooting?” This is a class that focused on European history, so unsurprisingly the class was all White. They did not say anything. The only comments that were shared is people wanting to get home early because they were scared of being caught in another demonstration.

Jutila recounts a story of another student’s experiences, “I heard about an incident where a professor allegedly said to a student who was late that you don’t smell like tear gas, so there is no reason that you should be forgiven for your absence.”

Student Demonstrations Versus Community Protests

When reflecting on the protests on the evening of the shooting, which resulted in vandalism to several University-area businesses and the closure of the interstate near campus, Chancellor Dubois explains,

This made me aware that if that group of people on that first night decided to come on campus, we could have had a terrible situation on campus in terms of potential threats to students or damage to property or whatever, so that’s the safety part of my thinking.

Arthur Jackson, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, praises the University for quickly “develop[ing] an action plan to protect the campus. The campus was basically protected. We were kind of an island around the violence.” Dean McIntyre praises the university for “reassure[ing] parents of young people here that this is not a violent campus.”

Dr. Vanessa Drew-Branch remembers that several demonstrations occurred on UNCC’s campus as well. She states, it was the “students drove most of the [University’s] response.” Student Jordan Brusso recalls that the day after Scott’s death,

the Black Student Union and the UNCC NAACP worked together to put the die-in together. It started as a gathering in front of the union, where Chancellor Dubois spoke [and some faculty silently attended]. Then, a couple BSU members decided that we would go inside the union and lie down on the union floor. It lasted an hour.

While attending the student demonstration, student Ashley Myers remembers, “We sang songs. We chanted. We were in the middle of the union, so no matter what floor you [were] on you [could] see us and hear us.”

At 8:31 a.m., the day after the demonstration, Chancellor Dubois sent an email praising students for the “peaceful gatherings” and affirming that “the campus remains safe and secure. Regularly scheduled classes and activities will go on today as planned.” The following Monday, September 26, Chancellor Dubois sent a similar message:

Here at UNC Charlotte, our students organized two peaceful campus-based demonstrations last Thursday in and around the Popp Martin Student Union. These demonstrations provided students with a forum to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences. We anticipate that additional campus-based events will take place this week.

He also listed several specific events such as music and dance performances, a campus “march in solidarity against racial injustice and police brutality,” and a candlelight vigil.

Student Ashley Myers reflects, “For me personally, this [Scott’s death] was my defining moment as far as what route of activism I want to take . . . because it was so close to home and so personal . . . ” Myers, who participated in both campus and community protests, recalls,

The tone I read from the Chancellor’s emails is that [the University] gave themselves a pat-on-the-back for allowing us to do the die-in and allowing us to march across campus. [However, they] did not foster any type of community where we could come together and have a moment to feel . . . they just sent us all to class. They just left everybody out-to-dry.

Reflecting on the reassurances that the University sent out that the campus protests were “safe,” Myers states,

It was interesting to see White people tell their parents they were scared for their lives and that they felt threatened. Our response was “Hello, that’s how we always feel. We’ve been telling you that and you looked at us like we were crazy.” But then the question [to White students] was, “Why do you feel threatened? Who threatened you?”

Teaching Notes

Instructors should use this case study and teaching note to discuss how leaders respond to competing concerns in a diverse environment following a racial trauma and/or period of racialized unrest. The UNCC was compelled to address the mental and physical well-being of students, staff, and faculty in the aftermath of the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. The police-involved shooting of a Black male, 1 mile from the main campus, followed a national pattern of violence against the African Americans at the hands of law enforcement. In this case, we explore how a White racial frame (Feagin, 2013), specifically “the primary emotional message is that African Americans are to be feared” (p. 110), triggered a protective response from the university in response to White fear and failed to adequately address the racial trauma triggered by this event and subsequent traumatizing events on campus among African American and minority student populations (Bryant-Davis & Ocampo, 2006; Carter & Forsyth, 2009; Comas-Díaz, 2016).

To examine the context of this case, students should engage with perspectives of multiculturalism. To better understand the university’s perspective on diversity, Marable (1995) offers a framework in which to examine the university’s approach to navigating a racially diverse student population. Marable (1995) presents four categories of multiculturalism, whereby students consider the strengths and weaknesses of each and speculate as to where UNCC lies along the continuum and to what extent this approach helps/hinders racial progress on campus.

Prior to engaging with this case study, students may wish to read research on campus racial climate (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000) conceptualize the racialized motivations and impacts of the leadership decisions in response to the shooting, community and student demonstrations, and the handling of several racialized incidents on campus. First, students should note the differential impacts of administrative decisions on students based on racial designation. Second, through employing a racial lens, students should interrogate administrative awareness and willingness to accept ownership of responsibility for improving campus racial climate.

Discussion Questions