Paid To Be There

It’s hard to say whether there was some prior warning that this might happen. Did Georgia State English prof Carissa Gray tell her students that they either got to class on time or shouldn’t bother showing up? Had she warned them that if they came in late, they would be told to leave? Had late arrivals disrupted her classes too many times for her to tolerate?

Or was she just a needlessly mean scold who outrageously over-reacted?

Another day, another incident of inexcusable harm done to Black youth at the hands of authorities. This past week, police were called on two students on the Perimeter campus of Georgia State University when they arrived late to class. On Wednesday evening, TikTok creator and college peer, Bria Blake posted about the incident in full. In the video which now has over 356,000 views, Blake recounts the story of how students, Taylor and Kamryn were asked to leave the classroom after arriving two minutes tardy.

“Two minutes tardy,” as reported by a reliable source, a “Tik Tok creator,” hardly seems like a big deal. It’s not great, but it’s not the end of the world either. Unless there’s information unprovided, such as a constant problem causing the prof to put her foot down, or perhaps a particular problem with these students never arriving on time and disrupting class. Or perhaps not. Who knows?

According to Blake’s retelling, the students entered the classroom while the door was still open, made their way to their seats, and proceeded to pull out their class items to take lesson notes. It was at this time that they were asked to leave due to their tardiness. The students refused to leave the classroom stating that they “paid to be there.” The professor, named by Blake as Carissa Gray then left the class and returned with two armed campus police officers.

Some view the college classroom as transactional, where students pay and are entitled to the privileges of any consumer. Others consider education differenty, where the students are not the peers of the professor, where they prof controls the classroom and where the students are properly expected to demonstrate respect for their professor and to follow her rules.

After being asked to leave for being late, a refusal because they “paid to be there” seems quite arrogant. Did the students owe the prof enough respect to comply with her direction that they leave for being late, or did the prof owe her students respect by not directing them to leave? After all, they were, indeed, paying to be there.

After the two students refused to leave, what was the prof to do? Wrestle with them? Forcibly remove them on her own? She left to get campus police officers, who apparently carry guns in the usual line of duty, to compel the students to obey here direction. But cops, and guns, and black students, is a recipe for outrage.

To some, it may come as a shock that Ms. Gray, a professor in GSU’s english department, is actually a Black woman. There is an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) expectation for Black people to understand the gravity of calling in police on other Black people. More than any other racial group, we’ve seen first hand the dangers we face in our interactions with authority. While some believe that there is never an incident where the cops should be called in, I would say most would agree at the very least, that there need not be police interference when there is no threat posed. In the case of these two students simply refusing to leave their seats after arriving late, there was never any threat of violence.

Had Gray not been a black woman, this might have been a very different story, one of unchallengeable racism as a matter of campus course. But since demographics were wrong, the dynamic shifted to the “unspoken expectation” that one never calls in cops on “other Black people.” If the students were white, nobody would care. But they weren’t white, and the fact that they chose not to comply with their black female professor’s order, but rather to talk back to her with a flippant “we paid for this” after being late for class left the prof with limited options to control her classroom.

“Stuff like this cannot keep happening to Black youth in America,” Blake said in the video. “Stop weaponizing the police against Black people.”

“Stuff” like what? Stuff like black students arriving late for class? Stuff like students refusing to comply with their prof’s directions? Stuff like challenging an accomplished black woman’s authority to run her classroom? Pushing a professor to require campus police when her students decide they get to rule her class? What “stuff” would Tik Tok creator Blake mean?

“They’re both extremely traumatized to say the least. This is not something we’re going to let them sweep under the rug,” Blake said.

The two “armed police officers” were campus police, hardly the armored warriors in riot gear with heavy weapons. The same cops who students see regularly on campus. The same cops who are used to students being students, for better or worse, and somehow manage not to traumatize anyone by their existence except when it behooves their cause to claim so.

As a result of the outrage generated by Blake, the Tik Tok creator, this matter wasn’t swept under the rug, and has so far resulted in Gray’s removal from the classroom. But that’s not nearly enough for the Tik Tok creator.

Georgia State University confirmed the incident to CBS46 and said the professor is no longer teaching in-person classes at this time. The two students have also been invited to meet with the school provost and police chief today.

Blake says the three of them met with the Dean of students on Thursday and was unsatisfied with what transpired.

She feels it isn’t enough Gray isn’t teaching in-person there anymore.

“She shouldn’t be teaching period. I don’t care if it’s online or in-person.”

Gray’s been ousted from the classroom as a result, but that isn’t good enough for the Tik Tok creator, who apparently believes what she gets to rule the classroom. And given her “over 356,000 views” thus far, it appears that Georgia State University might very well agree.