Security is being ratcheted up on the D.C. campus of Howard University, after several students were randomly and viciously attacked this weekend by a group of teenagers, known to police for their troublemaking.
Videos posted on social media this weekend showed the melee, in which Howard students were injured outside a residence hall — two victims managed to escape the violent mob of about 15 or more teenagers while another one of the victims was stabbed in the back, according to NBC4 Washington.
With nearly 250,000 views as of Tuesday evening, one TikTok user describing herself as a sophomore journalism student said that one victim was “left to die on the concrete” as security walked away.
“We’ve been tracking these juveniles, not only on our campus, but also throughout the District as well, over the summertime. They’re part of a fight club. They go to restaurants to instigate fights,” said Dr. Tashni-Ann Dubroy, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the school, at an emergency town hall on safety Tuesday.
@thesocialitechannel #greenscreen Four Howard university students were attacked by over 50 locals early Monday morning and the University is not doing as much as the students would like to see and respond to this incident.##fyp##trending##howarduniversity##hu25##hu26 ♬ original sound – thesocialitechannel
“And the reason why it escalated so quickly and became viral is because that’s part of their strategy. That’s part of what they do,” she added.
This isn’t the most recent act of violence on the HBCU’s campus. Last month, a man doing work on the campus was shot and killed during an attempted robbery.
“Washington, D.C. is having a tough time right now. There are too many guns on the street, too many juveniles that are conducting violent crimes. The last percentage I saw … there was an uptick of 26% in violent crime,” said Chief Marcus Lyles, head of the university’s Department of Public Safety.
Concern is especially high because freshman students new to the city may be particularly vulnerable to violent crimes.
“Over the last eight months, we’ve installed over 1,000 cameras, both internal and external. And we’ve also installed smart card readers for access control purposes. That’s just Phase One,” Lyles said. “These are multimillion dollar projects and we’ve invested heavily and we will continue to Phase Two … in which we will be installing another 1,000 cameras across the university with another 500 smart card readers.”
The police chief said an armed officer has been posted in front of the building where the brawl broke out this past weekend. Campus residence halls have 24-hour security and bike patrols to secure the campus.
“We’re creating a safety path for you. We’re going to communicate to our students that, at night, this is the path that we want you to walk, because every 100 or 200 feet, you’re going to see a safety officer there,” Dubroy said.
“We are going to continue with Bison Week and we’re going to ramp up security,” Dubroy said. “We want the students to have a good time and we’re going to put all of the barriers that we can around these safe spaces.”
School officials also said that some events will be moved indoors where student ID checks can be enforced, so that individuals cannot enter without proper identification.
