march 16–29, 2020 | new york 93
In the spring of 2019, when Tess
was still in high school, Barnard and
Columbia undertook a massive re-
thinking of their approach to the is-
sues of race and student safety after a Co-
lumbia senior named Alexander McNab
refused to show his ID at the high Barnard
gates. Within minutes, McNab was encir-
cled by six campus security guards and
pinned to a cafeteria counter, his arms be-
hind him, like a fish. McNab yelled, “Take
your hands off me,” repeatedly, and a cell
phone video rolled.
Everyone in the world saw the video, it
seems, and it became the occasion for
anguished, campuswide soul-searching.
Students of color said they were frequently
targeted by campus police, leading to arbi-
trary stops and ID checks. White students
mostly agreed, while students who dis-
agreed stayed silent. The administration
held listening sessions. The security
guards were put on administrative leave,
and Barnard’s director of public safety was
replaced by Amy Zavadil, a former dean
with a background in equity compliance.
President Beilock also hired a consulting
firm to investigate the incident, and on
August 15, she wrote a letter to the whole
community, vowing “to take the necessary
steps to address any racial and other forms
of bias and inequitable enforcement of
campus policies.”
According to the consultant’s report, the
biggest safety hazard had nothing to do
with race. T&M Protection Resources
found safety procedures at Barnard to be
haphazard and informal. Its recommenda-
tions were for the college to better codify its
mission: to train officers, to articulate poli-
cies, to collaborate better with Columbia
security, to be more transparent with Bar-
nard students, and to “conduct an indepen-
dent and comprehensive physical security
assessment of the Barnard campus.”
Paulette Arnold and five other students
wrote as much in a letter to President
Beilock two nights after Tess’s death. On
December 13, an assault occurred under
Paulette’s dorm window, and Barnard
didn’t notify anyone for almost two hours.
“Even though the assault did not involve a
Columbia or Barnard student,” they wrote,
“multiple students saw the incident from
our windows, and it’s unbelievable that we
had to learn of information from outside
sources to prepare ourselves.” They contin-
ued: “There has been increased crime in the
Morningside Park area since last year, and
there was an extremely violent attack in
April that students were never notified
about. Despite the park technically being
off campus, it is dismissive to disconnect
Barnard from the greater Morningside
Heights area.” In an email to me, Beilocksaid it’s a balancing act: “We discussed the
importance of urban sense and safety with
our students, but at the same time want
them to experience the wonderful neigh-
borhood that Barnard calls home.”
In retrospect, Coleman Hughes can see
how Alex McNab and Tessa Majors are
ensnared in the same seemingly borderless
conversation about safety and race. Hughes
isn’t just a Columbia undergraduate;
thanks to a series of provocative essays on
race in America for Quillette, he’s also
become, over the past several years, a hero
of the “intellectual dark web,” a loose group
of thinkers who reject the shibboleths of
liberal culture (while keeping some dis-
tance from the Trump-era right). With both
cases, Hughes believes public safety has
been collateral damage in the effort to
expunge racism. Among the woke majority,
“there’s a dismissive attitude about proac-
tive safety.” The McNab incident was han-
dled badly, Hughes agrees, “but safety actu-
ally matters. It’s not an empty word.” He
continues, “Alex McNab was a student. But
he could have not been a student. That’s the
thing. He could have had a knife in his
pocket. That was unsayable at the time. But
sometimes people do have knives in their
pockets. Just because the kids come from
terrible circumstances doesn’t mean they
don’t sometimes have knives in their pock-
ets, and people will do intellectual gymnas-
tics to avoid confronting that paradox.”Over the course of February and
early March, certain things have be-
come normal to the baby-faced boy.
He enters the small courtroom after
everyone is present—sometimes his uncle,
always his aunt (taking notes in a scrupulous
hand on a small legal pad). Large legal
teams occupy two large tables, each spread
with stacks of files and pads and Post-it
notes. The boy is escorted in by an officer
with a gun, his hands cuffed behind his
back. His body has adapted to the way the
cuffs come off and on: He shifts his shoul-
ders and angles his wrists to help out the
officer with the key.
He wears a dark winter coat with a gray
stripe on the hood that says Calvin Klein,
and he keeps it on for hours, even when the
courtroom gets stif ling, until finally he
removes it and then you can see what he’s
wearing—often a baseball shirt, white
with blue sleeves. He has nervous habits.
He pulls at his lips, sometimes plucks at
the front of his hair. The tabloids have said
that he has a hard time paying attention,
but this isn’t altogether true. He some-
times falls completely asleep, with his
head on the table cupped in his arms, but
more often he is doodling or writing or
frequently talking to his lawyer, tappingher shoulder and whispering things
behind a cupped hand as if he were telling
secrets in school.
These preliminary hearings went on for
weeks; their purpose was for Judge Carol
Goldstein to make rulings on admission
of evidence. While awaiting his trial in
April, the boy has been held at Crossroads
detention center, a place sometimes
referred to as “gladiator school.” What-
ever happens, this boy will get off easy,
compared to his friends. His age means
that even on a felony-murder charge, he
will be tried in family court; his file will
remain sealed; if convicted, he will serve
five to nine years. But 13 is the boundary.
The older boys are both 14 and, charged
with murder and robbery, will be tried in
the youth part of the criminal court. If
convicted, they will serve five years to life.
In the courtroom, there’s another fre-
quent visitor. He sits in the corner farthest
from the boy, near the door, on a hard, nar-
row, uncomfortable bench. He shifts posi-
tions, leaning forward and back, crossing
and uncrossing his long legs. This is Inman
Majors, Tess’s father. Majors takes his job
as Tess’s representative seriously. He wears
a dark suit and dress shoes and a metallic
blue tie the color of Tess’s eyes. He looks
like Tess, except his face is rounder and
bleak. This is one of the people who
insisted that all of the memorials for Tess
be named “celebrations,” that they be satu-
rated with music—Sly & the Family Stone
and Paul Simon and Violent Femmes—
that people dance and sing if so moved,
that the lyrics to “Prom Queen,” Tess’s song
about falling in love with a girl, be printed
on the back of the program. “I’m stuck in
my head cuz ’m falling so hard / And I
know that she’s still up with the stars.”
One day in February, the boy’s lawyer,
Hannah Kaplan, argued for the fifth time
for parole. At that point, the boy had been
held at the detention center—where he is
“the youngest, and the smallest”—for 55
days. Kaplan pointed to the boy’s recent
progress report: He had only been acting
out a little bit and only with some of the
younger staff, refusing to do things like get
out of a chair. The boy was getting good
grades—“outstanding,” in fact, in science,
creative writing, and art. He needed to be
home. He needed to be in school. His uncle
and aunt would agree to any restrictions;
they would follow all rules. Furthermore,
“my client is not alleged to have stabbed
the victim,” she said. “He did not touch her
or take her belongings.”
At the word victim, Inman Majors
made a loud and involuntary gasp, as if he
were taken suddenly by surprise. For the
fifth time, Judge Goldstein denied the
boy’s parole. ■Y ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICTRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC0620FEA_Majors_lay [Print]_36890197.indd 93 3/13/20 9:09 PMmarch16–29, 2020 | newyork 93I
n the spring of 2019, when Tess
was still in high school, Barnard and
Columbia undertook a massive re-
thinking of their approach to the is-
sues of race and student safety after a Co-
lumbia senior named Alexander McNab
refused to show his ID at the high Barnard
gates. Within minutes, McNab was encir-
cled by six campus security guards and
pinned to a cafeteria counter, his arms be-
hind him, like a fish. McNab yelled, “Take
your hands off me,” repeatedly, and a cell
phone video rolled.
Everyone in the world saw thevideo, it
seems, and it became the occasion for
anguished, campuswide soul-searching.
Students of color said they were frequently
targeted by campus police, leading to arbi-
trary stops and ID checks. White students
mostly agreed, while students who dis-
agreed stayed silent. The administration
held listening sessions. The security
guards were put on administrative leave,
and Barnard’s director of public safety was
replaced by Amy Zavadil, a former dean
with a background in equity compliance.
President Beilock also hired a consulting
firm to investigate the incident,and on
August 15, she wrote a letter to the whole
community, vowing “to take the necessary
steps to address any racial and other forms
of bias and inequitable enforcement of
campus policies.”
According to the consultant’s report, the
biggest safety hazard had nothing to do
with race. T&M Protection Resources
found safety procedures at Barnard to be
haphazard and informal. Its recommenda-
tions were for the college to better codify its
mission: to train officers, to articulate poli-
cies, to collaborate better with Columbia
security, to be more transparent with Bar-
nard students, and to “conduct an indepen-
dent and comprehensive physicalsecurity
assessment of the Barnard campus.”
Paulette Arnold and five other students
wrote as much in a letter to President
Beilock two nights after Tess’s death. On
December 13, an assault occurred under
Paulette’s dorm window, and Barnard
didn’t notify anyone for almost two hours.
“Even though the assault did not involve a
Columbia or Barnard student,” they wrote,
“multiple students saw the incident from
our windows, and it’s unbelievable that we
had to learn of information fromoutside
sources to prepare ourselves.” They contin-
ued: “There has been increased crime in the
Morningside Park area since last year, and
there was an extremely violent attack in
April that students were nevernotified
about. Despite the park technically being
off campus, it is dismissive to disconnect
Barnard from the greater Morningside
Heights area.” In an email to me,Beilocksaid it’s a balancing act: “We discussed the
importance of urban sense and safety with
our students, but at the same time want
them to experience the wonderful neigh-
borhood that Barnard calls home.”
In retrospect, Coleman Hughes can see
how Alex McNab and Tessa Majors are
ensnared in the same seemingly borderless
conversation about safety and race. Hughes
isn’t just a Columbia undergraduate;
thanks to a series of provocative essays on
race in America for Quillette, he’s also
become, over the past several years, a hero
of the “intellectual dark web,” a loose group
of thinkers who reject the shibboleths of
liberal culture (while keeping some dis-
tance from the Trump-era right). With both
cases, Hughes believes public safety has
been collateral damage in the effort to
expunge racism. Among the woke majority,
“there’s a dismissive attitude about proac-
tive safety.” The McNab incident was han-
dled badly, Hughes agrees, “but safety actu-
ally matters. It’s not an empty word.” He
continues, “Alex McNab was a student. But
he could have not been a student. That’s the
thing. He could have had a knife in his
pocket. That was unsayable at the time. But
sometimes people do have knivesin their
pockets. Just because the kids come from
terrible circumstances doesn’t mean they
don’t sometimes have knives in their pock-
ets, and people will do intellectual gymnas-
tics to avoid confronting that paradox.”Over the course of February and
early March, certain thingshave be-
come normal to the baby-faced boy.
He enters the small courtroom after
everyone is present—sometimes his uncle,
always his aunt (taking notes in a scrupulous
hand on a small legal pad). Large legal
teams occupy two large tables, each spread
with stacks of files and pads and Post-it
notes. The boy is escorted in by an officer
with a gun, his hands cuffed behind his
back. His body has adapted to theway the
cuffs come off and on: He shifts his shoul-
ders and angles his wrists to helpout the
officer with the key.
He wears a dark winter coat with a gray
stripe on the hood that says Calvin Klein,
and he keeps it on for hours, even when the
courtroom gets stif ling, until finally he
removes it and then you can see what he’s
wearing—often a baseball shirt, white
with blue sleeves. He has nervous habits.
He pulls at his lips, sometimes plucks at
the front of his hair. The tabloids have said
that he has a hard time paying attention,
but this isn’t altogether true. He some-
times falls completely asleep, with his
head on the table cupped in his arms, but
more often he is doodling or writing or
frequently talking to his lawyer,tappingher shoulder and whispering things
behind a cupped hand as if he were telling
secrets in school.
These preliminary hearings went on for
weeks; their purpose was for Judge Carol
Goldstein to make rulings on admission
of evidence. While awaiting his trial in
April, the boy has been held at Crossroads
detention center, a place sometimes
referred to as “gladiator school.” What-
ever happens, this boy will get off easy,
compared to his friends. His age means
that even on a felony-murder charge, he
will be tried in family court; hisfile will
remain sealed; if convicted, he will serve
five to nine years. But 13 is the boundary.
The older boys are both 14 and, charged
with murder and robbery, will betried in
the youth part of the criminal court. If
convicted, they will serve five years to life.
In the courtroom, there’s another fre-
quent visitor. He sits in the cornerfarthest
from the boy, near the door, on a hard, nar-
row, uncomfortable bench. He shifts posi-
tions, leaning forward and back, crossing
and uncrossing his long legs. This is Inman
Majors, Tess’s father. Majors takes his job
as Tess’s representative seriously. He wears
a dark suit and dress shoes and ametallic
blue tie the color of Tess’s eyes. He looks
like Tess, except his face is rounder and
bleak. This is one of the people who
insisted that all of the memorialsfor Tess
be named “celebrations,” that theybe satu-
rated with music—Sly & the Family Stone
and Paul Simon and Violent Femmes—
that people dance and sing if somoved,
that the lyrics to “Prom Queen,” Tess’s song
about falling in love with a girl, beprinted
on the back of the program. “I’mstuck in
my head cuz ’m falling so hard/ And I
know that she’s still up with the stars.”
One day in February, the boy’s lawyer,
Hannah Kaplan, argued for the fifth time
for parole. At that point, the boy had been
held at the detention center—where he is
“the youngest, and the smallest”—for 55
days. Kaplan pointed to the boy’s recent
progress report: He had only been acting
out a little bit and only with some of the
younger staff, refusing to do things like get
out of a chair. The boy was getting good
grades—“outstanding,” in fact, inscience,
creative writing, and art. He needed to be
home. He needed to be in school. His uncle
and aunt would agree to any restrictions;
they would follow all rules. Furthermore,
“my client is not alleged to havestabbed
the victim,” she said. “He did not touch her
or take her belongings.”
At the word victim, InmanMajors
made a loud and involuntary gasp, as if he
were taken suddenly by surprise.For the
fifth time, Judge Goldstein denied the
boy’s parole. ■