The undecided legacy of Sandra Bland

The man with the bullhorn is older than the students around him, but, standing inside the student center at Prairie View A&M University he's hoping they'll listen.

"We need y'all's support," he shouts. "Sandy still speaks."

By now - a day after classes started back again after summer - many students know of Sandy and the videos she recorded earlier this year with the tag Sandy Speaks in which she urges social activism and touches on everything from mental health to relationships with law enforcement. Some stop to ask the man with the bullhorn for more information.

Dewayne Charleston, who was born on campus 52 years ago and has stayed in the small community, is urging students to join a march outside. They're going to walk roughly 2 miles to the municipal courthouse to ask City Council to vote to temporarily change the name of University Drive in honor of Sandy Bland.

He persuades a few before getting ushered out of the lobby Outside, others help urge more to join.

"Every one of you should be lined up," says senior Angel Chappel as her classmates stream in and out of the student center. "Pick up your sign and let's march."

Charleston is a veteran activist in Prairie View, including struggles involving the historically black university asserting the right to vote and the town itself struggling for better conditions in local schools. But this movement, this Sandy Speaks narrative, seems different.

"This is so much bigger than all of that," he said. "This is not our movement. … This is a millennial movement. This is a Black Lives Matter movement. Sandra speaks to the social media generation. She speaks to a lot of issues."

There are those in Prairie View who knew Sandra Bland, a Chicago native, before this summer: former bandmates, sorority sisters and coworkers.

But many new students did not know Bland even just a few months ago. That was when Bland returned to her alma mater, determined to start a new life, beginning with a temporary job on campus. The 28-year-old had barely left school after finishing up paperwork and visiting with a former colleague when a state trooper pulled her over for failing to signal a lane change. Bland's subsequent arrest - for allegedly assaulting the trooper - her roughly three days alone in a jail cell and her apparent suicide in that jail, which is still under investigation, are now forever part of the story of Waller County and Prairie View.

The next chapter, though, is very much undecided.

What about us?

It's mid-July. A swarm of state and local leaders crowd the auditorium of the juvenile justice and psychology building at Prairie View A&M University, taking turns telling the crowd of national media that they are committed to a thorough investigation of Bland's death.

They're gathered to review footage from the dash cam of the trooper who pulled over Bland. In a closed room for more than two hours, officials examine the footage. On stage, State Sen. Royce West says he thought Bland never should have been in jail in the first place. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urges people not to rush to judgment as the investigations progress. Journalists press for details.

But a student from the university has a question, directed at the school's president, George Wright: What about us?

It's a question on the minds of many students as the footage circulates of the trooper threatening to "light" Bland up with a Taser just feet from campus after she questioned why she needed to put out her cigarette and step out of her car. And its answer lies somewhere between the parallel histories of the first state-supported college for African-Americans and of a county sometimes hostile to it.

Over the next month, Wright will face more questions from concerned students and parents. The phone calls and emails are steady, according to Wright. His response evolves as weeks pass. In the beginning, he said, he struggled to find the right words.

At a summer orientation session for freshmen, he told a group of students: "I'm going to try to make some meaning for myself and the whole community out of what happened to Sandra Bland."

But some wanted a stronger stance from him. "People said, 'You are not doing enough,' " said the president, who would mention he had reached out to Bland's family and was supportive of an ongoing conversation.

"When people say to me, 'You're not committed enough or you're not mad enough, it hurts."

It hurts especially because it's not the first time he's been told this. The comment that stands out to him came from a 19-year-old student in his class at the University of Texas in the spring of 1990. That was the year members of Delta Tau Delta drove a car painted with racist slurs in the spring Round-up Parade. Signs outside the Phi Gamma Delta house read "No Blacks Allowed."

He tried to talk about it in class, reflecting what he felt was his responsibility to better educate students about what those slurs and signs tapped into.

"She was mad at me because I wasn't mad enough," Wright said. " 'You're so damn naïve,' is what she said to me, and I said, 'Lord, how dare a 19-year-old person say that to me?' " But, he said, "I went home and I thought about it and guess what, she was right."

Now, he still tends toward measured, qualified statements. "I want to say something that's going to help the situation," he said.

When he heard about the proposal to rename University Drive in Bland's honor, he knew there were some in the community who would oppose the change. And he leaned toward a scholarship in her name instead, but he understood the motivation.

Two days after Bland's mother and sisters watched the City Council approve the motion to rename the stretch of road in front of campus where she was pulled over, he said, "I think I can see why this passed. … I think it will bring a certain amount of healing."

Concerns linger

But many are demanding more from the university, the county and the state. Legislators in Austin, aware of booking documents that documented an alleged suicide attempt in the past year, are calling for a review of mental health standards in the state's jails. Legal advocates are questioning a bond system that they say fills jails with people too poor to post bail, many arrested on non-violent misdemeanors that advocates say should not be jailable offenses in the first place. They point to a system in which it is common for individuals, including Bland, to be assigned a bond amount by a justice of the peace with no law degree, without a lawyer present and with what they consider insufficient consideration of an individual's circumstances. And students continue to push for answers from the investigation into Bland's death, which, in a small county with a grand jury that only meets once a month, seems to drag on in the dark.

And then there are those who are concerned that it could happen again, it could happen to them.

"My momma didn't want me to come back," said LaDarius Jordan, a junior. Be careful out there, that's what his parents told him. But he did come back. "I'm just trying to get my education."

Close to home

Mason Chandler was on campus in July when Bland's death made international headlines and protestors began sitting outside the county jail demanding answers.

Over the summer, Chandler served as a guide for incoming freshmen during a five-week program. Talking with them and their parents, he said, Bland's name came up.

"I know it's on the minds of parents in particular who are bringing their children to campus," Chandler said.

It's part of a broader, long-running conversation in black families about interacting with police, he said, a conversation he doesn't shy away from with new students. "I talk about it every chance I get."

And it isn't just Waller County, that's part of what Black Lives Matter has documented as a movement. Hostile, and sometimes deadly, interactions like the one between Bland and trooper Brian Encinia happen everywhere, Chandler said.

When parents asked if their students would be safe at school, he told them, "I know you're dropping your child off here and we just had this incident happen, but this is a concern you need to have always for your child of color."

Even Chandler admits that what happened to Bland, so close to campus, affected him.

"I must say that I have become a bit more paranoid when driving, even with current tags and my driver's license and using my lane signal. Whenever I see red (and) blue lights flashing behind me, I get very concerned," he said. "I can be asked to put out a cigarette and I choose not to, which is my right, I can be taken out of my car and thrown to the ground." Or worse.

Students know and have known this is a possibility, according to many. It seems like police are always waiting off campus. It's even known as "trolling the yard," according to Malcolm Jackson, who graduated with Bland in 2009.

"This situation touched me because I've been in the same situation - pulled over by a state trooper seemingly for nothing," he said. Students know to be cautious leaving campus, especially at night.

Starting roughly around the school's inception, Waller County was home to a disproportionately high number of lynchings when compared to other Texas counties. According to research from the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, the county had the third highest number of lynchings between 1877 and 1950 in the state.

The current sheriff fielding questions about jail procedures in the death of Bland was suspended and then fired from his position as Hempstead police chief for racism only to be elected to his county-wide position shortly after.

Community's reputation

Alana Taylor used to not think much of stories she heard about interactions with police when she was on campus. A 2012 graduate and one of Bland's sorority sisters, Taylor followed her mother and grandmother by enrolling at Prairie View, founded in 1876. She learned about the school's long history early on. It made her feel proud to be part of such a storied institution.

But the county's history came later. "I did not learn about the reputation of Waller County until I had to deal with traffic violations," she said. "The way they were handled was a lot different. A speeding ticket there was handled a lot differently than a speeding ticket in Houston." At first she chalked it up to small-town dynamics, but, she said, "looking back, it just seemed like a whole bunch of unnecessary things that would happen."

It didn't stop her from going off campus. She even lived in Hempstead for a while, a town just a few miles away from Prairie View that houses the courthouse and jail. And she left campus to vote, another experience that exposed the divides between the campus and county.

As recently as two years ago, students had to fight to get a polling location on campus and there have been repeated efforts to prevent them from voting.

But the school has survived and even thrived through that long history. Its architecture, engineering and nursing programs in particular attract students from across the country. And its unique school spirit offers a learning experience all its own, according to Taylor.

"There's a lot of things I learned from and at Prairie View that I doubt I would've got anywhere else," she said.

Wright cites monthly guests speakers, international travel opportunities and a student body engaged in extracurricular and service activities as some of the draws to the university where he's been president since 2003.

And while Chandler said attending Prairie View has expanded his understanding of the varied black experience, he's also learned from the community in the city of Prairie View itself. "I've found that Prairie View has a rich history," he said. "I've met many community members that have been organizing for a very long time."

Not even a day after the city voted in favor of changing the name, Wright received a petition asking the city to reverse course. Some alumni and current students don't like the change. "This decision will not shed light on the changes that need to be made in our community; it will shed darkness on our community," the petition stated, "We do not want the words Prairie View to be forever synonymous with Sandra Bland."

Her mother, though, thinks students and law officers alike should speak her name as part of daily life. "I know no scholarship, no amount of money, no street renaming is going to bring my baby back," said Geneva Reed-Veal, "But for those who cannot stand a black face, … they should have to say her name. … I want her name to always be spoken because she's still speaking."

Divisions remain

Chandler said he was conflicted about renaming the street after Bland largely because it has divided the campus. The change would only be for three to five years at which point the city would erect a monument in her honor in the newly named Sandra Bland Park. He's more in favor of a community space like a park bearing her name. "My hope, my prayer is that we can refocus," he said. After a long summer of organizing and discussing tactics like an economic boycott of the county, he's discouraged to see the campus divided so quickly now that school's back in session. "There's a real sense of disunity on the campus," he said.

For now, the decision stands. But what her name will come to mean - as the investigation into her arrest and death continues, the family's own federal suit against Encinia progresses and the constellation of causes rallied by activists and legislators gain traction - is less certain. "Her legacy," said Chandler, "has a life of its own."