CWRU Is Replacing Yost Hall

By Veronica Maciag

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) has recently announced the details of its new project on the Case Quad. In place of the building formerly known as Yost Hall, CWRU is constructing the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB). Here’s everything you need to know about it.

What is Yost Hall?

Historically, Yost Hall functioned as a primary dormitory for the Case Institute for Technology—one of two universities that had later merged to form what is now Case Western Reserve University. Later, with the formation of CWRU, the building’s purpose shifted to house the university’s Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Statistics. Yost Hall has now run its course with this purpose as well.

What will the ISEB be Used for?

CWRU’s President Eric W. Kaler has expressed his aspirations for this building to align directly with Case’s mission for fostering research and community engagement. The ISEB is meant to combine these two focuses in prioritizing several issues that are urgent to the globe, such being climate change, health disparities, and artificial intelligence applications and developments. Here, the building will promote intersectionality between students of all fields to explore such issues. CWRU is crafting the ideal place for its newly introduced major—experimental humanities—to thrive.

When Will it be Finished?

Now, the ISEB’s completion will take place by the end of the year 2026, which is in time for the bicentennial celebration of CWRU’s founding. Ultimately, the ISEB is the largest project on the Case Quad yet. Costing around $300 million dollars, this 200,000-square-foot building represents a new and eagerly anticipated development by the entire CWRU body.

Source: The Daily

CWRU Welcomes Award Winning Author Garth Greenwell

By Lily Stuart

In February, the Case Western Reserve University English Department welcomed Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You (2016) and Cleanness (2020), as its 2023 Stonum Writer-in-Residence. An author of many accolades, Greenwell’s Cleanness was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, a New York Times Critics Top 10 book of the year, and a Best Book of the year by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, BBC and more.

During his time on campus, Greenwell hosted a total of four events, including a fiction writing workshop, a hands-on letterpress session, a reading of his up-and-coming novel, and a departmental colloquium talk. The latter two were open to the public.

Greenwell is a professor at Princeton University. He carries a passion for literature, poetry, and above all, for students, which was resonant throughout his events. At the department colloquium on Friday, the author noted that he “love[s] attempts to make art more hospitable” and thinks that poetry “helps us live.” Students, faculty, and community members alike were engrossed with Greenwell’s prose and responded with contemplative questions.

Students in CWRU Law School’s Community Development Clinic Lead TCO Organizational Board Meeting

This article originally appeared on the Case Western Reserve University School of Law website.

Community-based news media organizations like The Cleveland Observer (TCO) provide critical news content to local communities with a focus on grassroots newsgathering. The students enrolled in the Community Development Clinic (CDC) at Case Western Reserve University School of Law have worked closely with the leadership of TCO this year to establish it as a nonprofit corporation and seek 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

Originally called the Ward 7 Observer when it started out in 2018, TCO re-launched in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and racial unrest as a digital news and monthly print publication. The organization serves several communities in Cleveland, including AsiaTown, Fairfax, Hough, Midtown, St. Clair Superior, Central, Downtown, East Cleveland, Lee-Harvard, Broadway Slavic Village, University Circle, and Glenville.

Recently, TCO’s CDC team, consisting of third-year law students Sierra Lipscomb, Michael Bishop, and Jacob Gialamas, under the supervision of Professor Matthew Rossman, led TCO’s organizational board meeting over Zoom. The meeting provided an opportunity for TCO to convene its prospective Board of Directors, elect officers, and carry out other important business such as adopting its bylaws, which the CDC team prepared.

The CDC team members served as temporary chairs and secretary of the meeting and guided the organization through its agenda, which the team also drafted. This legal work is critical to ensuring that TCO has a strong foundation as it looks ahead to seeking tax-exempt status in the near future.

The CDC is one of nine clinics under the umbrella of the law school’s Milton and Charlotte Kramer Law Clinic. Every law student undertakes a 3L capstone in one of the clinics or a semester-long externship. Based on the work of the CDC and the other clinics, preLaw magazine ranked Case Western Reserve University School of Law 6th best law school in the nation in practical training.

As of May 11, The Cleveland Observer is officially a 501c3 organization, thanks to the Community Development Clinic (CDC) at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Resident complaints against University Circle Police reveal need for external review board as patrol jurisdiction set to expand

By Doug Breehl-Pitorak/Cleveland Documenters

Donnie Durrah was planting grass seed at a home on Wade Park Avenue in Glenville, he said, when University Circle Police Officers Dave Rios and Kelly Gabriel pulled up and asked him to stand near his white truck. The officers eyed the lawn mower in the attached trailer.

“I just want to tell you somebody just stole a lawn mower around the corner, and it looks just like the one on the back of your truck,” Durrah recalled Rios saying.

Durrah had noticed the officers cruising up and down the street and he had wondered what was going on. But the implication that he stole a lawn mower, loaded it in a trailer, and traveled around the block to do yard work was “racism at its finest,” Durrah, who is Black, told Cleveland Documenters.

Durrah, 56, filed a complaint about the incident, which happened in September 2021. As a kid, he cut grass in the neighborhood. Today, he treats the lawns of more than two dozen customers in the area and said he is routinely outfitted in yellow safety shirts and khaki pants. The officers stopped him just a two-minute walk from the Wade Park Avenue home that his parents have owned since 1974. His point? How could the police not recognize him? And, along those lines, who are they supposed to protect and serve?

That question has caused tension as Cleveland City Council considers legislation to expand the jurisdiction of

UCI Police to Little Italy and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Police further into Glenville, stretching north from Wade Park Avenue to Ashbury Avenue.

Cleveland safety officials as well as several council members have endorsed the expanded private police presence as a “force multiplier” for safety in the University Circle and Little Italy neighborhoods, which draw 50,000 visitors and workers each day and fuels a significant part of the city’s economy.

To Durrah, the answer is clear. He has noticed the influx of white students, noting that most, if not all, of his neighbors have been Black since he moved to Wade Park Avenue with his family 48 years ago. And along with the new neighbors has come increased investor interest in the area – and more police, he said.

“Now I see them protecting, you know, what is valuable to them,” Durrah said.

Still, Durrah supports the proposed expansions and hopes that they will lead to more diverse, local and better-trained police forces – potentially preventing what happened to him from happening to others. Ultimately, he expressed frustration with how newer residents and some police officers alike regard him, a long-term community member, as the outsider.

Caption: Cleveland City Council is considering legislation that would expand the jurisdiction of University Circle’s police department to Little Italy as shown in this map.

Who is handling UCI’s citizen complaints?

Durrah’s complaint about how the UCI officers treated him should have been reviewed by an independent board – not police supervisors – under an agreement the department has with Cleveland that allows them to patrol in the city.

In 2018, when UCI signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) it had 90 days to create the board and the process to review, investigate and issue findings related to civilian complaints. In addition it agreed to follow policies and training for officers on bias-free policing, use of force and crisis response that were implemented for Cleveland police as a result of the 2015 Consent Decree.

Despite what the written agreement says, the department had no complaint board in place to review Durrah’s complaint – or the others made in 2020 or 2021.

Cleveland’s Chief Public Safety Officer Karrie Howard said in an April 27 meeting that the city could choose to end an agreement if a party violates it. Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia, senior public information officer for the Department of Public Safety — which signed the UCI agreement — did not provide comment for this story.

UCI sergeants and captains handled investigations for all three citizen complaints filed in 2020 and 2021, records show.

None went through the process outlined in the agreement with Cleveland, the same process Chief Jim Repicky shared with City Council members last month: an outside investigator reviews complaints and submits findings to a civilian review board, which then makes a judgment on the case.

UCI and its police department complied with the MOU, according to a written statement sent to Cleveland Documenters by Becky Voldrich, senior director of communications and events for UCI. “Implementation of our new Citizen Review Board has proceeded steadily despite pandemic-related delays,” it said.

The complaint board members had an introductory meeting on Sept. 29, 2021, and they are scheduled for training May 6. Voldrich did not comment directly on why the board wasn’t created between the signing of the agreement in 2018 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but she said UCI was confident people would understand “why such a complex and important process takes time to fully implement.”

UCI did not answer a request for the name of the investigator it hired, when they were hired, or if they have reviewed any complaints yet, though Repicky said in an April 13 Safety Committee meeting that the investigator is a former county prosecutor.

Caption: The agreement between Cleveland and University Circle Inc. (UCI), signed in 2018, required UCI to create a civilian complaint board within 90 days.

Why does it matter who reviews the complaints?

Civilian review boards, like the one outlined in UCI’s agreement, are meant to add a layer of external accountability to ensure that complaints against police officers or dispatchers are looked at by citizens who are not in the law enforcement chain of command.

In his complaint to UCI, Durrah said the officers’ conduct was uncivil, and he wrote that a public written apology and meet-and-greets with Wade Park Avenue residents were in order. However, Durrah said he ultimately requested face-to-face apologies from the officers. He said he has not received them.

Durrah, who said he felt his complaint wasn’t taken seriously, thinks a civilian review board could have made a difference.

“They won’t be able to say, ‘Well, we didn’t do anything wrong,’” he said. “When you have a board of six or 12 people saying, ‘Yeah, you’re wrong,’ [then] you’re wrong. You’re all wrong.”

In the disposition letter, UCI Sergeant Adam Gilmore wrote that he apologized on the phone to Durrah and told him he wished the incident hadn’t happened.

East Cleveland resident Sharif Shabaz Ra El also told Cleveland Documenters a civilian review board would be beneficial, saying it could prevent those with clouded judgment from reviewing complaints.

Ra El filed a complaint against UCI Police in 2021 alleging that Officer Zachary Krebs — who has since joined Garfield Heights Police Department — and UCI Detective Alanna Smith pulled him over on Euclid Avenue near E. 115th St., yelled at him to exit his car, handcuffed him, and refused to let him retrieve his ID from the back of his vehicle while questioning his young daughter without his permission.

He had previously reported his vehicle as stolen but hadn’t cleared that report, Ra El said. Still, he said the officers wouldn’t let him identify himself as the owner, which led him to file a complaint at the department.

In a disposition letter to Chief Repicky, Sergeant Steven Brady, who reviewed the incident, wrote that an officer told Ra El during the stop that the conduct was in line with the department’s procedure for “high-risk felony traffic stops.” The department invited Ra El to the station to see documentation of the police protocol, but he didn’t go because he wasn’t satisfied with the overall complaint process.

“How can you get a fair review when you have someone who is part of the cookie jar?” he said.

The MOU hasn’t been followed; what happens now?

On April 27 the Safety Committee advanced the legislation that would expand the jurisdictions of UCI and CWRU Police, with a change to require quarterly reports from the director of public safety. Council’s Finance, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (FDEI) Committee is set to review the legislation May 9. If passed, it would then receive a final vote by the full council at its regular meeting later that night.

Council Member Mike Polensek, who chairs the Safety Committee said it doesn’t give him a “warm and fuzzy feeling” to hear one thing at the committee table — that citizens’ complaints are being dealt with properly and accordingly — only to learn otherwise later. He said the responsibility lies with the administration to ensure compliance.

“It’s going to be up to the administration to hold their feet to the fire, to make sure they implement what they committed to,” Polensek said.

Sarah Johnson, communications chief for Mayor Justin Bibb, said in an email that she was unable to reach the appropriate people to provide a comment for this story.

Council President Blaine Griffin, who chairs the FDEI committee, told Cleveland Documenters he is eager for the UCI complaint board to get up and running, but he would not comment on how UCI has handled complaints. Griffin reached out to confirm that Cleveland Documenters received information from UCI about the pandemic-related delays in creating the board and the training that is now scheduled.

Council Member Stephanie Howse, who serves on the Safety Committee, advocates for a more hands-on approach. The city must have a process for verifying whether there is compliance with the MOUs, and, in cases of non-compliance, the city must rectify the issues, she said.

“At the end of the day, community members, they want to make sure that people have their back as well,” said Howse, who represents Ward 7. “And when people aren’t following guidelines, I think that creates the opportunity and really diminishes people’s belief and trust, not only in our law enforcement partners, but really in the City of Cleveland.”

Board responsible for reviewing complaints about University Circle Police did not do so in 2020 or 2021, lawyer says

By Doug Breehl-Pitorak, Cleveland Documenters

In advocating for legislation to expand his police department’s jurisdiction to Little Italy, University Circle Police Chief Jim Repicky told Cleveland City Council members how the department responds to residents’ complaints about police conduct. It’s a process outlined in the agreement that University Circle Inc. (UCI) signed with Cleveland in 2018 requiring complaints to be reviewed by a board of civilians.

What Repicky didn’t tell council members during the mid-April meeting is that the department didn’t follow that process for complaints filed in 2020 or 2021. Cleveland safety officials, as well as several council members, have endorsed the pending legislation, calling it a “force multiplier” for the University Circle and Little Italy neighborhoods, which draw 50,000 visitors and workers to the area each day.

Similar legislation, if passed, would also expand the jurisdiction of the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) police department to include Little Italy and a residential slice of Glenville from E. 105 Street to E. 120 Street reaching north to Ashbury Avenue and south to Wade Park Avenue.

Caption: Cleveland City Council is considering legislation that would expand the jurisdiction of University Circle’s police department to Little Italy as shown in this map.

Some council members and residents have raised concerns about how the private police agencies, such as those of UCI and CWRU, will interact with residents, particularly young people, and whether they will be required to follow the same rules for training, use of force and responding to complaints put in place for Cleveland under the U.S. Department of Justice Consent Decree and the recently passed ballot initiative, Issue 24.

The agreements, or memorandums of understanding (MOUs), are meant to set expectations and ensure consistent protocol among the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) and the private departments that they partner with. They date back decades — 1992 for UCI and 2007 for CWRU — and both have been amended previously.

The city’s agreement with UCI was amended in 2018 to “further the goals of constitutional and effective policing, address training of UCI Officers and Dispatchers, certain UCI Police Department policies, and complaint handling,” according to the legislation.

Repicky laid out the complaint-handling process during the two-hour April 13 Safety Committee meeting. It includes the use of an outside investigator to look into complaints about officers and a review by a civilian board that “will sit down and discuss the findings of the investigator, and then they make a judgment on the case.”

The UCI Police Department received two complaints in 2021 “and the same in 2020,” Repicky told council members.

Caption: University Circle Police Chief Jim Repicky (left, second from the top) addresses Cleveland City Council’s Safety Committee at an April 13 meeting about legislation that would expand his police department’s jurisdiction.

Cleveland Documenters requested copies of complaints the board received and reviewed in each of those years, as well as how they were resolved. Kevin Butler, legal counsel for University Circle Inc., responded in an email that there were no records that satisfy the request.

After a reporter pointed out that Repicky stated the number of complaints in a public meeting, Butler wrote:

“I confirmed the review board has not been trained yet to conduct investigations into citizen complaints against the police department, and that the scheduling of this training is underway. As such, the board has neither received nor reviewed any complaints in 2020 or 2021.”

Cleveland Documenters has again requested the resident complaints filed in 2020 and 2021 but has not received those complaints. Repicky has not responded to questions asking why the board wasn’t trained in 2020 and 2021 or if the board was ever trained following the 2018 agreement. UCI did provide the names of the individuals it says are complaint-board members.

Butler’s response about UCI’s complaint board is similar to what ProPublica was told two years ago. In its September 2020 story about racial bias among several Cleveland private police forces, ProPublica reported that UCI was still in the process of establishing its complaint board as required by the 2018 agreement, which gives it 90 days to do so.

Caption: The agreement between Cleveland and University Circle Inc. (UCI), signed in 2018, required UCI to create a civilian complaint board within 90 days.

Council Member Kevin Conwell (Ward 9) told Cleveland Documenters he wasn’t too surprised by the board not being trained in 2020 and 2021 because of UCI police behavior described in the ProPublica report, specifically the fact that 88 percent of the nearly 2,000 drivers cited by UCI police since 2015 were Black.

Regardless, the legislation is needed based on a safety-first principle, Conwell said.

“My job is to protect people that live, work and travel through the City of Cleveland,” he said, adding that he constantly hears from neighbors about gunshots and once had to fend off someone trying to break into his home. “I want [the legislation] because I need safety for my residents.”

Oversight and accountability are needed, too, he said, from council and from the Department of Public Safety.

In an April 27 Safety Committee meeting, where discussions of the legislation resumed, Council Member Charles Slife (Ward 17) asked what options the city had if an agency were to deviate from what’s written in their MOU. Director of Public Safety Karrie Howard said it could choose to end the MOU, which he views as agreements of mutual aid.

“It’s logical to assume that the reason we are in these MOUs is that our partners foresee a need or a time that they will need us to assist as we will need them to assist,” he said in the meeting. “That need creates the obligation for us to be in compliance with the agreement that we have.”

The Department of Public Safety, which proposed the expansion legislation being considered, did not provide comment for this story. The agreement with UCI is set to expire Dec. 1.

Council Member Mike Polensek (Ward 8) also told Cleveland Documenters that accountability is crucial. And with several private police agencies operating in the city, a uniform adherence to Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) policies — including body cameras, oversight, and providing due process to citizens with complaints — is needed, he said.

“That was one of the reasons why the Justice Department came in here; the citizens were not treated right and fairly,” Polensek said. “And so I think we’ve made good progress. But are we where we need to be collectively, not just within CPD, but with all these outside agencies? No, I don’t believe we’re where we need to be at this point.”

Polensek, in the April 27 meeting, reiterated the need to make sure all future MOUs require private police departments to adhere to the same policies CDP does, including the consent decree, for the sake of accountability and transparency.

The committee approved the UCI and CWRU legislation, with amendments that would require the director of public safety to report quarterly to the committee about the police agencies’ activity in their jurisdictions. Both emergency ordinances would still have to be approved by the Finance, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and then voted on by the full council.

Find Documenter Emily Anderson’s Twitter thread on the April 27 Safety Committee meeting here.

CWRU to Expand Residential Property

By Lisa O’Brien

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) recently announced that it will be expanding its residential spaces through the acquisition of surrounding properties.

On February 16, 2022, in an email to students, CWRU administration announced that it is revising its initial decision to restrict housing by guaranteeing that all upperclassmen who wish to live on campus will be able to. The move to buy new properties followed this announcement. It was explained that the university was exploring offering off-campus housing options, though not which properties they would acquire.

On February 25, it was revealed that the university had purchased three housing units on Fairchild, Glenwood, and Murray Hill. This announcement stated that more properties were to be purchased, but did not disclose them.

On March 23, CWRU unveiled even more acquired housing options: eight apartments in a 1716 building, five apartments in the Fairchild Apartment building, the upstairs of two Fairchild duplexes, a five-person house on Glenwood, and another duplex on Murray Hill. The university alluded to even more options if student numbers grow but did not disclose the locations.

Two CWRU students weighed in when asked what they thought of the university’s recent expansion:

Joann Jones, a second-year student, replied “I was relieved when they guaranteed to house us, but felt like it was something that should have already been done. I think they should expand housing if they’re going to keep letting more people in to make room for everyone.”

Another second-year student, Grace Harrison, stated “If the university is continuing their plan of expanding admissions, there should also be a plan to expand housing. The issue with this though is guaranteeing that the housing is affordable to students, and does not encroach on local communities and neighborhoods.”

The Cleveland Observer reached out to the university for a comment, but officials did not respond in time for the publication of this article. With the housing deadline for students approaching, local residents and students alike will want to be on the lookout for more housing updates regarding university purchases.