Drugs, Murder, Race, and Harvard

Prep For Prep is an organization that identifies and prepares bright poor kids to attend New York City's elite private schools. Judged by college admissions, it is a great success. Prep for Prep sends a slightly higher proportion of its graduates (about a quarter) to Ivy League schools than such traditional Ivy spawns as Groton or St. Paul's. It currently has 40 kids at Harvard, more than Choate or Hotchkiss. Chanequa Campbell, 21, a native of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and a member of Harvard's class of 2009, was regarded as a model Prep for Prep student. In May 2005, at Prep for Prep's annual Lilac Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Campbell spoke to a thousand guests, many of them wealthy bankers and lawyers, about overcoming the challenge of living in two worlds. At home, she said, she was sometimes regarded as "too white." At school, she said, she was sometimes regarded as "too black." But with the support of Prep for Prep, she found a sense of community and a sense of self-worth. She said she was proud to both be "in the 'hood" and going to Harvard. She received a standing ovation.

On June 4, Campbell was scheduled to receive her Harvard diploma in sociology at a traditional ceremony in the leafy neo-Georgian courtyard of Kirkland House, one of Harvard's undergraduate residences. The day would come as final validation of the faith that others had in Chanequa, and that she had in herself. About 20 members of Chanequa's family were expecting to attend.

But on May 18, a 21-year-old African-American male, a non-Harvard student named Justin Cosby, was shot in the Kirkland House basement, in what was reported to be an attempted drug rip-off gone wrong. Cosby later died of his wounds. Three young black men, none of them Harvard students, were implicated in the shooting. At a press conference, the local district attorney, Gerard Leone, also linked two Harvard seniors to the men: Brittany Smith and Chanequa Campbell. (One of the men charged in the murder was reported to be Smith's boyfriend.) He did not elaborate on the connection, but the "common denominator," said the D.A., was "drugs." The story was widely reported in the national press.

Within a few days of the shooting, both Smith and Campbell were told by Harvard to leave campus and were denied their diplomas, at least for now. Their belongings were shipped after them. Campbell testified before a grand jury on May 20. Her lawyer, Jeff Karp, told NEWSWEEK, "This is a classic case of guilt by association. I can confidently say she won't be charged." The lawyer says Campbell was off taking an exam when the shooting occurred, and Campbell has publicly denied Internet rumors that she dealt drugs. It does not appear that she will be charged in the case, though the investigation is ongoing. Citing privacy issues and a desire not to interfere with an ongoing criminal probe, Harvard has maintained a studied silence about the whole affair. Smith, who also has not been charged with any crime, has not commented.

Campbell's connection to the men involved in the shooting is murky. It may be that she was guilty of nothing more serious than socializing with some of them. But the case has been played in the press as part tragedy, part morality tale, with dark insinuations about the long reach of underclass culture. For Campbell, the incident has been the source of emotional and physical pain. Her would-be rescuers are heartbroken by her fall from grace, but that's not the way she sees it. She scoffs at the suggestion that she brought the 'hood to Harvard. She is proud of her roots and wants to hold on to them; she just doesn't want to be typecast.