Campus bigotry continues despite efforts

Editor's Note: This is part one in a two-part series about continuing intolerance on campus. Tuesday’s story will examine Indiana’s unusual hate crime laws.\nDespite recent University efforts to prevent racially and religiously charged incidents on campus, the IU Office of Student Ethics and Anti-Harassment Programs received the same amount of complaints in the 2006-07 school year as in previous years, and officials claim many incidents go unreported.\nWithin the last year, 45 complaints were reported on campus to IU Student Ethics. Although no increase in incidents is considered a step in the right direction, Pamela Freeman, director of the IU Office of Student Ethics and assistant dean of students, said incidents on campus are extremely under-reported. \nIU Dean of Students Dick McKaig said the University recently began to host a variety of events to help spread cultural awareness.\n“We put an emphasis on these events to try and make sure students are more aware and more appreciative of other cultures,” McKaig said.\nRegardless of the 45 reported racially and religiously charged incidents at IU, students are still holding back from reporting incidents of racism and religious intolerance, Freeman said. She said students are sometimes afraid to report discriminatory speech because they are not comfortable being identified as targets of these incidents. She said often these unreported incidents happen with international students. \n“Students may have found other ways to tolerate (hate speech), and that’s very sad,” she said. “They try to ignore it or deal with it in their own way.”\nWhile IU continues to struggle to recruit diverse students, George Mason University, named the most diverse university in the nation by the 2006-07 Princeton Review, reported proportionately about the same number of racially charged incidents for their student population.\nCompared to IU’s roughly 10 percent racial minority enrollment last year, about 35 percent of George Mason students are minorities, said Ric Chollar, acting director of George Mason’s Office of Diversity Programs and Services. \n“With greater diversity comes the chance for greater conflict,” he said. “But with enough systems and intentional conflict resolution and programming in place, all incidents turn into opportunities for folks to grow.”\nBut once racial tensions on a campus begin, it can be difficult for the strain to subside.\nAssistant Professor of History Khalil Muhammad said one racist incident can create a domino effect, referring to recent religious and racially charged incidents around the nation.\nMost recently, incidents in Jena, La., heightened racial tensions nationwide. In that incident, six African-American high school students were charged with attempted murder of a white student after other white students reportedly hung a noose from a tree at their school.\nLocally, within the last three weeks, a noose was found hanging from a tree on Indiana State University’s campus, and several swastikas were found on dormitory and faculty office doors at George Washington University and Columbia University.\n“Some are copy-cat events by people who share an ideology that they believe in with the precipitating event,” Muhammad said. “We have to recognize that there are a considerable number of Americans who believe that these symbols send the right message.” \nNumbers last year show many IU students continue to share in these ideologies.\nOut of the complaints reported in 2006-07, there were 20 involving a racial or ethnic slur, according to incident team reports from the Office of Student Ethics and Anti-Harassment. Throughout campus, there were four reports of swastikas being drawn or carved into doors.\nAs a part of the 20 reported racial and ethnic incidents, 10 black students had reported being called “niggers.” In addition, an international student from Korea, who had lived in the U.S. for six years, reported that several American women had referred to her culture as “nasty” and “disgusting,” and she was ridiculed by other students for not understanding English.\nA Residential Programs and Services employee sent an e-mail to IU apartment housing residents after the April shootings at Virginia Tech University. The e-mail encouraged students not to begin to stereotype Asian-Americans as violent since the suspect was Asian-American. \n“It is now reasonable to assume that the actions were those of one person, not those of a larger national or ethnic group,” the e-mail said. “We should therefore be careful not to place blame on the innocent.”\nMuhammad said even though the University cannot prevent students from expressing bigotry, they should encourage students to learn about different racial and religious backgrounds through introducing a required course that explores these aspects of the campus. \n“There should be an institutional focus on this issue, but more importantly, students should have to police themselves in ways the University cannot enforce,” Muhammad said. “When students are describing other minority groups using racial epithet, the students who were taught better need to speak up.” \nThere will always be racism, Muhammad said, as long as there is a considerable number of Americans who believe that racist symbols send the “right message,” despite the fact that they’re politically incorrect. \n“It’s a backlash against multiculturalism and affirmative action,” he said. “When there are enough Americans who think those are wrong ideas, we’ll see nooses and characterizations of black achievement as handouts from the government.”\nMcKaig said it would be beneficial for students to report crime so the University can have a better understanding of hate crime activity on campus.\n“My impression is we hear about some, but there are incidents where students think it’s not going to make a difference if they report it or not,” he said.\nBut reporting hate crimes on campus does make a difference, officials said.\nEven if a student feels targeted, he or she can report the incident for information only, and no action will be taken against the offending student, Freeman said. IU Student Ethics would never take action without student consent, she said. \n“That’s a basic principle we feel strongly about,” she said. “We are always seeking an educational outcome.”