A UNIVERSITY police officer discovers a student in the dead of night spray painting a racial epithet on the concrete walkway in front of Old Cabell Hall. In lieu of traditional UJC prosecution for the vandalism offense, the student is instead found guilty of a racially-motivated crime and expelled under the University's new single-sanction expulsion penalty for such crimes. While such a scenario is currently implausible, many students have advocated that such crimes should carry a mandatory single-sanction expulsion penalty. However, such initiative is misguided and not the best approach to solving the problem of racial crime here at the University.
The movement for an expulsion penalty for racially-motivated crimes implies that the University has a problem with such crimes and such a severe penalty is needed to deter future crimes of a racial nature. In reality, over the past two years, there have been just two well-publicized instances of racially-motivated crime at the University: the recent vandalism of Amey Adkins' car and the alleged assault on former Student Council President Daisy Lundy in February 2003. Yes, there have been other ugly instances of bigotry during that time, but in an e-mail Black Student Alliance President Myra Franklin notes that the group's Zero Tolerance for Ignorance Campaign is pushing an initiative that "advocates that students found guilty of committing racially motivated crimes be punished with a single-sanction expulsion penalty" at the University. Franklin notes that the expulsion initiative is aimed at "crimes punishable by law, not acts or comments."
A single-sanction penalty for racially-motivated crimes also implies that the University currently lacks a system to deal with such offenses. In fact, the University is more than capable of punishing the perpetrators of such crimes. A racially-motivated assault is still at its roots an assault, an offense routinely prosecuted by the University Judiciary Committee. The UJC retains the power of expulsion, and has expelled before for assault offenses.
Greater than any punitive punishment, however, is the social stigma attached to racially-motivated crimes. While the cowardly nature of racial crimes unfortunately often precludes the arrest of the perpetrators, to be frank, anyone caught spray-painting the "N-word" on a student's car would have problems far worse than a citation or UJC charges. The vast majority agree that crimes motivated by race, gender, sexual orientation and the like are heinous and have no place in both this community and in society as a whole.
The very title "Zero Tolerance for Ignorance" implicitly suggests there is tolerance of ignorance here at the University. Yes, in all likelihood there are bona fide racists here at the University. But just because someone doesn't sign a petition or attend a meeting or passionately espouse the virtues of tolerance doesn't mean they fall into that category. In fact, it's ignorant not to accept everyone, however lackadaisical or distorted their views on race relations may be.
One argument leveled by those in favor of the expulsion penalty for racially-motivated crimes compares such a crime to an honor offense: If the University expels those judged guilty of lying, cheating or stealing, shouldn't we also expel those guilty of a racially-motivated crime here at the University, given the comparatively graver nature of the offense? The comparison of the two is illogical, because the application of the single sanction for an honor offense is blind to the motivation of the crime, while the application of a single-sanction penalty for a racially-motivated offense is not.
A student should not be punished additionally for his or her thoughts or motivations in committing a crime, and that's precisely what a single-sanction expulsion would do. In addition, even if such a measure was adopted, who would judge what is or isn't a racially-motivated offense? And why should the line be drawn just at racially-motivated crimes? If these crimes are to be punished by a single sanction, we must also punish crimes motivated by intolerance for religion, sex, political ideology and the like.
The advocates of a single-sanction for racially-motivated crimes are missing a key step in solving the problem of race relations at the University. Simply skipping ahead and promoting a punishment for such crimes is the wrong approach. Rather than working to ensure a dramatic punishment for racially-motivated crimes, the University should work towards stopping such crimes in the first place and promoting an environment of racial tolerance.
Joe Schilling's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jschilling@cavalierdaily.com.
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