FIRST YEARS had a bleak introduction to race relations at the University this past week, with a slew of racially charged incidents filling the front pages of this and other news publications. If I had called my parents back in Pittsburgh after my first week here with such news, they'd probably have said, "Oh my God, we sent you to school in Alabama." To be fair, just about every other large university between Alabama and Pittsburgh is grappling with the same problem in one form or another. Nonetheless, the University has some significant race issues, and they need addressing.
For those new to the place, here's a quick crash course on racial tensions over the past few years. In addition to the written and verbal racial epithets directed at students this past weekend, there was a very serious episode three years back when a biracial Student Council candidate was assaulted and warned to drop out of the race. Some more recent events included the vandalism of a black student's car last year with derogatory scrawls and an incident where white students showed up at a Halloween party in blackface.
Both through last Saturday's rally against hate at the Rotunda and by the noticeable preponderance of black shirts worn on Monday, students of all races have shown that by and large they stand in solidarity with the black community against the recent incidents of hate. That such a response was organized so quickly and so visibly is an encouraging sign, because the effectiveness of hate incidents increases exponentially when the larger community reacts with apathy and indifference. To simply not approve of hate crimes is not sufficient; it is only by actively showing solidarity with the victims and condemning the perpetrators as a community that the message of hatred can be effectively rebuffed.
While the University community is off to a good start in addressing this issue, there is a palpable way in which more can and should be done. Last year during spring elections, a referendum was passed that asked the University Judiciary Committee to create "specific and severe punishment guidelines for judiciary offenses motivated by hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion and disability." Action must be taken on this motion.
After the referendum passed, the UJC created an ad hoc Committee for Sanctioning Hate Crimes to address the issue. According to UJC Chair Tim Ormsby, "This discussion involves the whole community and not just UJC," and as such the UJC is seeking extensive community input rather than simply giving the Committee a specific mandate to create hate crimes legislation. The process has been stalled, however, due to substantial ignorance in the community about how the UJC actually adjudicates cases. The UJC operates on a two-trial system, which first holds a trial to establish mere guilt and then another to determine what sanction is appropriate based on factors such as motivation. Since motivations for the crime such as racial prejudice are not taken into account until the second trial for sentencing, the process of creating sentencing guidelines for hate crimes is somewhat more complicated than is commonly thought. Also, most of UJC's proponents consider one of the merits of the system to be that it doesn't operate on precedent and members are free to assign whatever sanction they feel is appropriate to a particular case.
It is this last feature that is currently under review by the ad hoc Committee. The basic goal, according to Ormsby, is to examine how UJC handles hate crimes and make recommendations. But he stressed that UJC isn't just going to tell the ad hoc committee what to do. "What I like as a solution," he said, "is less important than what the community thinks is an appropriate solution, and I think that's the purpose of the [ad hoc] Committee." Only if members of the larger student body take interest in this issue will their compatriots in the UJC be able to take the next step in fighting hate.
The most effective way to take that step is to fashion sentencing recommendations for UJC trials in which the defendant is found to have been motivated by racial hatred, and the recommendation should be nothing short of expulsion.It makes little sense to live by a community code of honor that mandates expulsion for cheating on a discussion section quiz but not for arbitrarily violating the rights of another human being. However, the duty to correct this error falls not upon our governing bodies but upon the community that gives them their mandate. The ad hoc committee will have its first meeting on September 7 -- will you be there to take the next step?
A.J. Kornblith's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily.He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.
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