How a school’s administration chooses to handle incidents of racial violence on campus can impact students as much as the initial incident.
By Niyah Gonzalez, Adam Tismaneanu and N’dea Yancey-Bragg
Nicole Harvey doesn’t feel safe.
The sophomore has had her dorm room at Framingham State University vandalized not once but twice with racist graffiti. Both incidents occurred in a narrow window of time when both Harvey and her roommate, also a member of the Black Student Union, had left the room.
As a result, Harvey said she feels like she’s being watched.
“We were just like, ‘This is absolutely crazy’,” Harvey said. “They know when we’re leaving and they know when we’re in our room because they do it such short amounts of time.”
This is one of four racist incidents that occurred at Framingham State within two weeks.
The university responded rather quickly. Campus police are working with the FBI to compare handwriting samples, and cameras were installed in Harvey’s dorm. There is a $1,000 reward for whomever turns in the suspect.
Millie Gonzalez, interim chief officer of diversity, inclusion and community engagement at Framingham State, said her focus going forward is to foster healing conversations on campus.
“Something terrible happened in our campus community that made our students feel unsafe, unwanted,” Gonzalez said. “We want to turn the corner and make sure they all feel respected, valued and, certainly, safe.”
The video below contains images viewers may find disturbing.
How a school’s administration chooses to handle incidents of racial violence on campus can have just as big an impact on students as the initial incident itself.
Caitlyn Gardner, a target of racist graffiti this fall at Boston College where she is a student, said she was frustrated by the response, or lack thereof, from the administration. She said the school did little more than send a generic email that recycled language used when LGBT students were targeted on campus the year before.
Hundreds of students walked out of class to protest the response on October 18.
What’s challenging about these incidents is that although they are clearly examples of vandalism, whether or not they are hate crimes is a murkier question.
Carl Williams, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, explained that “hate crimes” is a legal term that is very different from “hate speech,” which is protected under the United States Constitution.
Although racist speech on campus may not be illegal, Williams said that doesn’t mean schools aren’t responsible.
“Should our institutions, especially ones that are state funded, deeply discourage racism, sexism homophobia? Yeah. Can they do that? Yeah. Should be people be brave about it and admit that historically there have been problems there? Yeah,” said Williams.
These incidents are not happening in vacuum. Across the country, numbers of hate crimes and hate speech are on the rise. Each person we talked to attributed the increase to the current political climate.
FBI statistics show that hate crimes increased 5% in 2016, a number that likely wouldn’t include situations like those Harvey and Gardner faced.
As Gonzalez, the official from Framingham State, put it: “No campus is immune to this type of hate.”
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