While administrators and the Chancellor have been quick to criticize the incidents and send out communications, there has been a general sense of a lack of swift disciplinary actions.
“That the chancellor respond to all of the recent racist and hate incidents that took place on our campus and the steps she is taking currently to prevent them in the future. We want to know how the chancellor will reassure us and that we will always remain safe on our campus. A simple email response, while appreciated is not a strong enough response to such acts of hate. In the future, we strongly recommend the first initiative action to come from our chancellor by taking pro-active steps to work with our community. Overall, we want the chancellor to have accountability and to speak against hate and keep transparency between the students, staff, faculty, and administration.”
Mohamed Buzayan, is a sophomore now at UC Davis, he told the California Aggie earlier this week that the “lack of swift disciplinary action by university officials for these and other acts may have prompted subsequent crimes.”
“They took notice to students at UC San Diego, and they’ve seen no disciplinary action and nobody got caught. So they knew they were going to get away with their crimes and so they went and started committing them.”
Neither Rahim Reed nor Pat Turner, administrators at UC Davis returned calls on Thursday from the Vanguard. However, the Vanguard did speak with Police Lt. Matt Carmichael.
He told the Vanguard that the incident at the LGBT could be categorized as a hate incident rather than a hate crime. However, he strongly believes that given the fact that hate crimes are specifically targeted, that this particular incident fits that definition.
Moreover, he said that the Jewish student who had the swastika carved into her dorm was a clear and blatant hate crime, even more striking to him was that it was in a dorm, so it could have possibly been another fellow dorm mate who did it, or even let the vandals come into the dorms late at night.
Lt. Carmichael indicated that while he cannot get into the specifics of an ongoing investigation, the police do have some leads.
In response to the incidents and vandalism, the police have stepped up their patrols and go out in plain clothing.
From a procedural level, he said that the university had to clean up and cover up vandalism promptly. He called it the “Broken Window Syndrome.” If a car window is broken and gets left in that condition, by the next day the car gets completely trashed.
This is a widely accepted standard throughout the nation, where once there is vandalism cited and reported it’s the responsibility of, in this case UC Davis to get rid of it. It is the assumption that the longer it gets left on the building the more likely it will attract more graffiti and vandalism.
While investigators look for suspects, students and community members are looking for answers.
What does all of this mean? Is it a signal of hate or frustration with the current system? Is it a cry for attention or akin to a practical joke?
UC Davis Philosophy Professor Gregory Herek told the California Aggie that while it is possible that hatred may have played a role in these crimes, there are other possibilities as well such as peer pressure or thrill seeking.
“I’d say that we don’t necessarily know what the motivations of the perpetrators are. Whoever did it, it’s quite possible that they believe that somehow committing these actions would receive approval from the larger society, that they felt a sense of permission.”
However, there is a danger that that discussion may ignore a more crucial impact, which is something that we saw very clearly on Wednesday and it was expressed by a number of students.
One female African-American students emphasized how uncomfortable she feels as an African-American in Davis, that there is a reputation among African-Americans that Davis is unwelcoming to minorities, particularly African-Americans.
This is an issue that gets to the heart of the problem. The statistics that the UC Davis News Service showed me on Wednesday is that black students account for about 2.75% of all students on campus and probably an even smaller number in the overall community.
A consistent complaint for years has been the treatment of African-American students in the community as a whole and particularly by law enforcement. I have rarely met an African-American who went to school at UC Davis who did not come away with stories about encounters with the police and racial profiling.
For their part, the Davis Police Department and Chief Landy Black have always strongly denied that this is a practice, but the bottom here is that the perception is out there.
Whether these are hate crimes inspired by hatred toward other races, ethnicities, religions, or sexual orientation, the perception by these students is that they have been attacked, violated, and marginalized. That perception is now what we must combat, because students should be comfortable in their campus environment.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Vivian Nguyen contributed to this report
In my view many of these students are just activists and need any supposed cause to protest and stir up trouble. If it wasn’t
“hate incidents” or “higher college fees” they’d just find something else. The only reason they aren’t protesting the war in Afganistan is because Democrats are in power and it’s now Obama’s war.
In my view, having actually met them, almost none of them are activists.
Much of my career was working in information technology (IT) for large companies. That profession tended to be the most diverse of any other than the US military. It still is today. Another interesting thing about large company IT is the economic diversity of people working right next to each other. A senior database administrator required significant technical experience and technical skills and often they would be paid more than their manager (me). A mid-level desktop support technician may make 1/3 as much. Both roles were staffed with people of all skin-tones, genders and ethnic backgrounds. Compensation was significantly market based because of supply and demand of certain skills. There were no barriers to gaining skills and experience and growing prosperity other than the brains and work ethic of each and every employee. People got along as well as you would expect for members of the same tribe.
As early as the 1980s, I remember conversations with my fellow co-workers about the media reports of bias and racism and frankly nobody believed their scope and repetition represented reality. In our realm this type of bias did not exist at a level to warrant the corresponding level of news reports. The bias we had familiarity with was that of one idea over another, not any other type of group-ism.
The reason diversity works so well in IT and in the US military is the combined focus on common goals and objectives. I think the reason we are seeing any increase in race or group-based bias is that lack of common goals and objectives, combined with a lack of inclusion. This is a problem of leadership.
Barack Obama and our Democrat Congress are at least partially to blame here. Our national politics have become the most partisan ever, and since modern political leanings filter on racial differences, those racial differences are becoming the proxy for a conflict of ideas. Obama, Pelosi and Reid have clearly positioned themselves at odds with those that believe in competing ideas. More importantly, they have taken to parroting the voice of the extremes in their Party to marginalize those in disagreement… primary conservative and religious whites. This political approach is different than all Presidents and Congressional leaders before them and it is responsible – I think – for some of what we are seeing on campuses. I think it will get worse before it gets better… hopefully after November 2012.
Exactly Jeff, can you imagine the uproar if the Republicans were pushing a bill through Congress using bribes and any shady tactic at their disposal that’s not liked by a majority of the American public?
Here’s to November 2012
Rusty49: I prefer to not gravitate toward national politics for this, but I really think it is largely to blame. You point about Democrat tactics to pass their healthcare bill is spot on.
Remember the Democrat Party uproar over Bush’s comment: “you are either for us or against us”? Considering that Bush’s comment was directed at foreign states at a time of war, but Obama, Pelosi and Reid’s actions are even more polarizing and directed straight at groups of American citizens who disagree with their domestic policy agenda, is it a surprise that we are seeing high levels of anger boiling to the surface and manifesting as hate… especially when combined with our state economic doldrums and high unemployment? Here is the way I see it.
Reagan = Brought the country right, closer together and morally stronger
Bush1 = Neutral
Clinton = Brought the country left, closer together but morally weaker
Bush2 = 9/11 & resulting war and hurricane tore the county apart and he lacked skills to bring it back together.
Obama = War and recession further tore the country apart, and, aided by Pelosi and Reid, he has been using his significant skills to find additional ways to tear it apart.