How to Respond to Racist Incidents

Paul Young, the president of Sheridan College, was about to meet with Wyoming’s governor to discuss community-college budgets when a call came in — someone had scrawled a racial slur on a whiteboard outside the dorm room of two of Sheridan’s female Native American students.

Then the texts started rolling in — from legislators, and from a tribal member who serves as a liaison between the state and the Wind River Indian Reservation, where the women were from.

“You must have protocols for dealing with this,” the tribal liaison said. No, Young responded: It had never happened before in his 13 years at the college.

No College Is Safe From Racist Incidents

White supremacists have been making a concerted effort to provoke campuses large and small, public and private. Have both short- and long-term response plans ready.

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Before the incident, in September, Young had thought that his college was free from the racial hate that had been making headlines on bigger campuses in more diverse communities. The white students who make up the vast majority of Sheridan’s student body and the fewer than 50 Native American students from Montana and Wyoming tribes got along pretty well, he thought.

But as he made the 325-mile drive from Cheyenne back to Sheridan to confront the incident head-on, he realized just how wrong his comment to the tribal liaison had been.

“It’s happened — it’s probably happened a lot,” he says he realized. “It’s just never been reported or been followed up on before.”

That soul-searching led to efforts to make the Sheridan campus more welcoming to Native students. Sheridan notified all students about the incident that very morning, and the college provided resources to faculty members and asked them to talk about diversity and inclusion. The college estimates that about 30 percent to 40 percent did.

That night, roughly 100 people gathered at the campus center to support the women and speak out against hate. The college hosted a powwow and its first Native American Day a week later, and in February held a forum on Native Americans in education that included national policy makers. Native American students have started a club — the group recently brought to campus the Native rapper Supaman — and Young says he’s committed to creating a Native American center where students can meet.

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Not long ago, the higher-education playbook for responding to racial incidents on campus was straightforward: Condemn the act, reassure affected and concerned students, take the press hit, and wait for the news to fade.

“The instinct of the college president is to protect the reputation,” Young says. “But what’s the cost?”

The recent rash of racist incidents on college campuses, however, has made it clear that such problems can happen at any college. Experts are giving high marks to colleges that respond both immediately and over time — coupling a quick condemnation of the incident with a deep inward look at making institutional change.

The University of Maryland at College Park, for example, has taken a number of actions since last May, when a black student from Bowie State University was stabbed to death by a white Maryland student in a case being prosecuted as a hate crime.

The university has established a task force charged with nurturing a more respectful and inclusive climate; started a national hub for research, the Center for Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education; completed mandatory training on racial bias for all of its more than 100 police officers; and administered a campus-climate survey that examines issues like diversity and bias. The university is also in the process of hiring a full-time coordinator for tracking and responding to hate-bias incidents.

“We’re focused on how to not only do the best job we possibly can in addressing issues of hate on our own campus, but also on being a leader in helping to advance the national conversation about these issues,” says Roger L. Worthington, Maryland’s chief diversity officer.

The University of Virginia is spending millions in response to the violence at a white-supremacist rally last August that left one woman dead. The university is expected to invest $20 million to match large gifts to establish endowed faculty chairs that would help to prevent, respond to, or better understand the August incidents. Examples of academic areas that are eligible for the match include racial justice, emergency medicine, and early childhood education.

Virginia is expected to invest an additional $5 million in scholarships for first-generation and financially needy students, to increase diversity. Another $5 million will go to support “bridging projects” at various units on campus, with a goal of bringing together people of different races and backgrounds.

Risa L. Goluboff, dean of Virginia’s law school and chair of the working group that recommended those responses to the August violence, says the university continues to take “a hard inward look” at its history and whether additional changes are needed to make the campus more inclusive. Virginia removed two plaques honoring Confederate soldiers in September.

“We aspire to be a place of true equality,” Goluboff says. “We are still self-examining how we can do better.”

The deaths in Maryland and Virginia drew national media attention — and prompted robust responses that few other institutions have matched. But the crimes fit into a disturbing national trend: White-supremacist groups are focusing on college campuses like never before.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism documented 147 incidents in the fall of 2017 where white supremacists used fliers, stickers, banners, and posters to spread their message on college campuses — up 258 percent from 41 incidents in the fall of 2016.

Doron F. Ezickson, director of ADL’s Washington, D.C., regional office, says white supremacists are targeting campuses not only in a bid for new members, but also because fliers posted on college campuses are sure to provoke a response and generate publicity. That response may “enable these groups to project more power than they have in actual numbers,” he says.

Even so, Ezickson says, it’s unlikely their efforts will end soon. “This isn’t simply bad luck for a few individual campuses — there is a coordinated campaign here,” he says. “It’s incumbent on college administrators to reflect on what infrastructure they have to deal with it.”

Many universities, especially public institutions, are looking closely at their policies to determine how they can legally exercise more authority over how both students and outsiders use the campus. The reviews include looking at where fliers can be posted and by whom, where assemblies can be organized, and where speeches can be held.

Goluboff says the University of Virginia has historically had few policies that restrict the “time, place, and manner” in which people can exercise their First Amendment rights. But the university is considering updating its policies in a way that would be content-neutral, she says.

“I think you can work out a compromise,” she says. “I suggest that people hold in their heads the speaker they like and want to make room for, and the speaker they don’t like and rather wouldn’t come. You only get one set of rules.”

Some conservative groups are wary that universities will err on the side of protecting underrepresented and minority students — in the process infringing on the free-speech rights of others. A recent battle over fliers at Stanford University highlights their concern.

After a student posted a flier on her dormitory door listing a hotline number through which people could warn others about activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, someone tore that flier off her door and replaced it with a handmade "#BuildTheWall” sign. When supporters of the first student distributed 200 copies of the original poster — “Protect our community, report ICE activity” — another student posted a flier satirizing that message: “Protect our community. Report legitimate law enforcement activity.”

The #BuildTheWall flier and the satirical poster were both taken down by residence-hall staff members, under Stanford’s “Acts of Intolerance” policy, leading to complaints by the student who had posted the satirical flier, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and others.

“To allow a political message on one side of a controversial public issue and to disallow a message taking the opposite position is a blatant example of viewpoint discrimination,” wrote Michael McConnell, a constitutional-law professor at Stanford, in an email to the student whose satirical flier was removed.

Lisa Lapin, a Stanford spokeswoman, points out that the decisions to remove the fliers were made by student employees. Such situations “can bring about opportunities to fine-tune practices or increase staff training relating to how to protect speech and promote learning across divergent student perspectives,” she says.

College leaders say it’s important to have a plan in advance for dealing with hate or bias incidents. When a white student at Rhodes College, in Memphis, posted a racist essay on Altright.com, envisioning a white society “free of the troublesome burden of minorities,” President Marjorie Hass knew she had to speak out quickly and in an authentic voice.

“Think hard about the kind of communications you want to have come from the president’s office as opposed to other offices on campus,” she advises. “And make sure that you can articulate honestly and effectively the core values of your institution.”

The day the essay was published, she was bombarded by calls from the media, alumni, concerned parents, and Memphis residents. “There are a lot of voices wanting your immediate response,” Hass says. “My firm belief is that your first duty is to the students on your own campus.”

In an email to students and faculty after the essay was published, Hass pledged a “vigorous reaffirmation” of the college’s vision statement and commitment to diversity.

“This is who we are,” Hass wrote. “These are the ideals to which we aspire. These remain untouched and unbent.”

Hass says she can’t discuss the disciplinary process involving the essay’s author, Nick Pietrangelo, but she does say that she had some concern for his safety. “We don’t believe in shotgun justice on our campus,” Hass says. “You need to make sure that no matter what incident occurs, you follow your own policies and do so with deliberation and safety for all involved, including the safety of students who may ultimately be on the wrong side of your disciplinary processes.”

The ADL’s Ezickson says that after condemning hate speech, colleges must turn to the harder and longer-term work — helping students understand how they can be allies for one another, and how their own biases can undermine feelings of legitimacy in others.

“The challenge must be met with an educational response,” Ezickson says.

After a video surfaced of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members singing a racist song at the University of Oklahoma in 2015, David Boren, Oklahoma’s president, moved quickly to expel two students and ban the fraternity. Within weeks, Boren had hired a new vice president for the university community — the equivalent of a chief diversity officer — and instituted mandatory diversity training for all incoming freshmen.

That diversity training, called the Freshman Diversity Experience, is delivered primarily during three and a half hours of programming over several days at summer orientation camps. The program helps students become aware of group differences, introduces concepts like implicit bias and stereotype threat, and provides examples of inclusive language. The training was designed by the university’s Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies, the group behind NCORE, one of the higher education’s largest diversity conferences.

Jabar Shumate, the university’s vice president for university community, and an African-American who served as president of Oklahoma’s Student Government Association 20 years ago, says the training won’t prevent hate incidents on campus but will help students better understand how to react.

“You’ll have a campus community that is more engaged in the conversation,” Shumate says. “Students will better understand incidents that occur on our campus so that we are better equipped to respond.”

Just a week after the August violence there, the University of Virginia assigned new freshmen online training to understand stereotypes and other hidden biases. The training, offered for the first time this year, includes an option to take the controversial Implicit Association Test.

After the training, students go to a theatrical production that highlights issues around race and stereotyping. They then return to their dormitories for small-group discussions with resident assistants about how the bias training influenced their feelings about the skit.

“How do you create a comfortable environment for students to have conversations around things like race?” asks Allen W. Groves, the university’s dean of students. “A first-year won’t walk down the hall and say to a hall mate, ‘Let’s talk about race.’ It’s just not going to happen.”

For institutions with a large number of commuters, like Sheridan College, starting such a dialogue can be even more challenging. But Young, the college’s president, doesn’t question its importance.

Sheridan, Wyo., is named for Philip Sheridan, an Army general during the Indian Wars who is associated with the phrase, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Some of the college’s residence halls are named for white generals active in the Indian Wars, and students can still eat at General Sheridan’s Grille (though the college is considering a name change). The college reports that fewer than 2 percent of its employees are Native American.

A regional airline recently started direct flights between Sheridan and a town some 220 miles away on the edge of the Wind River Indian Reservation. Young says he has committed to bring Sheridan faculty to the reservation, so they get a better feel for the day-to-day slights and encounters with racism that the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribal members experience.

“If somebody says something that makes someone uncomfortable, what does a faculty member do?” Young asks. “Some hope to get on to the next moment — no harm, no foul. But instructors need to learn how to address these things — these microaggressions — so that students of any color don’t feel marginalized continually.”