<p>From Saturday's Washington Post:
"Racist Incidents Unnerve U-Va.</p>
<p>After Slurs, Students Rally for Change</p>
<p>By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer</p>
<p>After class at the University of Virginia one night this week, sophomore Kyle Miller found a note attached to the windshield of his jeep. It wasn't a ticket; it was something hateful, racist, written in red ink, in all caps.</p>
<p>Just a few weeks into the school year, U-Va. has had at least nine racist incidents -- slurs shouted from cars, ugly words written on message boards, a racist threat scrawled on a bathroom wall. ...</p>
<p>Yesterday, U-Va. President John T. Casteen III summoned students to the Rotunda... in a rare speech from the portico, he invoked the name of Martin Luther King Jr. and urged students to demonstrate unity against racial intolerance....</p>
<p>M. Rick Turner, dean of African American affairs, said the climate is the worst he has seen in his 18 years with the university. "I call it racial terrorism -- it's gone beyond racial incidents.</p>
<p>"We have some African American young ladies who are . . . afraid of going to class or going anywhere at their university, and somebody's going to ride by, or a group of white men will call them" a racial slur.</p>
<p>Turner said that the incidents will make it harder to recruit black students to the school, even though it has one of the highest graduation rates in the country."</p>
<p>This is very sad. My friend's daughter just graduated from UVa & said she had close friends of all races & backgrounds & never noticed any racism while she was a UVa.</p>
<p>My S plans to apply to UVA, we had heard about a few incidents on UVA campus, but that was from last year. We were told by school officials that the incidents were isolated events and they do not think they were done by UVA students. But, after researching further it does appear that the majority of the incidents last year were most likely done by UVA students. Now this article really shines the light on UVA administration, if they do not get out front and acknowledge they have serious problems and start addressing the problem with action, then this will start affecting their recruitiment (actually it has cause at least one parent to encourge his S not to apply---ME).</p>
<p>I went back to read the whole article in the Post - and a few others. Sounds to me like a very, very small group, if not a single individual, has done these things. Terrible but certainly not an indicator of some widespread problem at UVA. Do you remember how two snipers terrorized the entire DC area for several months with one car and a rifle?</p>
<p>It would be terrible if a couple of immature morons prevent students from applying to a place that might end up a very good fit for them.</p>
<p>It's pretty unprecedented, I think, for a president to call the student body together on The Lawn. It's not so much this article suddenly shining the light on the Administration who can't get out front and acknowledge the problem. It sounds to me like the article reflects that they were taking this seriously even before a reporter filed the story.</p>
<p>This article is interesting to me because I applied to the University of Virginia last year, got accepted, and I decided not to matriculate because I was afraid of incidents such as this.</p>
<p>Boo freaking hoo, so a couple of black students were called a racial slur. You know how many times I was called a 'white boy' on college campuses. This is the biggest non story of the year.</p>
<p>Unless I'm missing something in the articles I've read, or on this thread, I don't know how we got from one stupid teenager or student writing an ethnic slur(s) to lynching. UVA may be a preppie school but that doesn't make it racist. Am I missing something about UVA, some history of racism in the past five or ten years? Do these recent episodes really rise to the level of keeping qualifed African-Americans from attending Virginia's best university? And that comment about everyone's white, gets up at 5:30 a.m. and runs" is just plain stupid.</p>
<p>Perhaps people should also consider that UVA has one of the biggest segregation programs of all universities. The black cultural center has special peer-mentoring programs and events throughout the year and recently purchased a plasma screen TV just for the center. A year ago a few white students tried to attend a meeting and were kicked out by the guy in charge because of their skin color. So much for cross-cultural relations.</p>
<p>Also remember that not too long ago some professor at Claremont McKenna faked an incident of "racism" so she could get 15 minutes of fame. So did some group at a university in Illinois, I think. I'm just saying is be careful before you start thinking there's a climate of racial hatred; it could easily be isolated incidents, a retaliatory response to university imposed-segregation, or a bunch of fakes. </p>
<p>Like Chief and JoeV said, this is pretty much reverse stereotyping of Southern schools. Anyone considering UVA shouldn't worry about it.</p>
<p>It's really great how people consistently try to explain away problems, instead of admitting a problem and trying to correct it. Evidently, there is more to the story if the adminstration has now become involved.<br>
JoeV being called a "white boy" on campus was not right either, but two wrongs does not make it right.<br>
I am a father of two, one is at UNC-Chapel Hill(southern school) and she was born/raised in San Diego, but she loves UNC, so I am not at all bais to southern schools, but this is not the first time I have received information of the racial problems at UVA. Some graduates of UVA at my wife's law firm have said that it is a problem, but it is caused by a very small minority.
UVA I feel is trying to address this and from my visits to the campus and my discussion with some of administration, they really want get these incidents stopped and move on.
UVA is a great state school, but I will not allow my son to attend...Why should I subject him to the possibility of such behavior.</p>
<p>Just recently a woman I know, age 26 and at UVA law school, transferred to NYU. This woman is Jewish, born in Israel, graduated from Columbia undergrad. She said she never thought about being Jewish as an issue on where she went to school. She said she was isolated and harrassed at UVA law school - not ever hurt or anything, it was just made clear to her that she "didn't fit in" by enough people that she wanted to go somewhere else. She is a very polite and very beautiful young woman who was a tennis star at Columbia. She does look middle eastern.</p>
<p>Dadx why are you assuming anything...Do you think the only schools in America that does not have overt racism is HBCUs. Both my wife and I attended HBCUs for our undergraduate degrees and our graduate and professional schools were majority schools and we both can say we did not face any overt racisms. Short answer your assumption is wrong...He does not have a HBCU as one of has college choices.
I want to make this clear, I think UVA is an excellent school, but as a parent I want to do all I can to put my kids in the best position to succeed and sending them to UVA would only add another obstacle (small one, but one none the less). UVA has had numerous reported incidents, some if not all are probably true.</p>
<p>I graduated from UVa in 1985. When I was in school there, the number of minority students was quite small. There was definitely a sense of segragation in the Greek system. The service sororities and fraternities were entirely black, the social almost exclusively white. There was a Black Student Union, "Black Voices" Gospel group, Black pre-law and pre-med societies. I always felt these were established to make minority students feel more comfortable on a campus that seemed overwhelmingly homogeneous on the surface. I can't really remember many Hispanic students. </p>
<p>There was a big ta-do one year because it was decided to have "Kool and the Gang" as one of the more expensive concerts, which many minority students felt was not representative of their taste. The Student Union had looked for a cross-over band in hopes of pleasing more people. I can't recall any hate crimes or malicious events while I was there. However the Gay Student Alliance was just being formed, and their meetings were held under the radar because they were afraid. Also many Jewish students did not go Greek because several of the houses did not pledge Jewish students. These same houses also didn't pledge middle class or poor kids, either. This subset seemed to rub everyone but themselves the wrong way. Fortunately there were other houses to select from. While I was there the first female student body president and first female president of the A-school were elected. I actually thought that was progressive for a school that did not admit women until the mid seventies.</p>
<p>Two of my African American classmates from high school went to UVa (out of seven total from my school). I went to a public high school in northern VA that was predominantly white and military families. Maybe they were more comfortable coming from a similar high school situation. I'm not saying there were never any problems, just that they didn't have this malicious tone cited in the article. It tended to be misunderstandings and the need to be cognizant of differences. The BSA held a rally during the Spring Minority Recruitment Weekend my fourth year because they felt the weekend did not represent the true culture of the University. Sometimes what people think is helping or being open to diversity really doesn't come across that way to the minority population.</p>
<p>I am glad that UVa is trying to address the issue rather than cover it up. It's a start.</p>
<p>UVA is a great school. I have a lot of friends at UVA. However, it is no secret that the different groups there do not really intermingle, and these issues are not as few and far between as we would hope.</p>
<p>Although I'm not a UVa student or in any way affiliated with the institution, I would argue that incidents regarding bigotry or racism are few and far between. </p>
<p>Yes, we should recognize that bad stuff happens. No, we should not stop sending excellent students to an excellent school just because of a couple of bad eggs.</p>
<p>"Evidently, there is more to the story if the adminstration has now become involved. " "Some if not all are probably true."</p>
<p>I'm not alone in making assumptions.</p>
<p>I just don't believe that UVA is much different that UNC, Wake, Clemson, Duke, MD, Illinois, .....you name it. The incidents reported seem to me to be not particularly serious. Ironically, the newspaper articles are probably less than helpful to the University community in making a careful investigation and in deciding how to treat the students involved.</p>