Organizing Against Hatred

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 9, 1999 by Cherryl D. Fields

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- In what some student leaders called a latent, still welcomed demonstration, the campus leadership of the University of Maryland-College Park organized a zero-tolerance for hate crimes rally last month in response to the circulation of several pieces of hate male directed at Black campus leaders.

The four typewritten notes sent though the campus mail to Black leaders and organizations were delivered to the student body president, who is Black; the Black Student Union and its secretary; and the school's Department of African American Studies, university officials say.

"We need to work together to stamp out this cancer than has invaded this community," College Park President Dr. C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr. was quoted by The Washington Post as having said at the rally. The president offered $1,000 of his own money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone behind the notes. Campus officials also assured the people and groups who received the threats that they would receive police protection.

The notes that incited these events were unsigned and did not include any handwriting. They appeared to have been typed on a computer.

"They threatened specific bodily harm and used [n-] and variations of it," says George Cathcart, a school spokesman. "There were individuals named and specific threats of extremely violent force."

The notes did not mention the use of any weapons or target any other groups besides Blacks.

"We're making no assumptions as to who might have sent them," he says.

Juliana A. Njoku, president of the student government association, received one of the notes. She says she was hoping the sender might be identified through fingerprints on the notes.

The incident brings the total of hate crimes that have been perpetrated on the campus this year to about one dozen, The Post reports. Campus officials say that is slightly more than they usually have in one year.

"You often have people expressing a lack of tolerance for other groups of all kinds, but nobody can remember anything like this happening before," Cathcart says. "It seems that there's a great deal of racial discord throughout society right now. There are people who want to stir up racial discord, and we're victims of it."

-The Associated Press and Cheryl D. Fields contributed to this report.