Black coeds drop their racial complaint against white man at U. of Penn - University of Pennsylvania

Jet, June 14, 1993

A group of Black women students at the University of Pennsylvania who claimed to have been the target of a racist slur by a White male student recently dropped their complaint.

During a news conference, the five women said their decision to drop the complaint was because the judicial process had not allowed them to tell their side of the story.

However, they said the youth who called them water buffalo' when they made noise outside his dormitory, was afforded considerable media attention.

Subsequently, the president of the Ivy League school of 22,000 students, dropped racial harassment charges against 18-year-old Eden Jacobowitz.

"This all could have been settled a long time ago," said Jacobowitz, who claimed that the school had prevented his efforts to apologize to the women and tell them that he did not intend his words to be construed as a slur.

The five women -- Nikki Taylor, Ayanna Taylor, Colleen Bonnicklewis, Suzanne Jenkins, and Denita Thomas -- lodged the complaint against Jacobowitz last January after they claimed to have been barraged by racial slurs and epithets with sexual overtones as their sorority conducted its Founder's Day celebration on the university campus.

Among the slurs, said Taylor, were "shut up, you Black water buffalo," and "go back to the zoo where you belong."