Point News, 2001 February 27

              St. Mary’s College of Maryland
St. Mary’s campus weekly • 52nd year, No. 15 February 27, 2001 • St. Mary’s City, MD 20686
Racial slur hurts community
JEREMY CHISHOLM
managing editor
“Nigger association meeting
next Monday. Bring your own
lynch.” On Friday, February 16,
at around 10 p.m., these words
were found scrawled on the
whiteboard outside the Black
Student Union (BSU) office, and
amidst their shock and outrage,
students are left wondering how
this could happen at St. Mary’s.
Students, however, have over­come
their initial reaction of
shock, and are beginning to de­velop
and articulate responses
to this event. “How could
somebody do this without get­ting
caught?” said Mike Rhodes,
one of the students who origi­nally
found the message. Said
BSU president Rhoda Dixon, “It
began to infuriate me as I thought
about all the contributions that
black students make on cam­pus,
their sincerity and diligence,
in academics, athletics, and com­munity
service.” Public Safety
is investigating the incident, but
has not yet brought- charges
against any individual.
The response to this attack
has been varied in its intensity
and depth, but uniform in its
condemnation of the attack as
cowardly, base, and wholly un­acceptable.
Some members of
the community have expressed
the opinion that there will al­ways
be obnoxious drunks to
scrawl graffiti, and that not
much can be done to stop them.
However, the student body at
least has been strong in its push
for an active response to the
attack. Said Dixon, “The ma­jority
of the community does
not feel this way, but I do think
it was very intentional, the hand­writing
was legible, this was
not just some drunk [attack].
You can’t minimize the issue;
this was a direct attack against
a specific group, not a random
act on a Friday night.”
The only member of the Ad­ministration
who has formally
made a public statement about
the incident is Vice President
and Dean of the College Michael
Freeman. Last week he sent
out an all-campus e-mail to in­form
the community of the in­cident
and to issue a condem­nation
of it.
Student response to the inci­dent
has been swift, strong, and
broadly based. The incident
was addressed at the SGA meet­ing
last Tuesday. At the meet­ing,
attended by many students,
Dean Freeman, and Assitant
Dean of Residence Life Joanne
Goldwater, students voiced their
anger at the attack. Ideas were
also expressed as to what an
appropriate response from the
student body at large, the SGA,
and the administration should
be.L
ast Thursday, following the
SGA meeting, an organizational
meeting was held in Library 321.
The room was packed with a
diverse group of students. At
this meeting, various ideas were
voiced and discussed for plans
to address the incident. Stu­dents
spoke of the need for a
strong and swift response, and
also expressed the desire to make
a lasting impression. Ground­work
was laid for a rally, a
march, and other programs de­signed
to express solidarity in
condemning the assault. Com­mittees
were formed to head up
each of these initiatives. The
meeting has been perceived as a
positive step in the right direc­tion.
Said Dixon, “Student re­sponse
thus far has been on the
right track—it was encourag­ing
to see such a diverse group
of people.”
The following Friday, SGA
president Constantin Kostenko
organized a committee to ad­dress
the issue from an SGA
standpoint, to consider policy
protocol developments. The
SGA had previously passed a
resolution at the start of the
semester, in response to an in­cident
of vandalism last semes­ter,
to address “hate crimes.”
Many students have argued that,
especially after a second attack,
the SGA should push for the
implementation of new stan­dards
and policies at various
levels of College organization.
Most have focused on new pro­tocols
for RAs to follow in the
event of a “hate crime.” RAs
would be trained in how to re­spond
to incidents of vandalism
that bear a message of “hate.”
Snow Day at St Mary ’sir
Students and faculty enjoyed an afternoon off on
Thursday. The College closed at noon, in anticipation
of the coming snow storm. Here, a group of students
make the most of the opportunity for a late-winter frolic
in the freshly-fallen snow. photo by Brian Sutherland
“My biggest concern is that stu­dents
don’t know how to imme­diately
address the issue,” said
Dixon, who is also an RA in
Queen Anne Hall,
A more controversial policy
development has not as of yet
received much attention. Sev­eral
members of the community
have suggested that perhaps we
need a new speech code, and
that the use of some words
should be punishable by College
sanction. “Perpetrators should
be punished for their actions,
and also their words, because
their words were racially moti­vated;
the intentions were di­rected
towards a specific group,
black members of the commu­nity,”
said Dixon.
As plans advance for an orga­nized
public response to the in­cident,
students are hopeful, but
also aware that this is not an
issue which can be dealt with
overnight. Said Dixon, “I don’t
know if the community realizes
that this is a journey; we are
moving towards reconciliation
and unity, but we’re not there
yet. We need to be careful that
we don’t become prideful in
how we perceive our commu­nity
and glamorize it.” Said
Brandon Jones, the student who
recorded the offensive graffiti
on video, “Changing the people
who did this, that’s what the
effort should be aimed at.”
—Shawn Milleville contributed
to this report. Students discuss smoking in the residence halls at SGA meeting
SHAWN MILLEVILLE
editor-in-chief
The issue of smoking in the
residence halls was discussed
last Tuesday at the SGA meet­ing,
with Assistant Dean of Resi­dence
Life Joanne Goldwater
attending the meeting. The issue
being discussed was the pos­sible
banning of smoking from
all current residence halls. Most
of the students there to discuss
the issue were smokers protest­ing
this idea.
Smoking in the residence halls
became an issue after the mold
in the Calvert basement was dis­covered.
As reported in the Feb.
6 issue of The Point News
(“Mold found in Calvert; cleanup
a work in progress”), the prob­lem
was discovered when reno­vations
on the basement were
growing mold a few days after
new dry wall was put in place.
The mold has caused the need
for the basement offices in
Calvert to be evacuated so that
repairs on the mold problem
can be made. While the base­ment
is being fixed the staff in
the basement will be moved to
offices being built in Anne
Arundel in the space that was
the old campus bookstore.
When Dr. Ebenezer Israel, the
St. Mary’s County Health of­ficer,
came to inspect the mold
in Calvert, he expressed con­cern
with the ventilation sys­tems
in not only Calvert but in
the other residence halls on cam­pus.
The age of the buildings
and the lack of recent renova­tions
were a concern to Dr.
Israel, and he recommended that
smoking should be banned im­mediately
from all the residence
halls due to the poor air ventila­tion
system.
Goldwater reminded students
before the discussion began that
“Smoking is not permitted in
any state-owned building; how­ever,
we have made the excep­tion
for our students in the resi­dence
halls.” She also said that
the townhouses would not fall
under this rule because each
townhouse has its own air con­ditioning
and heating system.
She also made the assumption
that smoking in the new suite-style
residence hall would be
okay because the new building
would have the properly needed
ventilation system.
Once the discussion was
opened to the students, many
people had different things to
say. Many students questioned
the need for such a ban when
the windows could be left open
with a fan on. Other students
made recommendations such as
having smoking-only halls or resi­dence
halls. Some students were
adamant about being able to
smoke in the dorms either be­cause
of the amount they pay to
go here or the fact that they are
making an informed decision to
smoke.
On the other side, there were
also some non-smokers there
who took part in the discussion.
While most of the non-smokers
did not care either way about
the issue, a few were very ob­stinate
in their .opinion that
smoking in the residence halls is
a problem. In the end, Goldwater
was happy to hear all students’
opinions because she was “not
comfortable just saying ‘thou
shall not [smoke in residence
halls]’.”
While the future of the issue is
still up in the airrightnow, SGA
vice president and third-year stu­dent
Lauren Dunnock told stu­dents
at the meeting that “It’s
up to the students; if you guys
are really upset about this, we
won’t do it.”
Inside
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•NEWS...............................................................2
FEATURES.....................................................3
HUMOR..........................................!................4
A&E................................................................., 5
OPINION........... ......................................... 6-7
SPORTS...........................................................8
F lying S aucers on
C ampus
An old campus tradition is being
revived this spring, and you’ll want to
keep your eyes open. Page three.
13 133
# @ # ! !@ AND ALL
. THAT ! % @ @ #
Humor editor Matt Pembleton
shares the love on Page four.
§ H ateful W ords
Students speak out about the
vandalism of the BSU office
message board. Pages six
and seven.