NAACP says NCSU's graffiti response 'tepid'

[struggle4progress]

Published: Nov 18, 2008 03:52 PM
Modified: Nov 18, 2008 03:54 PM

RALEIGH - The head of the state's NAACP chapter said today wants to meet with UNC system President Erskine Bowles and the Wake district attorney after N.C. State University offered a "tepid" response to his requests to expel four students who painted racist graffiti about President-elect Barack Obama.

William J. Barber Jr., president of the NAACP in North Carolina, and other leaders of the organization issued a series of requests to NCSU after the graffiti appeared in the campus' Free Expression Tunnel on the day after the election.

In addition to asking for expulsion of the students, the NAACP also wanted the university to increase security on campus, support rules that would make hate crimes and hate speech punishable by expulsion, clearly define "hate speech" and make a diversity course part of the freshman curriculum, with credit ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/100/story/1299892.html

[zazen]

1. I think expulsion only legal after "free speech" tunnel officially precludes hate speech

I'm not defending these racist assholes, and God knows NC State has its share (I must know 900 people who work and teach there and the numbing idiocy of some of the students surprises even me), but it _is_ a free speech tunnel. Correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't think they communicated a specific threat, which would be legally actionable under current standards.

Change the standards--clarify them, by all means. Hate speech is explicitly prohibited on university e-mail accounts and university machines. It ought not be allowed in the tunnel. But it wasn't clear. This just gives the pigs ammo.

Let them stay and shame them for four years, if they even stay out the semester. My bet is they'll go back to their bumf*ck denatured small towns and enjoy their Republican-generated unemployment soon enough.

Diversity language ALREADY runs throughout the curricula, and mission statements, ad infinitum. Change has got to come through incentivizing informal activities. If curricula mattered to these jerks, it would have changed them already. The faculty and staff are exploited, underpaid and overworked enough as it is, and it just got worse last week with a 5% across the board budget cut. Please don't treat us to more top-down mission statements.

They need to sponsor a high public, highly competitive minigrant system for the sororities/fraternities to come up with creative approach to handling this. Nothing focuses the mind like competitively seeking money, and then they'll feel a sense of ownership.

[struggle4progress]

2. I more or less agree with your remarks, but notice that I myself am not

typically the target of racist comments, so don't really know their full potential impact

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. Barber to ask why this wasn't violation of hate crimes law...

More from the article, Dr. Rev Barber to work for legislation if our current laws
don't cover this:


Barber said he and other NAACP leaders planned to:

- Organize a Unity Rally at NCSU after Thanksgiving.

- Ask for a meeting with Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby to get an explanation of why the graffiti was not in violation of the state's hate crimes law. The NAACP will take the information to the General Assembly, Barber said.

- Ask for a meeting with Bowles "to communicate directly to him our concern about the apparent lack of policy and aggressive action regarding hate crimes and acts on at least some of the 16 campuses in the system."

- Ask the national NAACP and the state's congressional representatives to strengthen the enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits federal funds to educational institutions that practice or tolerate racially discriminatory educational practices.