The University of Utah is investigating a report that a group of men walked across campus dressed like the KKK, in white hooded robes, in early October.
And the school is looking into a second incident from a month earlier, when a Black student reported a substance that appeared to be excrement was smeared on the door of a dorm room.
The two incidents drew attention late Sunday night after a student at the Salt Lake City school posted about them on Instagram, questioning why they hadn’t been addressed. Now a U. spokesperson says residential housing officials and campus police are reviewing the incidents again, after initial investigations were inconclusive.
The cases are also being looked at by the Racist and Bias Incident Response Team at the U., which is expected to release a statement on its findings this week. Its review didn’t start until after the student’s post.
In the first incident, which occurred on Sept. 1, a Black student reported returning to their dorm room to find it covered in a brown substance, with a paper towel lying on the floor, according to the U. spokesperson. The student believed it was feces and cleaned it off before reporting to their resident adviser, or RA.
The U.’s housing office reviewed footage around the day and couldn’t see anyone approaching or at the door. The school spokesperson, though, said the cameras might not have covered the specific area. They have not publicly identified which dorm the student lived in.
The student was immediately moved to new housing.
In the second case, which allegedly happened on Oct. 1, a RA reported overhearing some students in the student’s original dorm building talking about seeing some men dressed in KKK attire on campus trying to recruit students to a white supremacist group. The U. again looked through three days of video but did not find anything fitting that description, the spokesperson said.
After that RA’s report, another student’s report from the same day was added to that file. The student reported finding a substance they also thought was feces smeared on their car door. The spokesperson didn’t know where the car was. The student didn’t immediately contact police, and the school hasn’t been able to corroborate that report.
The spokesperson said they weren’t sure if either incident was being considered a possible hate crime, but police are looking at both again.
The incidents are the latest to happen at the U. The school also opened a case in September after two students allegedly shouted a racist slur at a contract worker as he was making a delivery to a loading dock at the dorms. The students then apparently threw sunflower seeds and coffee pods at the worker.
The worker immediately reported the interaction to university officials, who were able to identify the students responsible “and hold them accountable through the conduct process,” according to an earlier statement from the U.
At the time, U. President Taylor Randall said: “Let me be clear, racist and hateful behavior on our campus is an offense to our entire community, particularly our communities of color.”
Prior to that, in January 2020, a car was marked with the N-word on campus — shortly before the celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
University officials say the graffitied racial slur was done by someone pressing their finger into the frost on the car’s windshield and was not permanent. They identified multiple individuals involved, according to a statement from the school, and took “appropriate actions.”
The school — as well as others in Utah — has had issues recently with white supremacist groups coming to campus, hanging up posters and stickers and trying to recruit new members. That came to a dramatic head in February 2019 when Identity Evropa, which is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, hiked the hill to the concrete block U above the university and laid down a banner that declared, “End immigration!”
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/30JDwwz
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