On January 23rd, an assistant Resident Assistant (RA) in a first-year dorm at the University of Chicago walked by the door-mounted whiteboard of Juan Velez and his roommate, and stopped in his tracks.
The phrase, “Juan hates niggers and kikes,” was scrawled across it. The RA reported the incident to a Resident Head and a closed dorm-wide meeting was immediately called.
On January 27th, the incident was written up as a front-page article in the student paper, the Chicago Maroon, and included a statement from University Vice President and Dean of Students Steven Klass decrying the conduct as “a violation of Housing, University and community standards. Any form of abusive, threatening or harassing behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” The university, he promised, would respond to the incident as “a serious incident of racial and ethnic harassment.”
Though the administration responded through a single voice, student reaction to the incident ran the gamut from seeing it as a tasteless joke to seeing it as one that demanded university action.
“If we have to dwell on race,” protested Velez’s roommate, who had not seen the comments, “couldn’t we focus on actual actions that actually offended people as opposed to words taken out of context that offended no one?”
A fourth-year student who asked to remain anonymous disagrees. “Although no one who saw the statement may have been offended,” the student said, “when you put a statement like that in a public space where 150 people in the dorm can see it, you’re making a private joke a public incident.”
A week later, the perpetrator, who asked to remain anonymous, was expelled from university housing. While Velez was not expelled from the housing system, he was forced to leave his current dorm for leaving the message on his door and not immediately reporting it.
The majority of students within the dorm seemed to feel that Velez’s punishment was excessive. Following Housing’s decision, students in the dorm signed a petition stating, “Juan’s actions, while unfortunate and unwise, should not be exacerbated by the excessive punishment proposed by the Housing Board so as to have a permanent and negative effect on our dorm’s unity.”
Other students felt otherwise, including one who stated that dorm meetings and video cameras disrupt dorm life already and that “the [offending] students didn’t come forward until repeatedly asked…that housing’s decision was more than fair.”
The debate played out in dining halls, dorm rooms, classrooms, and on the editorial pages of the Maroon. On February 7th, when the Housing decision was announced, the editorial staff supported the expulsion. The editors wrote, “The students involved in this act do not belong in the housing community, which is intended to be safe, hospitable, and open for all students.”
One week later, Maroon editorial columnist Dana Chandler criticized the editorial and the decision. “I hope that no one on this campus is so deluded and ignorant about what real racism is,” she wrote, “that they actually believe that kicking these two first-years out of housing will create a more tolerant, open-minded university.”
Whiteboard Incident Part of Recent Pattern
The U of C, which at seven percent Jewish and four percent black is not as well represented by those groups as at many other universities, faced more than scribble on the whiteboard this past year.
On October 14th, a group of students in the May House dormitory threw a “Straight Thuggin’” party, where a dozen students dressed up in stereotypically urban black clothes, and played gangster rap music.
Nearly two weeks later, the controversy dominated the front page of the Maroon, and president Don Randel proposed a school-wide discussion, while local news stations flooded the campus to interview students. However, as it was held on November 11th, nearly a full month after the incident, students attributed the event to a response from media pressure.
Racial sensitivities at Northwestern University, another Chicago-area campus, were also heightened. On January 14th, a student under the influence of alcohol posted swastikas throughout the student union. He was arrested for vandalism and is now facing up to five years in prison.
Given the widely publicized responses to events at both Chicago schools, some students question the motives behind administration actions.
“The administration is understandably looking to give the impression that it is…being proactive about racism,” said the roommate, noting the shift in the administration’s attitude within the past year. “Where was this ‘strong and unified’ response last year when a Jewish student had his mezuzah defamed with a swastika?”
Since the whiteboard incident, conversations about race and free speech have only grown more intense. In that time, It has become clear that the underlying debate regards what constitutes a racist act.
During the week of February 6, a student at the University of Chicago posted a cartoon with a drawing of Muhammad with the caption, “Mo’ Muhammad, Mo’ Problems.” The university has not yet responded with disciplinary action, but the possibility of removing the student from campus housing is a possibility.
Similar free speech and hate speech boundaries were agitated on February 21st, when four students protested a Marine summer program recruiting table by brandishing swastikas and signs that said “Support America’s Nazi Youth – They Do it Better than the Marines.” When asked to leave, the protesters refused, prompting their arrest by University Police, according to the Maroon.
The next day, the campus was covered with fliers claiming the university had violated free speech.
Student opinions varied widely on whether the protestors’ arrests were warranted. Even though student protesters were Jewish – one even descended from Holocaust survivors – many students were outraged that the comparison was drawn at all, particularly with a table for Hillel nearby, according to witnesses.
While debates over free speech continue, many students are getting frustrated with the quarreling. In the March 3rd edition of the Chicago Shady Dealer, the campus humor magazine, the cover article mocked the incident by reporting on a fabricated controversy over a whiteboard comment on the age-old campus debate over the use of “soda” versus “pop.”
The spike in recent school controversies even prompted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a non-profit agency which lends organizational support for free speech, to get involved.
In a school like U of C, where students come from a vast range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, the question of where offensive humor becomes hate speech — as well as the proper way to discuss the matter — is unclear and continues to dominate the campus, from the office of the President to private dorm rooms.
