Sara Russo

When obscene and racist slurs were found scrawled on the dormitory doors of several black students at the University of Mississippi, administrators at the school wasted no time convening tolerance meetings and suggesting that federal hate crimes charges might be brought against the perpetrators. The national news media rushed to cover the story. One month later, when it was discovered that the graffiti artists were three black students, the University failed to file criminal charges against the culprits and penalized them with probation, community service, and research papers.

The incident occurred on the night of November 6, when students in the Ole Miss dormitory of Kincannon hall awoke to discover that doors and hallways on the fourth, fifth and sixth floors of their dormitory had been violently defaced. The messages written on the door included such phrases as “F-ing-Hoe Nigger” and incorporated obscene and racist imagery including a crudely drawn pictorial of a tree and a hangman’s noose.

Ole Miss administrators responded quickly to the incident by convening a special “Committee on Sensitivity and Respect” and issuing firm statements about penalizing the culprits. The Associated Student Body’s Office of Minority Affairs sponsored a 200-person rally called “Say No to Racism: A Call to Action,” which prompted a call from that organization’s director for “programs and procedures” to promote racial sensitivity and prevent such incidents from happening again. Much was made of the fact that the University was currently celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the desegregation of its classrooms, brought about by the admittance of black student James Meredith in 1962.

Campus authorities investigating the incident made clear that severe criminal charges could result from their findings. “At the very least, it would be university charges. At the most, criminal charges, possibly a felony, or it could be a federal offense,” UPD Chief of Investigations, Bobby Black, noted at the time. University Housing Director Bill McCartney stated that the culprits were subject to being arrested by University Police and that they faced losing the right to live on campus.

Nearly a month later, just as students were heading home for winter break, the University announced that three black students had confessed to the crime, after initially lying to the campus police. The University Police Department brought five student code of conduct violation charges against each of the vandals, including “flagrant disrespect of a member of the university community,” “harassment,” “vandalism,” “disregard for university authority,” and “abuse of the university judicial system.” While some of these charges are criminal misdemeanors, campus officials declined to involve local police authorities in the incident, which they began referring to as a “prank.”

“You are dealing with people who are under 21…who are in college, and when you invoke criminal processes, serious ramifications follow,” stated Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat. “The Division of Student Life recommended to me, and I agree with them, that this should be handled through our student judiciary. This is a community issue. This is not, at this point, an issue for the courts.”

Some on campus have criticized the administration’s timing, claiming that they stalled on releasing their conclusions that three black students were behind the incident, waiting until December 12 when most students had already left school for winter break. The Daily Mississippian reports that some students knew the names of the black students involved by mid-November, nearly a month before charges against them were formally announced. Jeffrey Alford, a spokesman for the university, denies that the university deliberately caused any delay and notes that proceedings were held up by the fact that the three students initially lied to investigators and denied any role in the vandalism, only confessing when confronted a second time. “There was no point or purpose to dragging this thing out,” he said. “It did not benefit the University or anyone else.”

In another twist, university officials have refused to name the three black students charged with the crime, citing their right to privacy under the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act. Consequently, though the students have agreed to write a public letter of apology to be printed in the Daily Mississippian, a campus student newspaper, the letter will appear anonymously. At press time, an apology had not yet been published.

A staff editorial in the Daily Mississippian argued that no leniency should be granted to the perpetrators because of their race. “The issue of race has been debated since the accused students’ ethnicities were revealed, but the editorial board of this publication stands by its original statement,” the editors wrote. “Anyone on this campus who would commit such an act as this should be expelled with no exceptions regarding race or creed. It is now up to the Judicial Board, a body comprised of students, to stand by the well defined and well known policy of Ole Miss and race.”

The students’ punishment was decided at a closed meeting of the University Judicial Council. After deliberating for four hours, the body, which is composed of four students and four faculty and staff members, decided to bypass the severe penalties of suspension or expulsion. Instead, the council placed the students on probation until graduation and ordered them to perform community service and write a 15-page research paper. One of the three students got off even more lightly with a period of probation lasting only until December 31, and a 5-page paper assigned. The students will also be forced to pay the $600 in damages incurred by the acts of vandalism.

Already incensed by the perceived change in the administration’s tone when discussing the crime, many students on campus felt that campus officials had come down too softly on the three perpetrators.

“This punishment is a joke,” commented one Kincannon hall resident on the campus newspaper’s message board. “When they met with us about the incident after it happened they told us that they knew it was a white resident on our floor; neither of these was true. They also told us that this was a federal offence and that the guilty party would be arrested and charged with a hate crime and at the very least expelled from the university.”

“The truth is that when the university was ‘positive’ it was a white student, they were ready to punish them to the fullest extent to send a message of intolerance,” the student added. “This ruling sends the exact opposite message.”

University Spokesman Jeffrey Alford denies that the vandalism case was handled differently because the culprits turned out to be black. “It would have been handled in exactly the same way. We handled our judicial procedures and processes to the letter, and this would not have been handled any differently regardless of who the students were who were involved,” he told Campus Report. “This was a matter where the judicial council heard the evidence and the testimony and determined in their best judgment that this was appropriate punishment for the conduct that had been committed.”

“Incidentally,” he added, “What has been lost in all the hoopla over this is that these are the stiffest punishments that have ever been handed down for a case of vandalism on the campus. So the criticism that they got off lightly, there’s no justification for that.”

Alford did admit that one of the factors in the students’ sentencing was the judicial board’s determination that the racist and vulgar graffiti was not motivated by hate. “There’s no evidence anywhere here that they meant to threaten or intimidate, or cause harm to anybody,” he told Campus Report. “And that’s why I think it’s clear that the judicial council certainly believed that the punishment was reasonable for the incident.”

According to Alford, the students intended the racial slurs as a “prank” on two of their acquaintances. “The racial graffiti was directed at two particular students,” he said. “The rest of the graffiti was just vulgar, nasty things that they had written…four letter words, and that sort of thing, and vulgar drawings of sexual organs.”

“There’s reason to believe that at least one of the victims knew who the perpetrators were because he didn’t even go to his door after he heard the commotion,” Alford noted. “There’s reason to believe that he knew exactly who it was and he said he didn’t even get out of bed to check.”

Despite the administration’s claim that the penalties handed down for vandalism in this case are the harshest in university history, many students on campus remain unsatisfied that the penalties for the vandals were sufficiently severe. “I personally feel that the punishment is very light, and I’m concerned with the precedent that this sets,” commented Ole Miss Associated Student Body President Drew Snyder. “I think it’s a slap on the wrist.”

“I walk into class today, and around campus knowing three men who have no respect for something I love-and were willing to prove it-could be the person I just walked by, and it infuriates me,” student Grant Gannon noted in a Daily Mississippian column.

“The original crime was bad enough,” he added. “What’s worse is the perpetrators are still here. The university preaches tolerance and acceptance. It isn’t deserved in this case.”