Inside Higher Ed: When Ugliness Visits a Campus
Every once in awhile on university campuses, the unthinkable, even the unutterable, happens. A scrawled message shows up on a bathroom stall, a religious symbol is defaced — and administrators and faculty members are left to try to contain the fallout and forestall another explosion.
Pace University, in New York, has been plagued by a series of three racially charged incidents, beginning with the discovery of a library-owned copy of a Koran in a toilet on its main campus in Manhattan September 20. Just four days later, a car parked at Pace’s location in the suburb of Briarcliff, N.Y. was found strewn with litter, the word “nigger” written in the condensation on the windshield, and, on September 29, the same racial epithet and a swastika were found scribbled on a bathroom stall door at the Manhattan campus. No suspects have been identified, although campus officials are operating under the assumption that the perpetrators are insiders, students or employees with access to the buildings.
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