LOS ANGELES – The artwork on the campus of San Jose State University includes a towering statue commemorating the iconic moment when Olympic sprinters and alumni Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists as a salute to black power during the medal ceremony of the 1968 games in Mexico City.
It was all the more incongruous, therefore, that hundreds of students and faculty members gathered at the statue on Nov. 21 to express outrage at what had allegedly happened to an African-American freshman on that same liberal campus earlier in the semester.
According to law enforcement, the student’s dorm mates had subjected him to a gauntlet of racial taunting and abuse — from giving him racially demeaning nicknames to forcibly fastening a bike lock around his neck and displaying a Confederate flag in the common area of their four-bedroom suite. School authorities were only alerted after the student’s parents visited him in October and saw the flag draped over a cardboard cutout of Elvis.
The allegations have resulted in misdemeanor hate crime charges and suspensions for four students — Logan Beaschler, 18, Joseph Bomgardner, 19, Colin Warren, 18, and an unidentified juvenile — and embarrassment for university administrators.
“By failing to recognize the meaning of a Confederate flag, intervene earlier to stop the abuse, or impose sanctions as soon as the gravity of the behavior became clear, we failed. I failed him,” school President Mohammad Qayoumi said in a statement.
But the criminal charges have not satisfied activists both on and off-campus, who say San Jose State has long been institutionally insensitive to its small population of African-American students.
A 2011 study by Susan B. Murray, a sociology professor at the school, found that “Black students constantly negotiate racialized and racist constructions of their everyday interactions.”
“Something [is] terribly wrong with the experience that African-American students are having at San Jose State,” Gary Daniels, an SJSU student and chairman of the Black Unity Group, told Qayoumi at the Nov. 21 protest.
Qayoumi has authorized a “special task force” to develop recommendations “to help SJSU generate and enhance an increasingly sensitive, welcoming and inclusive environment for our campus population.” It held the first of six scheduled meetings on Thursday.
Amid other recent outbreaks of racism on college campuses in California — students at the University of California, San Diego, were accused of hanging a noose on a lamp fixture in a library and putting a Ku Klux Klan-like hood on a statue outside the main library — task force chairwoman LaDoris Cordell sees an opportunity for statewide change.
“Even in 2014, [race] is still the elephant in the room,” Cordell, a retired judge, told MintPress in an interview.
Information gap
What happened in the Campus Village apartments between August and mid-October has so far been the subject of a police investigation and a fact-finding inquiry initiated by Qayoumi.
“University staff acted in accordance with its policies in responding to the reports of misconduct at the time the incidents came to its attention,” the inquiry concluded, but “Neither the president nor the chief of staff is satisfied that the university responded in a timely fashion in this matter at the institutional [level].”
Qayoumi was not briefed until Nov. 20 — more than a month after officials became aware of the allegations of racial misconduct.
“We clearly know there was this information gap,” Cordell said. “The harder stuff is looking at all the things that happened before this came to attention.”
Blacks account for about 4 percent of the San Jose State student population of 31,000. The school is in Santa Clara County, which, despite being home to Silicon Valley, has a small black population. African-Americans accounted for 3.7 percent of the population in the 1990s, but by 2010, that percentage had dropped to 2.6, or about 46,428 people.
The alleged victim of the hate crimes at San Jose State, who has not been identified, joined that small group of African Americans when he enrolled at the school in August. He moved into a dorm suite with seven other students, an apartment-style accommodation consisting of four two-person bedrooms, a living room, a dining and kitchen area.
The dorm mates had all attended a two-day campus orientation designed to introduce them to university life. A resident assistant, who had undergone two weeks of training before the fall semester, was assigned to the floor.
Shortly after the students moved into the suite, the fact-finding report says, they were joined by another student in a discussion of possible nicknames for the residents. The suggestions for the alleged victim were “3/5” and “Fraction” — both of them references to the Compromise of 1787, which deemed slaves to be three-fifths of a human being.
“[E]ach of the suspects was heard to use the ‘3/5’ nickname at least once for several days after this meeting,” the report says.
According to the report, there were two incidents in September involving a U-shaped bike lock, apparently inspired by an episode of the television show called “Workaholics,” in which the characters put a bike lock around the neck of one of their friends. In the second incident, the victim was allegedly lured into the bedroom of one of the suspects where another suspect attempted to put the lock on him, but he resisted, causing a scuffle.
As another “prank,” two of the suspects allegedly removed the victim’s shoes from his closet before, on Oct. 8, they displayed a Confederate flag in the window of their bedroom. The RA visited the room that evening and told the students that the flag was a violation of housing policy because it was visible to the public. The next day, they decided to display it in the common area of the suite, specifically, the report says, “to see the reaction of the victim.”
After the victim objected to the flag, it was taken down. But on Oct. 13, he returned to the suite with his parents after a weekend visit to his home. According to the report, they observed the Confederate flag and a racial slur that had been written on a whiteboard in the common area. The victim’s parents complained to the RAs on duty and, the following day, the victim disclosed what had been happening over the course of the semester.
“Immature young men”
The San Jose Mercury News made the allegations public on Nov. 20.
“I’m still in shock,” the alleged victim, now 18, told the newspaper. “I tried not to dwell on this. But my family is upset and I’m upset.”
He explained that he tried not to spend much time in the suite and didn’t report his dorm mates to campus police because he hoped the conduct would stop.
Investigators also found Nazi symbols in the suite, including a picture of Adolf Hitler, the “SS” lightning bolt symbol and a swastika. The suspects admitted during police interviews that they incessantly harassed the then-17-year-old, but denied their behavior was racist, saying the incidents were mere “pranks” and “jokes.”
Campus police didn’t find anything funny about them and recommended that the Santa Clara County district attorney file the case as a hate crime. The suspects could face penalties ranging from probation to a year in jail if convicted.
“I’m not defending these insensitive, stupid acts by immature young men,” Beaschler’s attorney, Charles Mesirow, said. “But I don’t think anyone [who knows Beaschler] thinks my client was racist.”
In the aftermath of the revelations, Qayoumi appointed Cordell to head the 18-member task force, which also includes student activist Daniels and a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Cordell had urged felony charges against the suspects but views the fact-finding report as “thorough” and an “accurate picture of what happened at San Jose State with respect to the victim as well as the suspects.”
“The work is done as far as fact-finding,” she told MintPress. “We know what happened. The question now is why.”
Cordell noted that even if, as the report says, no school rules were broken by officials and policies and procedures were followed, “this thing still happened, and that’s a problem.” The task force, she added, will “look at the specific behavior and look at the overall environment at the university.”
One particular area of concern is the initial response of the RAs to the discovery of the Confederate flag in the dorm window. The victim was not present at the time, but the RAs made no inquiry as to whether an African-American was living in the suite.
“The evidence of the Confederate flag is problematic no matter who’s in there,” said Murray, the sociology professor.
According to Cordell, neither the school’s freshman orientation materials nor the hypothetical scenarios presented to RAs as part of their training make any mention of race. She is also concerned that none of the three students living in the dorm suite who have not been charged with any misconduct reported anything to the police.
“If you’re silent, you’re part of the problem,” she said. “Would you do that with a rape victim? These students didn’t feel they had an obligation to follow through on this issue.”