Hopkins students protest school’s response to party

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Johns Hopkins University Black Student Union members and their supporters expressed frustration Tuesday with the university’s response after racial and diversity problems on campus were exposed publicly over the weekend.

Saturday night, the Sigma Chi fraternity held a Halloween party with overt racial themes. In a separate incident the same evening, a black female freshman reported to campus security she had been accosted by a young white man — believed to be a Hopkins student — who brandished a stick at her while making threatening racist remarks.

The fraternity has been suspended by both Johns Hopkins and its national headquarters.

Nearly 400 students, faculty members and administration gathered Monday night after daylong protests on North Charles Street, just off the Charles Village campus, to discuss recent events and minority student life issues.

School President William Brody said in a written statement that the Halloween party, which used four-letter epithets and derogatory racial stereotypes to describe Baltimore and encouraged students to dress as pimps, prostitutes and slaves, was “deeply disturbing,” but he left campus Monday on out-of-state business before the forum-style discussion. Provost Steven Knapp said Dean of Students Susan Boswell planned to meet with student leaders within the week to formalize plans to address the climate on campus.

“To be honest, the meeting reminded me when President Bush finally met with the NAACP,” said Louis Young, 21, a political science major and Black Student Union member. “They distanced themselves from the action, but they didn’t offer any solutions.”

Black and Hispanic students at the rally and the meeting said the Halloween party was not an isolated incident, but the result of an administration and student body that typically looks the other way at such behavior. The students also said they have problems with faculty relations. Students in the gay and lesbian community said they have also been a target of hostility on campus, and last spring there was a controversy on campus after a conservative student newspaper “outed” a number of classmates in photos on the cover of one issue.

Black Student Union members were scheduled to meet with Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Baltimore chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Tuesday evening to arrive at some solutions.

“They invited me to the forum last night and what I heard the students say [was] the Halloween party was not an isolated incident,” Cheatham said.

“There are systemic problems that Hopkins hasn’t addressed.”

rcassie@baltimoreexaminer.com

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