By Derek Hawkins
In the wake of a recent incident involving racist graffiti scrawled on the exterior of Stetson West, the Northeastern Black Student Association (NBSA) has called on university officials, as well as other student groups, to more actively address issues of racism and hate crimes on campus.
In a letter sent last week to President Joseph Aoun, several senior administrators and the executive boards of every student group, members of NBSA said they were “dismayed” at what they called a lack of response to racially motivated crimes on campus.
“We work arduously to identify resources for Black and other students of color in order to improve the social climate on campus,” said the letter written by the NBSA executive board. “We believe this should be a top priority of your administration as well. Importantly, this goal will only be achieved through forceful and meaningful actions from the administration and student organizations.”
The incident that served as the catalyst for the letter occurred sometime between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Wednesday, when a swastika and the words “fuck niggers” appeared written in blue marker on an entrance of the freshman residence hall Stetson West.
Northeastern facilities workers painted over the graffiti by the next day, but not before NBSA treasurer Shane Lloyd, also a Resident Assistant (RA) in the residence hall, was notified.
“That was pretty much the last straw,” Lloyd, a senior behavioral neuroscience major, said. “Every time a big incident happens, everyone feels it occurs in a vacuum. But clearly this was part of a string of incidents. From an administration standpoint it had to be acknowledged.”
Similar vandalism occurred at least twice in Stetson West and once in White Hall last semester, several NBSA members said.
Jordan Clark, NBSA’s Student Government (SGA) representative who also serves as an RA in Stetson West, said during the fall he reported homophobic and graffiti written on the walls and ceilings of the residence hall and anti-Semetic graffiti in a bathroom to Northeastern University Division of Public Safety (NUPD). As of press time, The News was unable to confirm either incident with NUPD.
Clark, who said he was alerted to the graffiti in an early morning phone call from Lloyd, said the incident “lit a fire under us.”
“I was fed up because I thought I was being ignored. This wasn’t the first time,” said Clark, a sophomore political science and African-American studies double major and the current Mayor of Huntington Avenue. “I said to myself, ‘I live down the hall from where somebody wrote that. This is my home.'”
That night, Clark said he met with the NBSA executive board, drafted the group’s letter and sent it in an e-mail.
Thursday President Aoun responded to the incident with a public announcement posted on the myNEU Portal.
“I am outraged by this incident and want to assure the members of our community that this act is being addressed in a timely and aggressive manner,” he said. “Public Safety is very actively investigating the circumstances and is making progress in identifying the individual responsible. The Student Affairs and Residential Life staff last night called a meeting of the residents of Stetson West, and I am pleased that our students, in addition to expressing their outrage, made some very positive suggestions about how to deal with such incidents.”
NUPD said they have since identified a “person of interest” in the case. The individual is a non-student guest of a Stetson West resident, said Northeastern spokesperson Fred McGrail.
Justin Aronstein, vice president for social justice at Northeastern University Hillel, said he and fellow Hillel members learned of the graffiti through NBSA’s letter. The sophomore computer science major said he was “disappointed” in what he believed was a delayed and superficial reaction from the administration.
“I feel the administration hasn’t acted properly in informing the community at large. What NBSA did means a lot to us. Just putting it on myNEU doesn’t do the job,” said Aronstein, adding that an e-mail to the student body would have been more appropriate.
Clark said response from Northeastern Hillel and other student groups has been overwhelmingly supportive. NBSA plans to meet with many of them in the coming weeks, he said, to discuss extended plans for combating racism and discrimination on campus.
Wednesday’s incident sheds new light on an exchange that took place between Clark and Aoun at last Monday’s SGA Senate meeting, during which Aoun took open questions from students.
When Clark asked Aoun a question about minority faculty and student retention, Aoun defended the university’s efforts to become a more diverse campus.
“The most important issue in terms of diversity for me is to increase our diversity by becoming a more and more and more welcoming environment and building on this welcoming environment,” Aoun told Clark. “We have a welcoming environment and we’re growing it.”
Clark recalled the exchange in an interview with The News after the vandalism occurred.
“These are the signs of things to come,” he said of the graffiti. “Everybody has been given far too many signs. This was the third or fourth incident that I know of. I didn’t see the welcoming environment that the president was talking about.”
