In light of several racially-motivated incidents within the last year, the Vice President for Student Affairs Office recently created a temporary system for notifying the University community of racial or biased episodes. The Office will communicate with students through their VPSA Connections e-mails until a permanent system is developed.
Patricia Lampkin, vice president of student affairs, said she has used VPSA Connections e-mails as a means of communication in response to concerns from students and faculty.
"One of the constant requests from students and faculty has been that they want to know what is happening out there," Lampkin said. "Sometimes, when incidents have occurred before, people felt they found out about them too late."
Lampkin said using the VPSA Connections e-mails is a temporary solution until the Incident Reporting Working Group devises a more permanent and consistent system for alerting the University community when hate crimes occur.
Lampkin said the group, which is chaired by African-American Affairs Dean M. Rick Turner, is looking at ways to best record and report incidents.
In the meantime, Lampkin said she will continue to use the VPSA Connections e-mails, as well as announcements in The Cavalier Daily, to alert the community of hate crimes.
Only incidents that do not pose an imminent threat to the community will be conveyed through the VPSA Connections e-mails.
"We want to be transparent with what is happening and not overload mailboxes," Lampkin said, adding that if there is any occurrence that is a specific threat, a special e-mail is forwarded to all students.
Last week, the VPSA office sent out an e-mail notifying students of an event that allegedly occurred at Beta Bridge on the evening of Jan. 30. The e-mail stated that the incident involved someone in a blue Mustang who yelled, "Africans don't paint, they pick cotton," to two African-American students on the bridge. "Although it was not a violation of law, the people in the blue Mustang were responsible for an assault to our sense of community," the e-mail said.
On Feb. 12, members of the Organization of African Students discovered that some of their flyers advertising a date auction had been defaced with the word "slave." Members of the OAS said they currently are in the process of meeting with officials, including Lampkin, to discuss the incident. The VPSA office has not yet released any notice to the student body about the occurrence.
OAS Secretary Ama Cobbina said she thinks the VPSA Connections e-mail is a decent method of communication because it goes out to the entire student body. She said, however, that it still is not entirely satisfactory.
"Not a lot of people read it, and people are oblivious to these things happening," Cobbina said.
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