Arielle Emmett: Hate crime beheld
01:23 PM EDT on Friday, March 30, 2007
ARIELLE EMMETT
PHILADELPHIA -- WHEN YOUR CAR is smashed and kicked in at 2 a.m.on the Brown University campus, the incident can turn into a minotaur’s maze.
My daughter, a Johnson & Wales University nutrition and management student who juggles several jobs, closed shop on the late shift at one of Brown’s cafes, where her co-workers are from J&W, and then emerged in the dimly lit parking lot behind it to discover that two of her car doors had been crumpled like aluminum foil. Several large boot prints were visible in the metal.
A Providence police sergeant called the crime a “malicious to an auto [sic].” My daughter believes it was a hate crime, committed by students. She reported it to the campus security forces, both at Brown and Johnson & Wales, but after a cursory investigation, the case was dropped for “lack of evidence.”
My daughter believes she knows the perpetrators, the same group who had called her “white trash” in the hallways at J&W. One of the witnesses to the vandalism telephoned her a day after to taunt her about the vandalism. The caller, a woman, asserted that she knew who did it, telling my daughter that she’d have her “messed up” if the case were pursued further with police.
For the past several weeks my daughter has tried to seek legal restitution. Brown University denies any responsibility for the vandalism, even though it occurred on the university’s watch, and to an employee who must enter an unguarded parking lot late at night.
Ironically, Brown owns the lot but leases space to the Providence Police Department. However, Providence Police Sgt. Danny Gannon said the police “have no responsibility for the lot . . . where the incident took place.” Insurance people and lawyers at Brown assert that student employees park their cars at their own risk.
Meanwhile, Johnson & Wales University Dean of Students Ron Martel propelled an investigation. It stopped dead when Campus Security Chief Michael Quinn reported that suspects had been questioned but admitted no guilt. The self-proclaimed witness to the crime has quit school and returned to her home state; therefore, campus police can’t question her. The Providence Police also elected not to pursue the case. Dean Martel, who shows real concern, acknowledges racial tensions on campus are real. Periodically, ugly things happen.
What are we left with here? Hate crimes? University and police bureaucracy that points you in different directions but takes no real responsibility for what has actually happened?
We contacted Brown’s Office of the General Counsel to find out who is responsible for maintaining safety in that parking lot. The lawyers didn’t answer our question. And an assistant to Brown President Ruth Simmons noted to us that my daughter’s face wasn’t damaged, just her car. She told me my daughter ought to have comprehensive auto coverage. She can’t afford it, I replied.
“Brown can’t do anything for your daughter,” she said. “She’s a limited-duration employee.” In legalese, that’s not exactly a term of art, my lawyer told me. But it seems to get Brown off the hook.
My daughter has always been taught to treat people fairly. She also knows that racist behavior is a regular part of Providence college life. Although neither Brown nor J&W reported her incident as a hate crime, the universities’ own statistics tell a different story.
For example, the most recent campus police report (2006) from Brown University indicates that 11 “non-reportable” hate crimes, which included intimidation and vandalism, took place in 2005, four of them motivated by race or ethnicity, five by sexual orientation. Oddly, Johnson & Wales’s 2006 Providence Campus Safety report indicated “no hate crimes” whatsoever. Yet it listed four forcible sex offenses, three aggravated assaults on campus, and 22 aggravated assaults involving students on public property (2005 figures).
Hate crime is in the eye of the beholder and the victim, I tell myself. It’s a deeper issue that goes beyond the danger to my daughter or the damage to her car.
No university in Providence should be hiring people to work late at night without providing security escorts and supervised, well-lighted parking lots. If a crime occurs, the university should be protecting employees, even if they’re students from another university, showing concern, providing appropriate reparations, and most importantly, following up legally so that our students are safe.
We also must address racial tension — and hate crimes — at universities. Education is needed. Honest dialogue and the study of nonviolent strategies for conflict resolution should be mandated as part of every university curriculum. Such universities as Brown and J&W should be cooperating on security procedures for student workers.
Finally, university presidents and legal counsel need to take calls from distraught parents whose children are victims of crimes committed on their campuses. In my daughter’s case, she is lucky; her face wasn’t banged up, just her car. But what happens if next time it is someone’s face? Or life?
Arielle Emmett is a lecturer in journalism at Temple University, in Philadelphia.
