Race Relations on Campus Database

Periodically, JBHE Weekly Bulletin will publish a selection of racial incidents that have occurred on the campuses of colleges and universities. Here are the latest incidents:

• A group of food service workers at St. Leo University in Florida has filed a race discrimination lawsuit against the university and Sodexo, the university’s food service provider. The minority workers allege they are subjected to racial harassment on the job. The suit claims that black workers, or whites who associate with blacks, are given less desirable assignments. One black worker says that he was assaulted for openly celebrating the election of Barack Obama as president. (Hinterland Gazette, 10-11-12)

• A racial slur was written on a bathroom wall on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The slur was directed at a black student from Trinidad who was elected president of the freshman class. (Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, 10-9-10)

• Kellen McClendon, an African-American professor at the Duquesne University law school in Philadelphia, has filed a federal lawsuit charging that he was denied a promotion because of his race. The suit claims that the university president and provost ignored his application for dean of the law school. (Pittsburgh Tribune Review, 10-13-10)

• A white student at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, distributed a flier on campus that was headlined, “White and Proud.” When a symposium was held on campus concerning the flier, the white student showed up in a uniform with swastikas and was allowed to speak. He claimed “The National Socialist Movement is not about hatred, it’s about love.” (The Columbian, 10-18-10)

• Racial slurs were written across the entrances to two residence halls on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. The graffiti called for the lynching of black students. (Wisconsin State Journal, 10-22-10)

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