http://www.kansascity.com/2010/02/26/1776433/cotton-ball-incident-raises-racial.html#ixzz0ggfWI8XeCotton ball incident raises racial hackles at MUBy MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS
The Kansas City Star
University of Missouri Police are investigating what appears to have been a racially motivated incident at the campus Black Cultural Center Friday morning.
Cotton balls were strewn across the center’s lawn, walkway and bushes between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. Police said two people in dark clothing were seen running from the center grounds.
Whoever is responsible could be charged with either littering or tampering, said MU Police Capt. Brian Weimer. State statutes contain no hate crime law, but if racial motivation was found, “it would enhance the punishment for the crime,” he said.
Roger L. Worthington, MU’s chief diversity officer, condemned it as “an aggressive act against the entire MU community.”
The Legion of Black Collegians, a student government group on campus, is holding a campus wide town hall meeting at 5 p.m. on Monday to discuss racial diversity.
“To say the least, I am disgusted by this action,” said graduate student Jennifer M. Wilmot, adding that it makes her feel unsafe on the campus.
In e-mail to campus administrators, Wilmot urged MU to “take swift and public action through campus-wide statements condemning this experience, seeking out the culprits, and hosting campus-wide town hall meetings to assure students that the University will not tolerate such incidents, hate, or discrimination.”
She said students view it as a hate crime. “Normally when there is a crime on campus a mass e-mail is sent out but that hasn’t happened,” she noted.
The Gaines Oldham Black Cultural Center on Virginia Avenue is used as a class and meeting space for culturally diverse student and faculty organizations. The center was named in 2001 for Lloyd L. Gaines, the first black man admitted, under court order, to the university in 1938, and Marian O’Fallon Oldham, who was denied admission because of race but years later became MU’s first black woman curator.
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