My traffic just spiked because this post is currently high on the Google results list for "Cl@remont cr0ss burn!ng" and "H@rvey Mudd h@te cr!me". I don't mind, but it's not like I have anything of value to contribute to the discussion or analysis. After all, I left the school over five years ago.
But here's another article on the subject, this time from the Pomona student newspaper, The Student Life. Not at all surprisingly, TSL manages to get quotes from Mudd students, other college administrators, and Campus "Safety", while the Collage (the putative five-college newspaper) only managed to interview Pomona students. Let's see what they're saying:
Campus Safety then ... determined that the incident did not appear to be a hate crime, and Harvey Mudd elected to handle the matter internally.“Harvey Mudd made the decision that it was not a hate crime,” [Campus Safety Director Lena] Robinson said. “We never talked to the students involved.”
Harvey Mudd Dean of Students Jeanne Noda said she could not comment on the incident being racially motivated, but she did not believe that any student at Harvey Mudd would not have known the historical significance of burning a cross. “Every student raised in this country understands the symbolism,” she said.
A Harvey Mudd student proctor[...] “Though it is clear to us that there is a big difference between ignorance and malice, in this case it wasn’t racially motivated,” he said. “The bigger question is why someone would steal someone else’s artwork and burn it.”
A senior math major: “One has a strong feeling of respect here,” she said. “It’s unthinkable for most people to believe that they had malicious intent. People just don’t know how to deal with it.”
So, who to believe? Two students think it's unlikely that it's racially motivated. Dean Noda refuses comment. Campus Safety strongly implied that the decision was made at Mudd not to treat it as a hate crime. Sounds like Noda disagrees --- if so that would mean the decision was made by a committee and the Dean of Students was outvoted. So where does that thought lead -- President's office? Dean of Faculty, at least.
But maybe she doesn't disagree. Note that what Noda actually said is also very interesting-- “Every student raised in this country understands the symbolism.” (emphasis added) My wife, who was not raised in the U.S., was ignorant of the symbolism and learned what a burning cross means only after some time in the U.S. Perhaps the students involved were not raised here? Perhaps they were, and Noda feels that the case was handled incorrectly?
In any case, some at Pomona are out for blood:
Much of the debate at the forum centered on the topic of whether or not the students who burned the cross realized the significance of their actions.“If we assume the students are not guilty, then the school [HMC] must be guilty. Some one is in the wrong,” James Davis ‘05 said.
If the students are innocent, then the school is guilty? Even if I bought this claim, how to proceed? How do you propose to punish the school? Suspend it for a semester? Make it live off campus? Abolish it?
Here's another good quote, this time from a Pomona art prof who should know better:
At a lunchtime discussion on Wednesday, Pomona Art History Professor Phyllis Jackson said that ignorance of the law is not an excuse. “Intent is irrelevant,” she said. “Stealing property is a crime.”Jackson asserted that the students who burned the cross were criminals and cowards.
“Am I supposed to accept stupidity as a defense,” she asked. “There is nothing you can tell me that would prove that they didn’t know.”
Right on almost every count, but very very wrong on one. "Stealing property is a crime" - right. "[T]he students who burned the cross were criminals" - check. "[A]nd cowards" - no evidence, but I'll let it slide. But where the good professor gets hung up is on the question of intent.
Intent is not irrelevant. Intent is very important in our criminal law. Intent is the difference between manslaughter and murder. (Not motive, intent.) In this case, intent is the difference between theft, vandalism, and "petty arson" (or whatever it's called when you burn something illegally --probably some sort of citation for illegal burning of garbage) on the one hand, and a hate crime on the other.
California law explicitly prohibits hate crimes, so I'm told. But the governing law is quite clear, since the Supreme Court recently decided that state laws can prohibit cross-burning only where there is an intent to intimidate. But as Chemerinsky explains, the intent to intimidate must be proven; it cannot be inferred merely from the fact of the cross-burning.
UPDATED: This post was edited for clarity 2/20/04
I check my search engine words periodically and usually there's nothing very good in there. But now I discover that someone reached this site by searching for:
"per cap!ta" aFRICA "pen!s size"
Not only do we not have that information here, I'm not really sure what use, statistically speaking, a per-cap!ta pen!s size number would be.
That's the beauty of the internet. Someone in the vicinity of Raleigh, North Carolina wanted to know what the African per-cap!ta pen!s size was the day before Valentine's day. And I, a total stranger with no information to contribute, am made aware of it. Whoever you are, I'm sorry I can't be of help. Good luck.
(I am deliberately substituting '!' for 'i' to help prevent future such visitors.)