Lakers in postseason, quarter almost over, and – oh yeah – a hate crime occurred at UC Irvine
By Christina Jenkins
May 25, 2004 9:00 p.m.
If you ask Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone, he’ll tell you
there was an “incident” at UC Irvine last Thursday
night.
If you ask anyone else, it was a hate crime ““ no
qualifications.
But I guess if you’re Cicerone, an investigation by the
UCI police department and the FBI spells “incident”
““ an “incident,” he finally wrote in an e-mail to
the student body on Monday evening, “which is now being
classified as a hate crime.”
A wall made of cardboard boxes, constructed by the Society of
Arab Students and intended to represent the security fence in
Israel, was set on fire sometime around midnight. It burned to the
ground.
By Friday, the Southern California office of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations was calling for an investigation. By
Saturday, the Associated Press was covering it, with the national
networks just behind. On Monday, the news vans were on campus
““ and Cicerone was compelled to issue a statement.
But aside from the requisite response to media attention, there
hasn’t been any campus reaction.
I was on campus that Thursday night. And Friday. And again on
Sunday. Nothing.
“Our campus is really, really, really dead on
Friday,” explains Muzzammil Ahussain, a third-year economics
student at UCI and a member of the Muslim Student Union. He said
police informed the Society of Arab Students and the Muslim Student
Union of the fire after it was reported, and that members knew by
Friday morning.
But he was right: Friday morning on campus was, well, dead. It
felt like a Sunday morning at UCLA.
Someone on Friday strung up a sign reading “hate crimes
will not silence us” in place of the wall. The New
University, the weekly campus newspaper, says it has received some
letters to the editor. (The paper’s editorial board ignored
the crime, writing instead on Monday about the Los Angeles
Lakers.)
And that’s about it.
Oh, there’s a student rally planned for Thursday.
So to get this straight: A symbolic wall burns to the ground
during a week called “Tragedy in the Holy Land,” the
university doesn’t release information about it until two
days later and students are silent ““ except to plan a rally
set for a week later.
Asked how the university is responding, aside from
Cicerone’s statement, the head of media relations says, well,
we’re investigating it.
There ends the university’s responsibility.
For what it’s worth, the chancellor’s remark in his
Monday e-mail that “events such as these are, unfortunately,
becoming more common in our society and on university
campuses” doesn’t fly with the statistics UCI and other
campuses have reported over the past several years, pursuant to the
Clery Act. Those records suggest that arson attacks have been
generally declining since 1999. UCI has seen none.
As general campus response to this “incident”
straddles the line between silence and contrived disapproval,
Cicerone left students with some words of wisdom: “The recent
incident at UCI stimulates us to renew our commitment to mutual
respect.”
I guess he, and the rest of campus, are humming Kumbaya.
E-mail Jenkins at [email protected].
