Keene State college confronts prejudice

Bias and prejudice are deep-seated at Keene State College, a recent report shows, shocking some and confirming what others already knew.

In response, the college has begun a series of educational forums and training sessions that, on top of the already planned addition of diversity training to the curriculum, will raise awareness of the sometimes uncomfortable topic, officials and students said.

"There was a feeling of shock for some that this doesn't describe our college, and I had the same feeling," said new President Helen Giles-Gee, who arrived in July.

"Even if only one person was harassed, we need to do something to help that one person."

The college commissioned the report after several harassment incidents on campus caused members of the Campus Commission on Diversity and Multiculturalism to question how widespread such problems were, said Candice Wiggum, a co-chairwoman of the group.

In response to the incidents --one of which involved a conservative student and a liberal professor's anti-war political stickers, and a second that involved a male student who was accused of sexually harassing a female teacher --the college streamlined its procedure for responding to harassment, and increased sexual-harassment training on campus.

But the commission wanted a deeper look at attitudes on campus about diversity, prejudice, bias and hate, said Wiggum, who is also director of the counseling center at the 5,200-student campus, which is 90 percent white. New Hampshire is 96 percent white.

Last fall, nine focus groups of 52 people total, including faculty and staff, minority students, female and male students and athletes, were surveyed on the sorts of bias, prejudice and harassment they saw on campus.

The responses revealed widespread and casual use of racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic jokes and language, hierarchical attitudes of faculty toward staff and students toward faculty, and unwanted touching of women's breasts and buttocks, leading to feelings of isolation, self-hatred and fear for the targets.

The report tells of students calling a convenience store clerk the "Iraqi Paki" and Jews "cheap."It lists racial slurs and recounts one student who writes poems about his hatred of black people that usually end with them dying, which he reads aloud at parties.

In it, one woman recalls several men following her, and yelling "Go back to India, bitch!"

It recounts a professor telling a campus safety officer, "I am tenured. You can't tell me what to do," and politically conservative students keeping quiet on campus for fear of breaking the liberal mold.

One student tells of overhearing a man who was aggressively dancing with her friend saying, "You know you want it," and another female student says she was sexually assaulted and nearly raped twice in one night.

Stephen Wessler, director of the Portland, Maine-based Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, led the assessment.

"While there are certainly things in there that are disturbing, it doesn'treflect that Keene has anything different from other campuses," he said. "If anything, it reflects well on Keene that it's made the commitment to address these issues. That doesn't always happen."

Senior campus officials, including Giles-Gee, have been meeting with staff and student groups since the report was released to gauge reactions, and they held a campus-wide forum on the report last week. The college is planning a presentation on diversity to incoming students and is integrating diversity into the curriculum, and officials are discussing workshops for faculty and staff, said college spokesman Michael Matros.

Students, however, have yet to make any sort of visible response, and many said reaction from their peers has been mild, perhaps, they said, because the report told them what they already knew. (next page »)