WASHINGTON
In a rare move, University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III summoned students to the Rotunda — the heart of the historic campus in Charlottesville — where he discussed a plague of racial incidents that has marred the first few weeks of classes.
Casteen invoked the name of famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as he urged students to demonstrate unity against the racial intolerance at the root of at least nine racist incidents there, ranging from slurs shouted from cars to racist messages written on dry-erase boards.
Approximately 250 students gathered on the lawn to hear the message, pinning black ribbons to their shirts.
“A lot of people were wondering what the university’s stance was,” third-year student Janelle Todman of Pelham, N.Y., says. “This showed they’re really acting. It’s not just empty rhetoric.”
Solidarity has been strong at the school, a campus with a troubled racial history. Students rallied on the lawn after the first incidents wearing black shirts, hung signs disparaging intolerance and drew black ribbons on their dry-erase boards.
Alumni offered a reward for information and some students pushed to change the honor code to make acts of intolerance grounds for expulsion.
But below the surface, fear remains strong, says Dr. M. Rick Turner, dean of African-American affairs.
