LOS ANGELES — A firestorm over racially and ethnically charged incidents at several University of California campuses spread Tuesday as UC San Diego announced a KKK-style hood was found on campus and students in Los Angeles and Irvine demonstrated against intolerance.
“What kind of campus promotes an environment that allows people to think it’s acceptable to target people for their ethnicity, gender or sexuality?” said Corey Matthews, one of about 200 mostly minority UCLA students who held a lunchtime rally. “It’s something about the tone of the environment that allows this.”
At UC Irvine, about 250 people gathered for a “student solidarity speakout” to condemn the recent spate of racist incidents at UC San Diego that targeted Black students and another incident last month at UC Davis, which targeted a Jewish student with a swastika carved on her door, said Marya Bangee, an event organizer.
The protests came on the same day UC San Diego announced the discovery of a white pillowcase fashioned into a KKK-style hood the third racist incident around the campus in as many weeks and a day after UC Santa Cruz officials found an image of a noose scribbled on the inside of a bathroom door.
Officials found the hood, which bore a hand-drawn circle and cross, on a statue of children’s book author Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, outside the main campus library late Monday. A rose had been inserted between the statue’s fingers.
Detectives were analyzing the pillowcase for fingerprints and DNA evidence, a university statement said.
UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox vowed to punish the culprits to the fullest extent of the law. “We will not tolerate these despicable actions,” she said in the statement.
