Williams responds to racial slurs

By Felicia Schwartz, The Dartmouth Staff | 11/15/11 2:41pm


 

Early Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a res­i­dence hall at Williams Col­lege was van­dal­ized with racial slurs. The next day, Williams' Cam­pus Safety and Se­cu­rity sent a re­port out to the whole cam­pus. On Sun­day, Williams' Col­lege Pres­i­dent Adam Falk re­leased a state­ment with the full de­tails of the event and can­celled classes for Mon­day.

"After con­sult­ing with the Fac­ulty Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, we have de­cided to can­cel all classes and ath­letic prac­tices to­mor­row (Mon­day)," he said in the let­ter to cam­pus. "We un­der­stand how this dis­rupts im­por­tant col­lege func­tions, but in the wake of a shock such as this, the cam­pus com­mu­nity needs to take a pause."

Williams also held an event on Mon­day and ex­pected all stu­dents to at­tend. Stu­dents who at­tended the event had lunch and small groups. To fa­cil­i­tate this, they sus­pended meal swipes for Mon­day lunch.

A sim­i­lar act of van­dal­ism oc­curred at Dart­mouth on Sun­day, No­vem­ber 6th. The Col­lege did not no­tify stu­dents a hate crime had taken place until five days later and this no­ti­fi­ca­tion came only after The Dart­mouth broke the story. Dean Char­lotte John­son sent a let­ter to the com­mu­nity, but it did not in­clude spe­cific de­tails of the event. The Col­lege has yet to hold any manda­tory or op­tional events to ad­dress the crime.


Felicia Schwartz, The Dartmouth Staff