HATE CRIME SPREE

The Republic of Racism?

By Amy Brouillette, 6-07-05

As if the festering heap of controversy could pile atop CU any higher, a recent scourge of racist crimes on (or near) campus has university officials once again scrambling to contain another certain enrollment-threatening pr disaster. In response to last Friday’s “incident,� in which a 22-year-old student was beaten, his jaw broken, in a racially-motivated assault on the Hill, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Ron Stump issued a campus-wide email condemning the act and pressing for the still-at-large suspect’s arrest—even throwing in a extra $1000 toward the reward, bringing the total pot to a whopping $5,500. (Note: the Daily Camera yesterday and the Denver Post today reported the total reward at $2,500, a figure which does not include additional money offered by the university late yesterday afternoon.)

Friday’s crime, strung together with a series of racist crimes on campus this spring (overshadowed by the front-page-grabbing football scandal and the Churchill affair), means Boulder—the city as well as the university it contains—has a real problem. It’s too easy, too convenient, to point to the college crowd on the Hill, to the out-of-towners bringing outside ugliness into Boulder’s idyllic, hate-free zone—too easy to make this a university problem (as if it doesn't have enough on its hands). Just because the reported acts have been so far contained to university’s geography and stomping grounds, that racism happened on the Hill, doesn’t necessarily make it of the Hill.

That racism here in Boulder (or anywhere) exists should surprise no one and outrage everyone. Boulder is no longer the bubble of political correctness it once was; this recent string of hate crimes has officially crashed that party. For a city that prides itself on diversity and tolerance, talk is cheap—just theory, really, and a hardly-ever tested one in a place as white as Boulder. Now is when it actually counts.

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