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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Vassar's Bias Response Team caught drumming up business |
| 2013-11-30 |
| This fall semester at the liberal arts college in New York saw a curiously high number of bias incident reports. On Nov. 14, the college sent a mass email to students advising them that Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT) had received at least six reports in the last few months of hateful and insensitive messages being scrawled and spray painted on student residences. “This is unacceptable and members of our community should be able to learn and work in environments that are free of hurtful expressions and behaviors,” wrote Edward Pittman, BIRT coordinator and dean of the College for Campus Life and Diversity, in an email to Vassar students. The email also outlined BIRT’s purpose and role in bias incident response. The task force receives the reports of bias incidents, meets with victims, and provides support for campus efforts to foster diversity and inclusion. Five days after that email was sent, Vassar President Catharine Hill sent a follow-up email. “It is our unfortunate duty to report that two Vassar students have admitted responsibility for creating a number of recent bias and hate-speech messages in public spaces on campus,” wrote Hill. “They also falsely reported these as anonymous messages. Sadly, our community has been deeply hurt by these actions.” The email noted that the two students had admitted responsibility and withdrawn from the college voluntarily. Their names were not reported. The Bias Incident Response Team had one student member: Genesis Hernandez, who is transgendered and was also a vice president of the Vassar Student Association (VSA), the student government. The Daily Caller (The DC) learned that one of the perpetrators was none other than Genesis Hernandez. Informed sources within Vassar told The DC that administrators pinpointed Hernandez as a responsible party, forcing him to give up his position in student government and leave the college. Leaked conversations between student government members also paint Hernandez as the culprit. On the same day that Hill’s email went out, VSA President Deborah Steinberg sent an email of her own announcing an election to fill the now-vacant VSA vice president position. Hernandez has withdrawn from the college. His vassar.edu address no longer works, and as such, he did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for the college also declined to comment. Vassar’s only statement on the matter remains Hill’s email, in which she acknowledged that the campus might now be skeptical of BIRT’s efforts, but stressed the need to continue them. “The outcome of this most recent investigation in no way diminishes our commitment to working toward a more just, diverse, egalitarian and inclusive campus community,” she wrote. The DC could not determine the other perpetrator’s identity, nor was it clear which student wrote and falsely reported which messages. |
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #2 Is Vassar interested in education? Just add the prefix "re". |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-11-30 10:44 |
| #1 "The outcome of this most recent investigation in no way diminishes our commitment to working toward a more just, diverse, egalitarian and inclusive campus community," she wrote. Is Vassar interested in education? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2013-11-30 10:18 |