Report: Racism Doesn’t Exist At Grinnell Except When It Does

JCC- A new report by the Office of Institutional Research finds that racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, and other forms of hate don't exist on the Grinnell College campus, except when they do.

The report, which anonymously surveyed over 200 Grinnell students before and after a bias-motivated incident occurred, found that students' attitudes varied significantly towards incidents of racism and homophobia depending on when they were surveyed.

“What we found is that Grinnell's progressive ideals and ethos of tolerance were a major influence for many students in their decision to enroll here,” said Oscar Cuomo, who wrote the report and oversaw the distribution of the survey. “For these students, things like racism and homophobia are not what they signed up for when they came to Grinnell, and so they like to think such things don't exist on campus.”

“We don't tolerate it. That kind of thing doesn't happen here,” said Allison Vors '10. “Not since last time.”

The College has a detailed, multi-step procedure to be implemented when the façade breaks down and a bias-motivated incident occurs on campus.

The procedure, known as the Hate Crime/Bias Motivated Incident Response Protocol, contains instructions for a campus-wide response to such incidents when they defy their non-existence. Depending on severity and which community members are directly affected, responses can include rallies, making posters and T-shirts, and all-campus emails from Elena Bernal '94, Vice President for Diversity and Achievement.

These procedures are usually accompanied by a campus discussion about why these things happen, how to prevent them, and how they never happen here, not in a place like this.

Because Grinnell is special.

Bernal stressed the importance of increased dialogue on campus during times when racism or homophobia is found to exist on Grinnell's campus.

“It's clear that there needs to be more dialogue within campus organizations immediately following a bias-motivated incident,” Bernal said. “But once that dialogue occurs, it can end, because the bias that originally caused it will fade from everyone's minds.”

“Fortunately, Grinnell promotes awareness of such issues in many classes and events on campus. That's why students of diverse racial backgrounds talk about it all the time, even when they're just sitting together at lunch.”

Other students lamented the fact that when bias-motivated incidents do occur on campus, they frequently result from written words that, in some cases, take only a few seconds to transcribe.

“It's awful enough that we have to acknowledge hate speech at all,” said Horace Borza '11. “But at least when these things happen, it's probably not a Grinnell College student who is responsible.”

“Unless it is,” he added.

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