*(Via Black Press USA) – Kayla Tarrant loves the University of Maryland (College Park, MD). But the campus tour guide says a racist email and photo attributed to her schoolmates makes her reluctant to encourage other black students to enroll “in a place where you feel unsafe and no one cares about you.”
“We’re literally begging people to care about our issues,” Tarrant said, with tears in her eyes, to applause from about 100 students — blacks, Hispanics, Asians and a few whites — gathered to discuss the racial climate at the predominantly white, 27,000-student campus.
Conversations like the recent one at Maryland’s Nyumburu Cultural Center are taking place nationwide as racist incidents continue to pop up at colleges and universities, even though students are becoming increasingly vocal in protesting racism and administrators are taking swift, zero-tolerance action against it.
This week alone, Bucknell University expelled three students for making racist comments during a March 20 campus radio broadcast. At Duke University, a noose was found hanging from a tree.
“I just want to say that if your intent was to create fear, it will have the opposite effect,” said Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke. Officials have since accused a student in the incident but have declined to release the student’s name or race.
Get the rest of this AP story at Black Press USA.
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