First a Noose, Now a KKK Hood at UC San Diego

In the most recent in a string of racially-charged incidents at the University of California San Diego, a Ku Klux Klan-style hood was discovered draped over the head of a statue of Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, outside the campus library. The incident came late on March 1, a day before planned celebrations of the author's birthday. The event was canceled due to increasing racial tensions on campus.

The hood, crafted from a pillowcase and bearing "a hand-drawn symbol," appears just a week after a noose was found hanging in the campus library.

A female student has since admitted to leaving the noose in the library. She insisted that it was not meant as a racially charged gesture and that she "simply forgot" about leaving it dangling. The individual, who identified herself as a minority student, has been suspended.

All this comes on the heels of a Feb. 15 frat party dubbed the "Compton Cookout." A Facebook invite for the off-campus party urged attendees to dress according to "ghetto" stereotypes and the menu promised chicken, watermelon, malt liquor, and a purple concoction called "dat Purple Drank." Female attendees were invited to dress as "ghetto chicks" who "usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes." The party, hosted by the fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha, overtly mocked Black History Month.

As if that weren't bad enough, a broadcast by the Koala, a student publication that routinely publishes racially offensive material, defended the party and employed racial slurs to refer to offended black classmates. A sign with the words "Compton Lynching" was found at the student-run TV station the next day.

What's behind the slew of ugly incidents? Some say that these are just the most egregious examples of a campus environment that's alienating, and even threatening, to minority students. African-Americans make up just two percent of the undergraduate student body at UCSD. At University of California Santa Cruz, where a noose with the words "lynch" was scribbled in a bathroom last week, only 2.6 percent of students are African-American.

An LA Times editorial discussing the incidents suggested that Proposition 209, which passed in 1996 and barred California's public universities from consideration of race and other factors in admissions, might be to blame. The number of black and Latino students enrolled quickly plunged as a result of the new policy.

Is the under-representation of minority students in California's university system behind the recent string of offensive events on campus? Is racism on the rise? And if so, now what?

Photo credit: ThisParticularGreg