By A swastika, Confederate flag and portrait of Adolf Hitler were displayed in the common area of a San Jose State University dorm room.
In this dorm room, four white roommates locked a U-shaped bike lock around a black SJSU freshman’s neck and blockaded the freshman in his room, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The taboo symbols and violence were just a few elements of alleged racial harassment and abuse against the 17-year-old student in a hate crime scandal that has shocked the Cal State University community.
Cal State Long Beach sophomore and computer science major Hathairat Rattanasook said she was shocked to hear of such a crime occurring on a college campus.
“In a place where people are educated, they should behave as such,” Rattanasook said. “It’s not just like they didn’t know any better. These people knew what they were doing.”
The hate crime is a stark reminder of other racially motivated crimes that take place on college campuses, even though a recently released report from the Office of the Attorney General of California shows a drop in hate crimes across the state.
According to the Attorney General’s report, hate crimes in California decreased by 12.8 percent in 2012, and racially motivated incidents accounted for 56.8 percent of all hate crime events in the state throughout the year.
Hate crimes across the CSU system also decreased from 22 reported incidents in 2010 to 13 in 2011. There were 13 reported hate crimes in 2012, according to the Statewide University Police Association.
CSULB has seen a few hate crimes as well. According to the 2012 Crime Statistics on the CSULB website, one racially motivated incident of vandalism was cited on campus in 2012 involving a hate note left on the car of a Chicano and Latino studies professor.
“You Mexicans took over Cherry Beach — (No white people allowed),” the note read. “Now you invade our beach. Go back to Baja, wetbacks.”
A violent hate crime also jarred the CSULB community in April 2010, when a transgender graduate student was attacked in a restroom on campus.
The transgender student reported that his attacker had shoved him into a stall, pulled his T-shirt up over his head and slashed his chest with a sharp object.
Between 2010 and 2012, one hate crime has been reported on campus each year, according to CSULB University Police crime statistics. Crime statistics for 2013 are not yet available.
While the CSULB incident was considered nonviolent, it demonstrates that racial tensions at universities remain an ongoing issue in spite of zero-tolerance policies at many CSU campuses.
“I think this campus does a good job at preserving diversity, but you still see it elsewhere,” Nick Pena, a senior health science major, said. “There will always be people with [this] type of ideology.”
Junior management information systems major Alejandro Barron said it’s frustrating that crimes like this still happen in today’s society.
“People are still in a state of ignorance,” Barron said. “It’s a fear of something different and that lack of knowledge about other cultures that needs to be overcome.”
Managing Editor Courtney Tompkins and News Editor Rabiya Hussain contributed to this report.Â
