Promoting diversity or deepening the color divide?

Apart from outside pressures, UMass Boston faces serious internal conflict fueled by accusations of racism within the school.

The climate of suspicion has been heightened this year by everything from racial slurs scrawled on a bathroom wall to the arrest of an African-American professor after an altercation with a campus police officer.

In its mission statement, UMass Boston vows to "sponsor and support cultural diversity by helping ethnic and international communities to articulate and celebrate their cultural values and identities, and by recognizing the contributions and achievements of members of these communities."

Indeed, the school sponsors a wide range of organizations to meet the needs of students of color, who make up 35 percent of UMass Boston's undergraduate population. Among the clubs are the Black Student Center (BSC), Casa Latina and the Haitian Institute.

Students of color, however, sometimes question whether they are welcome and accepted outside of their own organizations. Racial tensions flared April 3, 2003 after one of U-Mass Boston's own police officers arrested one of the school's faculty members, Anthony Van Der Meer .

Africana Studies Professor Anthony Van Der Meer was arrested by campus police recently in an incident characterized by some as racially motivated violence.

The professor was thrown to the ground and arrested after an altercation between him and a National Guard recruiter, who escalated the incident when he allegedly said, "I hope you get shot in the head like Martin Luther King."

UMass Boston public safety chief Phillip O'Donnell said that arresting someone on campus is a last resort, and that anyone being arrested could expect to be handcuffed. But when Van Der Meer continued to yell after the guardsman as he was leaving, Officer J. St. Ives pushed the professor to the floor, handcuffing him and ripping his suit jacket in the process of making the arrest. Although the guardsman pushed the professor, witnesses said he responded only with words.

Read more about Professor Van Der Meer's arrest. "UMass-Boston Professor Arrested While Trying to Help Students"

Despite pressure from some members of the UMass Boston community to drop charges, the school is moving forward with the case and Professor Van Der Meer will be arraigned at the Dorchester District Courthouse May 28 on charges of battery and assault and resisting arrest.

Although there has been no official word on the school's stance on Van Der Meer's arrest, Public Relations representative Ed Hayward said that concerned student groups have continued to meet with campus police officers to talk about and make sense of what happened.

Witnesses characterized his arrest as an instance of police brutality and BSC representatives said it was not the first time minority students/faculty had been unjustly targeted by campus officers.

Professor Van Der Meer himself was previously questioned by UMass police while sitting in his own office; he was wearing a baseball cap, and officers were looking for a black male perpetrator wearing a hat. "They saw a black man with a baseball cap," Van Der Meer said, and automatically treated him with suspicion.

At a forum held on April 7 to address campus outrage over the arrest, Van Der Meer called it "an embarrassment to the university as a whole" and added, "I think it's time for the university to resolve these issues in a righteous way so we can go about doing what we're doing." He urged administrators to "forget the politicking" and get to the root of the problem, which he said involved racism. He said in an earlier press conference that police "booked me and treated me like a runaway slave" following the arrest.

Africana Studies Professor Jemadari Kamara echoed Van Der Meer's sentiments, calling the arrest of a black professor by a white officer "a manifestation of a set of relationships of power that are out of order."

"Unless we're willing to face up to the issue of racism," Kamara said, "all the rest of this [discussion] is for naught."

Read more about the forum. "Tensions High After UMB Professor's Arrest"

Racism has shown itself in other ways at UMass Boston. Maria Luisa Plasencia, a representative of Casa Latina said that someone scrawled the words, "Fuck all niggers, spics, gays and motherfuckers" on a bathroom wall. Although she says the racial epithets were quickly removed when students notified the administration, there was no official statement made condemning the incident.

"This is directly harassing us," Plasencia said, adding, "We were very offended by it." Plasencia and others went to Chancellor Gora with suggestions about how to respond to the graffiti, including creating posters advocating racial tolerance or holding a forum to talk about diversity. The chancellor took no action on these requests, Plasencia said. In addition, administrators suggested that the message had been left by someone visiting campus, although one part of the graffiti specifically named a UMass student.

The Black Student Center has also been a target of racial discrimination, representatives said. "You say public safety isn't racist, but they've been harassing us," Sylvia Beevas, the center's assistant coordinator, told administrators at the public forum. Beevas called for the dismissal of the officers involved in Van Der Meer's arrest, and told Public Safety Chief Phillip O'Donnell, "I don't feel like you guys are doing enough for safety."

Director of the BSC's board, Melinda Emmanuel, said she believes racial profiling is a real phenomenon among campus police. "I am tired, we are tired," she said. "I am qualified to be here. Teach me, don't judge me."

"We're not just that kid over there...he looks suspicious...look at what he's wearing. He has a name. His name is Professor Van Der Meer."

Steps are being taken to address issues of intolerance at UMass Boston. The school's Diversity Committee is planning several discussion panels for next semester to talk about cultural acceptance, as well as a conference on the subject.

Although tensions have settled since Van Der Meer's arrest and accusations of blatant racism have been replaced with a desire to move forward and learn from the incident, the issue of racial intolerance is still on the minds of many UMass-Boston students.

As Van Der Meer himself put it, "There are some systemic things that we have to address as a community, and we can do it."

NADINE HOFFMAN