NCJ Number
186206
Date Published
1998
Length
25 pages
Annotation
After discussing the incidence and nature of racial and ethnic hate crimes on college campuses, this chapter explores community-building approaches that aim at improving conflict resolution and campus cultural diversity, while addressing the issues of political correctness and academic freedom.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on one type and locality of hate crime, i.e., physical and verbal abuse directed toward racial and ethnic minorities that occur on a college or university campus. Hate crimes in general, regardless of whether they occur on campus, vary widely along two dimensions: the way they are carried out and their effects on victims. Levin and McDevitt (1993) identify three additional characteristics of hate crimes based on recent research findings: excessive brutality, the victimization of total strangers, and perpetration by multiple offenders. One section of the chapter briefly describes the various Federal, State, and campus laws and reporting requirements for hate crimes, all of which affect campus ethnoviolence. Regarding the incidence of racial/ethnic hate crimes on college campuses Ehrlich (1995) reviewed detailed studies of ethnoviolence victimization on several campuses. He found that the patterns of victimization followed familiar patterns of intergroup relations that varied by the relative status of racial/ethnic groups as well as by the proportion that each group represented on each campus. Another section of the chapter touches briefly on general conceptual frameworks and comments on those frameworks that seem related most closely to the current concerns over campus ethnoviolence. Although a large number of studies have shown that no single approach in programming will reduce racial and ethnic conflicts in educational institutions, successful racial and ethnic conflict resolution and the advancement of a productive environment in educational contexts has been related to the cumulative effects of a clear policy and multiple operational programs. The first prerequisite is an explicit, clear institutional policy on advancing equal educational opportunity. Next, a variety of programs are needed to address the policy in overt and specific ways to change the campus environment into one in which all students can attain the highest levels of achievement of which they are capable. The chapter concludes with sections that discuss the formulation of a viable racial/ethnic diversity policy, the development of diversity programming to achieve an inclusive campus community, and intergroup dialogues. 58 references