US: Racist graffiti on college campus leads to hate crime investigation

Name tags for three students at the University of Richmond students were defaced, and a Muslim advocacy group on Monday called for a hate crime investigation into one of the instances.

The Council on American Islamic Relations said in an email that it asked the school to look into an incident in which racist graffiti was written on the door of an African American student.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the residence hall name tags of three students were defaced last week in what university president Ronald Crutcher called acts of racism.

Crutcher sent a campus-wide email Jan. 24, after a black student’s door was defaced. The next day, Chief of Police Dave McCoy wrote to say there had been three incidents, apparently motivated by “intimidation with a racial and national origin basis.”

The president described the initial act as a “disturbing racial epithet” in his Friday morning message to students. He called the incident “disgusting”.

“An act of racism against any of us on this campus is an act that affronts all of us, and everything we are committed to as a University community,” Crutcher said. “We will not tolerate members of our community being targeted for harassment based on their identities.”

Cynthia Price, a university spokeswoman, said the vandalism was anonymously reported. McCoy said two of the incidents happened in the Marsh residence hall, but that police haven’t determined where the third reported incident took place. The university has not revealed what the graffiti said.

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