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SPATT speaks out against LSBE hate incident
BY ZACH GRILL
STATESMAN STAFF WRITER
ISSUE: 78/30
In the wake of a hate incident during a business class two weeks ago, the Students Promoting Acceptance Through Teaching organization (SPATT) is speaking out against such situations with the hope of preventing similar incidents in the future. The event in question occurred during an in-class creative writing presentation in an Organizational Behavior Management class on Thursday, April 24.
During the presentation, one group of students repeatedly used offensive racial language and inappropriate sexual references. According to SPATT members, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. “The business department had issues like this last year,” said senior Hana Dinku. “They are usually better than other departments about dealing with stuff like this.”
Labovitz School of Business and Economics (LSBE) Associate Dean Wayne Jesswein disagrees. “I haven’t been informed by faculty or staff about a previous incident like this,” Jesswein said. Dinku went on to say that it is the university’s responsibility to keep the students feeling safe and without of intimidation, and in this situation, they failed to do so. “Imagine yourself in that situation as they only person of color in the classroom,” Dinku said, “that immediately singles you out from everyone else.”
SPATT believes that it is up to the school to take the necessary steps, whatever they may be, to make sure that people know that it is not OK to do something like this, and if it happens again, there will be more severe consequences. “The school has to be held responsible,” said senior Scott Swanson. “They have to step in and show they care about their students.”
Although the actions of the group were very inappropriate for a class setting, the reactions of the other students in the class were more bothersome to SPATT members. There is one person of color in the class, but they were not in attendance the day of the incident, according to SPATT members. “The class’s reaction would have been much different if they [the student] had been in the class,” Dinku said. “Maybe some people aren’t as open-minded as they think they are.”
Another SPATT member, who wanted to remain anonymous due to conflicting personal affiliations, compared a classroom environment to having a formal job. “This isn’t tolerated in the real world; why should it be tolerated here?” the student said. “If this was a work environment, they would have been fired on the spot.” SPATT members are worried because sometimes this type out outburst can be a sign of a deeper problem.
Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter at the Virginia Tech massacre, handed in a disturbing creative writing project a year and a half before he went on his killing spree. “We need to emphasize these issues,” Dinku said. “We need to find a way to get the point across to these kids.”
The SPATT members all agree that the best thing to do is to make sure these issues are taken seriously to prevent it from escalating to a more tragic problem. According to Jesswein, there is no official university policy currently in place that is specifically designed to prevent such incidents. “Usually, it is just what is included in the syllabus for the class,” Jesswein said. “There is nothing yet in place; it is still in the thinking stage.”
One of the ideas the school will consider is training professors on how to handle such a situation. “Professors haven’t had any training like that up to now,” Jesswein said. “But now we have to think about it.”
