 "Photo: SGA Meeting by Matthew Sprague / The Towerlight")
The Student Government Association voted on Tuesday to pass the hate/bias resolution, which will require selective hate/bias acts to be reported to Towson students through an e-mail - the same way any other crime is reported.
Currently, the policies for campus crime reporting are dictated by the Clery Act of 1990.
“[The Clery Act is] a federal statute that’s monitored by the U.S. Department of Education, and they mandate to all the University police departments what crimes have to be reported under their act,” Towson University Police Department corporal of the community crime reduction unit George Morgan said. “There are certain enumerated crimes [that must be reported] – hate/bias incidents [are] not one of those enumerated crimes.”
The hate/bias resolution was written after the Black Student Union voiced concerns over this exclusion. BSU secretary Jalisa Sykes spoke in support of the resolution during the meeting.
“We looked at the vocabulary [of the Clery Act], the context that it was written in, and we decided that it needed to be updated,” Sykes said. “There needed to be some changes because there was too many issues going on about hate/bias and [the Clery Act] wasn’t clear, and it wasn’t specific enough to… say what needed to be done.”
Although the resolution will not be able to make changes to the Clery Act, it would amend the Clery Act Compliance/ Campus Safety Policy of Towson University, a separate document that describes how Towson adheres to the Clery Act.
The amendment would define a “hate/bias incident” as a crime under the Clery Act Compliance/ Campus Safety Policy, which must be investigated by TUPD and if necessary, reported in an e-mail to the campus community.
“People who ignore [hate/bias incidents] want to live in a bubble and act like there’s nothing wrong with Towson [and] there’s nothing wrong happening. But… there’s so many things that are happening on campus that we need to be aware of,” Sykes said. “Everybody should feel safe to live on campus, everybody should feel safe to go to class, and it’s something people should be aware of.”
SGA president Jon Graf said he felt it was important that the current systems are being examined.
“I think this year we’ve seen a lot of action starting to be taken related to hate/bias incidents,” Graf said. “This year specifically we’ve seen a lot of action, a lot of good conversations, and from those conversations we’re seeing action taken, and I think that’s going to have a positive effect.”
Graf explained that students may not see the effects of this resolution immediately, but there are steps being taken to ensure the resolution is carried out.
“There is going to be a system, I think, that gets figured out from this resolution that [will deal with how] we treat and how we report hate/bias incidents to the campus. So I think students we’ll see more visible reporting of hate and bias incidents,” Graf said.
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2 comments
---- So, every time a black comes on to our campus and attacks a white THIS WILL be marked as a hate crime also...RIGHT??? RIGHT???? Stupid idiots...