The Jan. 30 incident has cast a shadow over the school's Black Emphasis Month celebration.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published February 7, 2004
TAMPA - Black student leaders at the University of South Florida organized a host of activities this month in celebration of Black Emphasis Month and the birthday of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But nobody planned for the noose.
There it was Jan. 30, hanging from a tree outside Magnolia Hall, the on-campus residence hall with the name that evokes the plantation era.
A resident of Magnolia Hall, one of four apartment-style facilities, saw the noose fashioned from rope about 4:15 p.m., according to information released this week by USF police spokesman Mike Klingebiel. The student reported it to Magnolia Hall management, and police immediately removed it.
Police think someone placed the noose there between 3 p.m. Jan. 29 and 4:15 p.m. Jan. 30.
"We have nothing but a rope in a tree right now, but we're looking at every possibility for the intentions at play here," Klingebiel said Friday. "We want to know what was someone thinking when they did this? Depending on what is found, the university might have the right to take action."
The noose at USF is the latest in a series of such incidents in the Tampa Bay area.
In December in St. Petersburg, vandals ripped up posters in a traveling art show promoting tolerance, then spray-painted racial epithets and the word "brainwashing" on the outdoor exhibit. Days later, security guards at the nearby Florida Holocaust Museum discovered a message: "Why profit from the deaths of millions of Jews?"
Last month in Largo, police arrested a white man on hate crime charges after he was accused of placing a noose around a black teenager's neck at a fast-food restaurant.
Last week in Pinellas County, a Tarpon Springs High School student was suspended for circulating a petition calling for a ban on the Confederate flag. This week in Pasco County, four students were suspended for running a Confederate flag with the words "I ain't coming down" up the flagpole at Hudson High School; one was charged with criminal mischief.
USF leaders are trying to assuage the concerns of minority students, who say they have no doubts about the noose's message to the more than 4,000 black students at the school. To them, it's a jolting and painful reminder that bigotry remains a stubborn evil.
"Think of how many plantations in the South had the name Magnolia," said Black Student Union president Esque Dollar, 21, who lived in Magnolia Hall his freshman year. "There are like 15 dorms on campus, and for them to pick Magnolia and to do it now, I think it's pretty obvious what it meant. It's terrifying."
On Thursday, five days into USF's Black Emphasis Month, Harold Nixon, vice president of student affairs, and other administrators met with students to discuss the incident and a response to it.
"When it comes to hate, the best weapon against it is education and communication," Klingebiel said. "That was the purpose of that meeting. Open dialogue is our best weapon."
Dollar said minority students are pleased so far with the administration's response. He said it's better than last year when a bronze bust of King was pried loose from its stand. Police closed the case within a few months, saying they had no leads.
"Now at least Dr. Nixon is going out of his way to see the under-represented students from USF are hearing what's going on," Dollar said. "This is not a criminal act, but somebody better come back to us and say, "This is what happened; this is what we're doing; this is what we've done."'
Otherwise, he said, USF will falter in its attempts to diversify the student body.
"If this continues, USF will lose more and more of its black students," said Dollar, whose group is one of the largest African-American organizations at USF.
On Thursday night, about 100 students attended the Black Student Union's weekly meeting. The mood?
"There was a lot of gloom," Dollar said. "A lot of sad faces."
