Administrators said they are committed to change. On Tuesday, Casteen named the first vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity at U-Va., William B. Harvey, president of the Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity at the American Council on Education. The appointment was the result of a commission that has been working on such issues for more than a year.
Officials asked the FBI to investigate graffiti on a campus bridge. This week, investigators concluded that the writing was not racially motivated, but some students were skeptical. Someone painted over it almost immediately, in all black with white letters, "Reject Hatred."
And yesterday morning, an e-mail went out to the university community, asking people to gather on the Lawn in the evening. Casteen had issued a statement condemning the first spate of attacks, but many students and parents said it was an important symbol for him to speak from the Rotunda.
"I've come to express solidarity, a sense of oneness, with those who have been abused," Casteen said. "These acts threaten the core freedoms that make university life what it is."
He called the perpetrators "cowards" and urged students to wear the ribbons all next week.
Joselyn Spence, a fourth-year student from Chesapeake, Va., said: "This is a show. This is politics. Casteen had to go up there and say something."
Some students said privately that the incidents had been overblown, that they were probably the work of a drunk townie, not someone on campus, and that it was better to ignore it than to give the perpetrators attention.
Some pointed to other things that were written, anti-Christian and anti-gay, and said it wasn't only a race issue.
Turner said that the incidents will make it harder to recruit black students to the school, even though it has one of the highest graduation rates in the country.
Alice Miller remembers that when she was in college in Boston in the mid-1970s, a carload of white men threw a glass bottle at her on the street. "This is now 2005," she said, angry and sad at the same time.
Kyle Miller missed Casteen's speech last night -- he was taking an exam -- but after saying the university needs to pay attention and come up with solutions, he said: "The fact that the president talked today shows one step forward. That's at least one step forward."
Special correspondent Ryan Davis reported from Charlottesville, and staff writer Yolanda Woodlee contributed to this report.
