By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 22, 2005

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- The recent surge of racist incidents at the University of Virginia is a blow to a two-year effort by the institution to end a lingering legacy of racial segregation and inequality, and has left many black students feeling shaken and looking at their colleagues with a wary eye.

Reports of nine incidents in which black students were verbally assaulted in the past few weeks are unparalleled in the school's contemporary history but reflect the type of problems the school said it has been trying to solve with new strategies.

"We are going to stay the course," said Patricia Lampkin, vice president for student affairs. "We want to move to another place, a new place -- one that's better, we hope."

For the 9 percent of black undergraduate students, the assaults simply amplify their awareness of themselves as minorities at a university that fully accepted black undergraduates only 35 years ago.

Although the school stands as a beacon of independence and excellence in education for Virginians, it has long wrestled with racial strife. But now, things look different. Some parents of black students are considering removing their children, and about 60 students, many of them white, have tried to help by patrolling the campus in small groups each night to aid security.

Officials are responding with unprecedented actions: President John T. Casteen spoke Friday about the incidents on the steps of the school's Rotunda and is planning to speak again at Saturday's homecoming football game -- to a crowd of more than 61,000 -- on screens at the stadium.

"The act of standing together, of refusing to let our sisters or our brothers be cut off from us . . . that, in the end, is the fundamental gesture that can be made," he said at the Rotunda. Such appearances are rare by Casteen, who previously has communicated with students about racist incidents via mass e-mails.

Yet black students said this week that dealing with outsider status is simply part of the experience of being at a university where 65 percent of the student body -- including graduate students -- is white. Nine percent is of Asian descent and 2.6 percent is Hispanic.

Angelique Lynch visited the school as a high school senior in fall 2001 and fell in love with the stately campus, the warmth of the people and the idea of an education so first-rate that she could go on to do anything. But she soon learned from other black students that the best way to thrive is to be part of a network of support for one another. She heads a black singing group and mentors younger black students, the sort of thing you need "at a school like this," she said.

"A lot of it goes back to the history of this university. . . . I don't think a lot of people were open to African Americans being here, and that has carried on in the hearts and minds of students," said Lynch, 20, a pre-med senior from the District.

Her equilibrium, however, has been thrown off balance by the incidents that some officials are calling "racial terrorism." Racist epithets have been shouted from cars, left scrawled on apartment and dorm doors and on a note under a windshield. Although officials are conducting interviews and dusting for fingerprints, no arrests have been made and university officials have said it is probable that no one will be caught -- as no one has been for other racist incidents in recent years.

"I used to feel relatively safe here, I could go alone at night, but now I wouldn't even think of it," said Lynch, who returned to her off-campus apartment one recent evening to find a racist and sexist message for her and her three roommates on their door.

No one has been physically harmed in the incidents, and black students said the acts have not diminished their affection for the school. They, however, are considering anew where they fit into the community.

"When these things happen, we feel we are obviously not fully welcome and we need support," said Jade Craig, 21, a senior from Hattiesburg, Miss. "We need the community and the administration saying: 'We will stand on the front line with you.' "

The school last week announced the appointment of its first chief officer for diversity and equity and has seen its undergraduate black population climb to 9 percent after that figure slipped for several years. This year's freshman class is 10 percent black. Twenty percent of the state's population is black.

On campus this week, there was almost no visible sign of the turmoil within the campus's black community. Casteen's request that people wear black ribbons in solidarity was all but ignored.

"The frustration for us is the lack of urgency" on campus, said Gregory Jackson, 20, a junior from Roanoke who is black. "I would have said things were getting better before this year." Some students said they knew little about the incidents. Others were disgusted but seemed unsure how to express it.

"I just feel like the president isn't doing anything," said Leah Whiteside, 20, a junior from Charlottesville who is white, as she played pool Monday at the student center.

Her pool partner, Eli Adler, 20, a white New York native, was more subdued. "I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary here," he said.

"But I don't think that makes it any less important," Whiteside said. Asked whether they wore black shirts to a recent football game -- something black students requested as a show of solidarity -- the pair turned self-conscious.

"Of course, no one wants to do that," Adler said, "because they want to wear orange shirts" -- the school's color.

"I wore a black skirt," said Whiteside, apologetically. "I'm sort of bad at that sort of thing."

To some, the issue is not about the university but about the national culture.

"There is nothing at all unusual about what's happened. It's regrettable, just like the hundreds of thousands of things that happen every day that human beings do," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor who has been on campus since he was an undergraduate in the 1970s. "This place is a relative oasis compared to much of America."

Paul M. Gaston, a longtime civil-rights history professor at the school, sees the issue in slightly different terms. Gaston was a faculty adviser in 1969 when then-President Edgar F. Shannon announced a policy change to actively seek black students and faculty. The first black undergraduate was admitted in 1962 by transferring from another school, and through the 1960s there were a few dozen black undergraduates, or "tokens," Gaston said. He said he sees the incidents as part of a national backlash against the liberalism embraced in the 1960s.

"This is more than a few jerks; it's part of a cultural movement," he said.

Until last weekend, some black parents feared the situation could escalate into violence and were frustrated that it took three weeks for Casteen to make a public appearance on the issue.

"We feel these students have the right to attend this university without being racially harassed," said Rosalind Lynch, Angelique's mother, her voice rising as she sat at her daughter's kitchen table Monday, jabbing the tabletop.

The incidents are no surprise to M. Rick Turner, who has been dean of the office of African-American Affairs for 18 years. In a newsletter article titled "A Disturbing Trend" that was published this summer before the incidents began, Turner wrote about racial incidents on campus. The article cited a survey that found that 29 percent of black seniors were satisfied with race relations on campus, compared with 61 percent of other students.

"There is a subculture of racial insensitivity; these are people who feel all these seats belong to white people," he said.

Some said they believe the reports of incidents might not signal more trouble, but simply that students feel more comfortable coming forward.

"The issue is out in the open largely because the University is focusing so much energy on addressing it," says an editorial that ran Monday in the Cavalier Daily, using the uppercase "U" that reflects students' reverence for the institution. "We should be at once upset and proud; upset that these acts are happening and that our culture has allowed them to happen," the editorial reads, "but proud that we are confronting the problem with our collective might."