The UCLA School of Law has been facing serious racial tension lately and now hate crimes against Black students are becoming more common at the university.
School officials acknowledge that the entire university should be diversified, but the racially charged hate crimes seem to be hitting the UCLA School of Law the hardest.
Shortly after one law student released a video highlighting the lack of diversity on campus, another law student received a letter that read: “Stop being a sensitive n****r.”
The law blog “Above The Law” received the tip and Alexis Gardner, a Black law student, shared a photo of the letter.
A spokeswoman for UCLA’s Police Department, Nancy Greenstein, said the hate mail incident was reported to university police on Monday.
Authorities have not been able to identify any suspects and the letter was apparently handled by a number of students, making fingerprints relatively useless.
Despite the lack of leads, Greenstein promised students that authorities will get to the bottom of such hate crimes on campus.
“When it comes to hate crimes on our campus, we also go the extra mile in the investigation,” Greenstein said.
Students have been fighting for more diversity and equality on campus for some time, and even kicked off an online petition through Change.org.
The petition listed several ways students felt administrators could help combat the racist environment that has been growing on campus.
Student proposed that the university create a dean of diversity position; a university program dedicated to giving academic resources to underrepresented students; and scholarships for African-American students.
Dean Rachel Moran has since responded by meeting with the students who were behind the petition.
“I met for an hour and a half with 15 of our students to discuss the issues that were raised in the Change.org petition,” Moran said. “I was happy to share that the law school is making progress on a number of fronts to promote diversity and racial tolerance.”
In a public statement, Moran also said that the university is preparing to make efforts toward doubling diversity on campus.
“We recognize that racial issues exist across the campus not just in the law school,” said Moran in a statement to Above the Law. “In fact, just today Chancellor Block issued a special announcement about the need to redouble our diversity efforts in the wake of Proposition 209, which prohibited affirmative action in admissions at any public college or university in California.”
Students were not optimistic about the dean’s statement and are waiting to see if any immediate action will take place.
There are currently only 33 Black students in UCLA’s School of Law among the total body of over 1,000 students.
Other hate crime incidents that have taken place on UCLA’s campus include racial slurs that were spray-painted on students dorms, and racist flyers that were sent to an Asian-American organization on campus.
Controversy also sparked after white students began wearing baseball jerseys branded with “Team Sander.”
Minority students at the university felt that the team name and T-shirts were the students’ way of supporting Richard Sander, a UCLA professor whose work argues against affirmative action.
