"On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, open season has been declared on Native Americans and other people of color at settings where intolerance and hate might least be expected - at some of our foremost American colleges.
At Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., loftily described by its president as "at the forefront of American higher education since 1769," a recent cover of The Dartmouth Review featured a large and offensive illustration of a Native American warrior holding aloft a grisly human scalp. A tasteless, cliched headline with the illustration said, "The Natives are Getting Restless."
The most dangerous climate for people of color exists at the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign, where the mission is to "serve the state, the nation, and the world by creating knowledge, preparing students for lives of impact, and addressing critical societal needs ... "
A Native American student, whose name is not being used here to protect her safety, is starting spring semester at Illinois fearful and anxious after her life was gruesomely threatened in a posting by another Illinois student on Facebook, a popular social-network Web site."
Get the Story:
George Benge: Surprisingly, hate, intolerance inhabit campus
(Gannett News Service 1/16)
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