Experts attribute this rise in racial tension to changing demographics on college campuses, as well as the rise of new technologies, from Web sites such as Facebook.com to cell-phone cameras, which can capture any incident at any time.
Experts and students around the country point out that while campuses have been diversifying over the past decades, campuses have remained segregated by ethnic groups, creating tensions among the groups.
BC's recent survey of the undergraduate student body highlighted this fact. The survey showed that 40 percent of students find it difficult to interact across different ethnic groups, a percentage that rises among black students.
Students from across the nation have also recognized this phenomenon. "The best way to describe the racial climate is mutual coexistence. Ethnic groups do tend to separate themselves for the most part," said Joy Henderson, a sophomore at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. "One of the complaints that students have here is that there is not as much racial and cultural mixing as there could be."
Robert Schmidt, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, agreed. "Most of the groups just keep their distance from one another," said Schmidt.
Racial tensions last semester were especially visible at Dartmouth College, which was affected by a series of racist incidents directed toward its American Indian population.
Dartmouth was one of the first universities to ban the use of the Indian symbol and mascot in the 1970s, a move which as exasperated the relationship between the conservative and American Indian population at the college. In an attempt to revitalize a lost tradition, certain groups on campus embarked upon racially sensitive actions, such as selling T-shirts with American Indians performing crude actions, as well as an Alumni calendar that portrayed an Indian symbol.
Tensions flared when The Dartmouth Review, an independent student newspaper at Darmouth, published a front-page illustration of an Indian performing a scalp with a caption titled "The Natives are Getting Restless" - mocking the American Indians' complaints regarding the use of Indian mascots and symbols.
Spring Break
