What's at Stake for UVa?
University president weighs in on the campus's current racial climate and ongoing efforts to strengthen its multicultural milieu.
By Kendra Hamilton

The following Q&A session with the University of Virginia's president, Dr. John T. Casteen, follows news reports that the venerable state school, which appeared to have forged a bright multicultural future from its troubled racial past, has been stung in a national string of "blackface" incidents.

The news that three students — one dressed as Uncle Sam with an Afro wig, the others dressed as Venus and Serena Williams — had donned black face paint at a fraternity Halloween party was made public in late November, prompting a stern warning from Casteen.

"Human dignity, decency, mutual respect and understandings informed by a genuine knowledge of history … belong to all of us, not just to the students affected," he wrote in the Nov. 22 statement. "Efforts to make this university an authentic cross-section of what we are as a country and progress made toward this goal are too important to be cast aside by the careless acts of a few."

Both fraternities involved in the incident — Zeta Psi and the Kappa Alpha Order — were suspended, for a time, by national fraternal leaders and placed on trial by the UVa Inter-Fraternity Council for committing racially offensive acts. The panel that tried the fraternities criticized them for "an apparent historical blindness and lack of sensitivity," but ruled that the members' actions fell within the bounds of constitutionally protected free speech (see Black Issues, Dec. 19, 2002).

BI: The statement that you issued on the fraternity party incident was an unusually strong response by any standard of measure. Can you tell our readers what you consider to be at stake?

JC: The climate of openness and civility among students. This matters to all of our students. Student leaders who asked for my support in connection with this incident offered evidence that similar events have occurred in recent years. They see a pattern of ill-informed, insulting behavior. They did not see this incident as isolated. They did not see it as a violation of law. Rather, they argued — and I agree, based on the information they showed me — that decency and civility within the university community are threatened if only those directly affronted speak out for mutual respect among students.