Spring Break
Emotions high as students react to online video
By: Andy Farmer
Issue date: 11/8/06 Section: News
 Stacy Reeves - The Battalion Students ask questions and listen to reactions at a forum discussing a controversial online video posted by A&M students. The forum, was led by Tito Guerrero, vice president and associate provost for diversity, in Rudder Tower on Tuesday night. |
Emotions ran high Tuesday evening, as more than one hundred students, faculty, staff and members of the Texas A&M administration gathered in Rudder 601 in response to a racist video released on the Internet by three A&M students.
"What we need to work on is affecting change," said Sommer Hamilton, a graduate communication student. "It's good that we are all here, but we're preaching to the choir. I want to find a way to take this issue to the people who don't come to these events."
The video depicted a student with shoe polish on his face, acting as a slave caught using his "master's" Internet. The "master" then proceeded to whip and abuse the student. An alternate ending showed the "master" sodomizing the "slave."
In a letter to Aggie students, faculty and staff, A&M President Robert M. Gates described the video as "so utterly disgusting that . . . any member of our Aggie family would be outraged and ashamed if they viewed it."
Tito Guerrero, vice president and associate provost for diversity, said Gates could not attend the meeting because he was out of town.
Several people in attendance said the A&M administration has not done enough to combat the issues facing A&M.
"It's a structural and cultural problem that extends from President Gates to the lowest administrator, and we must demand change," said Rogelio Saenz, head of the sociology department.
Saenz said efforts to recruit students and faculty members of color have largely failed. He also said actions taken by the administration have not produced results.
Roxanne Longoria, the former president of the Hispanic President Council and veteran of several diversity committees, said racist issues have come up several times and that A&M is too tolerant of them.
"It's time for A&M to develop a no-tolerance policy toward these actions that deface A&M as a whole," said Longoria, a senior biomedical science major.
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