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Racist incident still under investigation

More than two weeks after a female professor was shunted off a campus sidewalk and harassed with racist slurs, the Queen’s administration is no closer to finding the four white male students responsible.

“We have made contact with the professor who reported the incident,” said Joel Keenleyside, the campus security co-ordinator. “But she could not identify who the students were, beyond her initial statement that they were wearing engineering bomber jackets.” He said campus security sent out all its normal notifications, and along with the Faculty of Applied Science, has sent out e-mails describing the incident, and asking anyone from the Queen’s community with more information to come forward.

The Nov. 14 incident—which occurred on University Avenue in the middle of the afternoon—comes after Frances Henry released a report in March 2006 detailing a “culture of whiteness” that alienated faculty at Queen’s.

“This is still a climate in which members of minority cultures feel unsafe,” said human rights adviser Stephanie Simpson. “Racism on campus is very real.” Barrington Walker, the University’s newly appointed diversity advisor, said systematic racism exists at Queen’s.

“This doesn’t mean that everybody is personally involved,” he said. “There just may well be a climate where Queen’s culture allows a silence about these sorts of things.”

—Evan Wexler

All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.

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