A student’s dorm room door was defaced with “derogatory and hateful” slurs targeting their racial and gender identities on Thursday night, according to an all-campus email sent by President Maud S. Mandel on Monday.
“We remind everyone on campus that it is a significant violation of Williams’ non-discrimination policies and code of conduct to target another member of our community in this way,” Mandel wrote. “Any individual found responsible for such behaviors will be held accountable through our disciplinary processes and procedures.”
Campus Safety Services (CSS) is currently investigating the incident, Director of CSS Jeff Palmer wrote in a Tuesday email to the Record. “We have met with some of the individuals who were directly impacted to help provide support and resources,” Palmer noted.
The Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (OIDEI) is working with CSS on the investigation, and a member of the OIDEI team met, on Thursday, with the student who was targeted, according to Vice President for Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leticia S.E. Haynes ’99.
“OIDEI is deeply concerned about what transpired and is involved in working to ensure the safety of those harmed and to facilitate critical conversations within the community,” Haynes wrote in an email to the Record. “Since [Thursday], several other members of the [OIDEI] team have been in direct contact with the individual to offer support and have also facilitated conversations with members of the community about this harmful incident.”
“Residents of the space [in which the incident occurred] and other community members report being deeply affected by this incident,” Mandel wrote in her all-campus email. She directed those seeking support to reach out to OIDEI, the Davis Center, Integrative Wellbeing Services, the Chaplains’ Office, or the Office of the Dean of the College.
Mandel also asked anyone with information that may help identify those responsible for the incident to contact Palmer or Assistant Vice President for Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Title IX Coordinator Toya Camacho.
