Incidents of bias and hate on the Syracuse University campus aren’t tracked as well as they should be. That’s why The Daily Orange is joining ProPublica’s Documenting Hate project to track down these untold stories, and we need your help to tell them.
In recent years, SU has seen a white cultural club pursuing university recognition, a soccer player shouting racial slurs on camera and 20 percent of respondents to a 2016 campus climate survey report experiencing discrimination. In its annual security report released in October, SU’s Division of Campus Safety and Emergency Services reported the second-highest number of hate or bias crimes in 2016 among peer institutions. SU’s five on-campus cases included incidents motivated by race, sexual orientation and religion.
Still, many hate crimes go unrecognized and unreported. While FBI data reveals between 5,000-10,000 hate crimes occur in the United States each year, an annual survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates there could be as many as 250,000.
The FBI defines hate crimes as “criminal offenses motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” New York has its own hate crime law, and SU offers students a place to report bias-related incidents.
University community members can report an instance of bias or hate directly through SU’s Department of Public Safety or STOP Bias reporting system. But with Documenting Hate, The D.O. hopes to record the personal accounts of students, staff and faculty who have witnessed or been affected by these incidents at SU or the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
If you’ve experienced or witnessed an incident of hate or bias, please share your story with The D.O. below. A D.O. reporter may then follow up with you for more details to the extent you are comfortable sharing them. Your response won’t be shared with the university.
News organizations and civil rights groups nationwide have already joined ProPublica on this project. As hate crimes continue to surge across the U.S., we’re ready to tell SU community members’ stories, too.
The post Bias and hate crimes happen at Syracuse University. Help The D.O. track them by telling us your story. appeared first on The Daily Orange - The Independent Student Newspaper of Syracuse, New York.
