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CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) — The acting leader of Southern Illinois University pledged Tuesday to ensure the campus remains "free from racism and intimidation," one day after hundreds of students conducted an anti-racism rally.
In a letter to students, faculty and staff members, interim Chancellor Brad Colwell outlined broad goals, but many of the specifics appeared to fall short of the demands voiced by protesters one week before final exams.
"Clearly, we have much work to do to build understanding and respect," Colwell said in the letter.
The Carbondale march was conceived as a one-day strike to call attention to mounting student debt and the state budget stalemate's impact on public higher education in Illinois.
But the protest broadened after the public release of an anonymous video that called for the lynching of black students. The video's online release via YouTube — which later removed it for violating the company's policies on hate speech — drew condemnation from university leaders. Late last week they countered with their own video response urging the campus community to fight discrimination.
That followed a black student's complaint that student supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used a racial slur and said black students should "go back to Africa" at a recent Carbondale campus residence hall forum. Also in April, someone drew a swastika on a residence hall chalkboard next to a message to "Build That Wall," an apparent reference to Trump's calls to curtail illegal immigration from Mexico.
"African-American students here have always felt accepted but not welcome," said Donald Chamberlain, a graduate social work student who also received his undergraduate degree from the school. "You can no longer put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound."
Among the demands sought by Chamberlain and other protests was mandatory diversity training for first-year students, similar to required classes on preventing sexual assault. Colwell's letter outlines plans to "explore training options" but doesn't explicitly endorse the protesters' preference.
The interim chancellor also pledged changes to the employee hiring process such as mandatory training for search committee members "to ensure that they are aware of their responsibilities for seeking and hiring qualified candidates from a range of backgrounds." A review of the student conduct code's prohibitions on discrimination and intimidation is also underway.
A university history notes that the school's first class in 1869 included two black students, with minority students currently accounting for nearly one-third of undergraduates at the 17,000-student campus.
But senior Tyler Davis, editor-in-chief of the Daily Egyptian campus newspaper, said that like on many campuses, groups of black and white students alike tend to self-segregate outside of the classroom.
"You get a lot of big clumps of students who never interact with other races unless they have to," said Davis, who is biracial. "Equality can't be legislated. Racial acceptance isn't top-down."
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