Racial Tensions Rising at
Cornell University

by
Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - 1/29/2002 - (ACN) The Cornell Review, a conservative right wing publication at Cornell University, is predicting a possible "race war" on campus. The prediction is the aftermath of two racial incidents that occurred at the university over the weekend. The first was the cowardly attempted lynching of a Mexican-American first year female student by 6 to 7 bat wielding white thugs and the second was the Gestapo type treatment of a popular president of a Latino fraternity by the campus police and the Ithaca City Police Department. The Cornell Review, notorious for its race-baiting approach to its editorials, has noted the Black student community's support for the two victims of Mexican descent by stating, "In the coming weeks, there will likely be a silent struggle inside of Ujamaa (Black student organization) between the moderates concerned about the civil liberties of all students and the radical black nationalists who want to start a campus race war over this incident."

La Voz de Aztlan has previously reported on the two racially motivated incidents that took place this past Sunday. The first was the early morning police raid on a Latino fraternity house in which its president was peppered sprayed, drag out across the yard and hauled off to jail and the other was the chasing of a young Mexican-American female student and her companion through the campus by what she describes as "a group of 6 or 7 white males " that got "out of their pickup and paced quickly behind us with bats in hand, continuously blurting out things that do not need to be repeated." It now appears that both incidents are related. On the evening of Sunday, there had been a meeting of minority students to discuss the assault on the Latino fraternity house which had been announced throughout the day. It looks like a "group of white thugs" armed themselves with bats and set out into the evening to "terrorize" students of Mexican descent who were either going to the meeting or coming back from it and they came across the first year student from Chicago and her companion. Who these "white thugs" are, is still to be determined. They may be students, or worst, they may be "undercover" members of the police who want to silence the student victims and their supporters. Cornell University has a history of involvement with COINTELPRO and many of its graduates have taken part in the training of counter-insurgency "death squads" in Central and South America. One thing for sure, La Voz de Aztlan's investigation has uncovered wide spread fear among minority students of the police. The female student was also afraid to report her ordeal to the university administration. The administration did not know of the chasing incident until we started asking questions, or so they tell us.

This situation is presently a "powder keg" that needs very careful resolution. Tomorrow Wednesday, students are holding a "Solidarity Rally" to, according to a Latina student, "BOLDLY ASSERT OUR HUMANITY AND DEMAND RESPECT". Chicano, Mexican-American, Black, Arab-American, Asian and American-Indian students are tired of the now old and false university slogan "Open Doors, Open Hearts, Open Minds" that is much repeated as propaganda by the administration. They have changed the slogan to, "NO MORE BOLTED DOORS, BROKEN HEARTS AND CLOSED MINDS". The administration must address the persistent institutional racism at Cornell University. The eyes of the Mexican-American community are now focused on this "Ivy League" institution of higher learning to see how it is going to resolve this problem.