To the Pitzer Community

Pitzer Community members and friends:

I greet you today with sadness and with anger. Last night a hate crime occurred on a Claremont College campus that affects us all — that attacks our educational mission and our personal sense of safety-and is meant to intimidate and instill fear. A Claremont McKenna College faculty member's car was attacked. The tires were slashed, the windows broken, and racial, sexist and anti-Semitic slogans were spray painted on the car. This is a vicious, hateful crime that I believe was designed to destroy the very heart of our community. They will not succeed. The individuals who did this and the perpetrators of other acts over the past few weeks are cowards who are attempting to instill fear and hate, and they will not succeed.

I asked you all to come together today because we must as a community express our collective disgust over the pattern of actions that have occurred, to express our unity as a community, and to demand for the consortium to take collective action. Although these recent incidents did not take place at Pitzer College, we are a Consortium College member, and therefore we have been deeply affected. The issue for me is not whether these acts happened next door, or if they happened in another state. I argue today that because they happened next door, it is particularly our responsibility to reexamine our mission as a consortium so that we can be sure that we are constructively engaging in a critical examination of society and history. If we do not act now, these acts will continue to
happen, and our nation's tragic legacy of racism, group hatred, sexism, anti-Semitism, discrimination, and oppression will continue.

We must open communication lines among our Colleges, but more important than the structure of communication is its content. I call on my sister college presidents to meet with me to create a consortium plan of action for the future. What message do we as a consortium want to communicate to current and future students? What consortial educational initiatives can we undertake so that all entering students clearly understand our institutional values? What do we all need to do in terms of personal responsibility and
introspection so that we continually challenge institutional structures and improve them for the betterment of future generations and ourselves? We have had plenty of warning that the time for action is now. I met this morning with student leaders, some of whom will speak, and they had concrete ideas for addressing these hate issues beyond the usual teach-ins and
panels. They want Pitzer to take the lead in addressing these issues through our academic program in an explicit way. This is our institutional and consortial agenda, and I vow to you that I am committed to working with you and the Consortium presidents. The people who commit these kinds of acts will not be tolerated and will not succeed.

Given by President Laura Skandera Trombley, March 10, 2004.

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