By Lauren Dalban and Brielle Entzminger
A string of racist crimes at the University of Virginia this fall has sparked fear among Black students, and sowed further distrust between the student body and UVA administration.
It started on September 7, when someone placed a noose—a weapon used to lynch Black people for centuries—around the neck of the Homer statue on Central Grounds. The next day, the University Police Department classified the incident as a hate crime due to the noose’s history as a violent white supremacist symbol, and, the following day, released security footage images of the suspect.
On October 25, the UPD announced that law enforcement had charged and arrested Shane Dennis, an Albemarle County resident, in connection with the hate crime. The Albemarle County Police Department arrested Dennis—who was charged with violating a state code that prohibits displaying a noose “on the property of another [or] other public place with intent to intimidate”—on October 24. The UPD also served Dennis, who has no known prior relationship with the university, a No Trespass Order, prohibiting him from entering UVA Grounds in the future. He is currently being held without bond at Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Police also suspect Dennis is responsible for leaving two masks, a “civil peace flag,” a Christian cross, and a sealed envelope containing a letter near the Homer statue on October 22. According to The Cavalier Daily, the letter claimed the statue “glorifies pedophilia.”
“We are all so blinded by hatred and racial division [that we] refuse to see the truth that is hidden in plain sight,” read the letter, which did not contain any racial or religious references. “If you live in reality you will see an old man with a nude adolescent boy in between his legs.”
On October 14, the UPD received a report that the n-word and another version of the slur had been spray painted across a sidewalk at 14th Street NW and John Street. The Charlottesville Police Department and UPD are both investigating the incident.
Because no federal statutes exclusively categorize hate speech as a hate crime, police have not classified the graffiti incident as a hate crime.
In the weeks following the discovery of the noose, student groups learned that the crime’s perpetrator, who appeared to be a white male, left documents at the foot of the Homer statue. Last month, UPD confirmed that the perpetrator had left items behind at the Homer statue, but provided no further details. In response, The Cavalier Daily published an open letter signed by “Black UVA” on September 17, calling the administration’s silence an “explicit [act] of collusion against the safety and well-being of Black students,” and listing a string of demands, including “full transparency regarding the letters released in connection with the noose” and “a significant financial contribution from [President Jim] Ryan’s Virginia Fund … to help remedy the emotional toll that campus racism has on the Black students.”
On September 22, UVA Executive Vice President Jennifer Wagner and UPD Chief Tim Longo sent an email revealing that one of the documents left at the statue contained the words “TICK TOCK.” Wagner and Longo claimed that releasing this information earlier would have compromised “the integrity of the investigation,” but assured the community that “nothing recovered at the scene conveys a specific threat to public safety.”
“Being able to denounce things—like [the Office of African American Affairs] being vandalized—early and consistently and urgently are important because I think when we let those things go without commenting on them as a university that it emboldens people to continue these acts,” said Ceci Cain, a UVA fourth-year, and a member of the University Student Council and of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.
Two other incidents, initially suspected to be racially motivated crimes, also occurred at UVA this fall. In September, a flag depicting an owl and a check for $888.88, which community members feared represented a white supremacist organization, were left at the school’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers—however, the UPD and FBI determined the items had been left by a UVA alumnus as a philanthropic act. And in August, someone threw rocks through one of the OAAA’s windows, but the perpetrator, who has been charged with vandalism, was determined by UVA to be “a student … who was motivated by factors unrelated to racial bias.”
Still, some students continue to lack faith in UVA’s responses to acts of racism. A student who saw the racist graffiti earlier this month, before it was reported to police, “alerted his peers to avoid involving the police,” reports The Daily Progress.
“When we see increased policing, we not only see heightened fear and anxiety and interactions of police with Black students, but also with community members,” Cain says. “I think those things are really concerning.”