Timing of U. Of Iowa’s Alert to Students of a Possible Hate Crime Fuels Racial Tensions
Monday night the Iowa City Police Department received a report from a black University of Iowa student who said he had been attacked in a potential hate crime outside an off-campus bar. Three days later the university sent to students a campus-crime alert by email and text. That response followed standard crime-alert protocol, but it incited fierce criticism from students who viewed the reaction as unacceptably delayed. Those students say the slow-arriving alert has highlighted greater problems of race relations and inclusion on a campus where some African-American students have already said they feel misunderstood.