By Grace Tesoro, Staff Writer
The Susquehanna community is still processing an incident regarding a racial slur on social media in past weeks by a Susquehanna student.
Although the slur was not directed toward any individual, the incident was reported immediately and an email from SGA was sent out to the Susquehanna community to make students and staff aware of the situation.
Susan Lantz, vice president of student life explained the process behind reporting an incident such as this one.
“There’s two separate policies that are helpful here. First is an anti-harassment policy as well as a bias response policy. Any time a student feels that there is an incident of bias they can report it and it goes directly to Dena Salerno, the Dean for Student Diversity and Inclusion,” Lantz said.
Once an incident is reported, Salerno oversees the report and makes an executive decision on the best way to respond.
Lantz noted, “If there was a violation of the code of conduct, it goes directly to the dean of students who is our conduct officer and the dean of students would then formulate a charge and go through the code of conduct system to make a determination if the student was responsible and then what sanctions would be appropriate.”
In this specific situation, Salerno pointed out that there was no official bias report completed by a student.
“There were students who were talking about it, so I asked Amy Davis to submit an official report because she overheard it.”
Salerno said that she is a proponent of an educational response in an incident like this.
“We have more of an educational response since it would not rise to a level of conduct violation. As offensive and horrible as the language that was used is, it does fall under protected speech.”
Salerno described this situation as tricky since the slur was not directed toward any individual, therefore, it could not fall into categories such as harassment or hate speech. The educational response is Salerno’s next move, where she tries to meet with the respondent of the incident report.
“Something similar happened like this last year, there was a real willingness of the student who used this indecent language to attend BSU [black student union] meetings and offer a formal apology.”
Lantz agreed with the steps Salerno took to address the situation last year, stating that the student was receptive of the education and that Salerno’s conversations with him had a huge impact on his personal thought.
“So that is our hope, when we respond, we want to talk about community impact. It does affect the student’s future behavior,” Lantz said.
In regards to moving forward from this situation, Salerno stated, “Dr. Lantz is going to be sending a proactive messaging around social media and the use of certain words.”
Lantz and Salerno both emphasized the importance of a unified community and creating a space of intolerance when it comes to using this kind of language as a preventative measure to keep it from happening again.
“To say, ‘No, this is not happening here with me,’ that kind of pressure on people is what is most effective,” Salerno said.
Lantz offered more information on how to properly access a bias incident report. The bias incident report can be found on mySU under the student safety section on the home page. Once completed, this form is directly sent to Salerno, who will then decide the proper approach. Lantz stated that there is a 48 hour turn around.
“The person who reports, is engage[d] in the process immediately and would always know what’s happening,” she said.
According to Lantz, Salerno completes a report on each of the bias responses at the end of each semester. This information can also be found on mySU so that members of the community can look at these reports to see what the incident was and how it was handled.
“I think that might give people some education that we do things and the responses are varied depending [on the case],” Lantz said.