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The Rice Thresher
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by LIORA DANAN THRESHER EDITORIAL STAFF Racist fliers created by a neo-Nazi group were distributed on car windshields in campus parking lots Sunday. Students and others parked in the Brown College, Jones College and Allen Center/Cohen House Lots found the anti-black propaganda, from the group National Alliance, on their windshields. According to Lt. Terry Ryals, Campus Police removed many of the fliers after students notified them. The Black Students' Association and Amnesty International are coordinating activities to protest the fliers. Brown senior Laurie Silverberg, who parked in the Brown commuter lot around noon, said she was one of the students who notified the Campus Police. "Even though they may have their right to free speech, I personally don't want their message on campus and I think most Rice students would agree with me that such a message does a lot of harm," Silverberg said. "I was just furious when I saw it, and I removed all the fliers at Brown." One flier was headlined, "Don't Have Sex With Blacks: Avoid AIDS!" and listed three black "sexual predators" who, according to the flier, had lied about being HIV-positive and had sex with "dozens of white women." Another flier included a photograph of a white woman and girl and described in greater detail the beliefs of the National Alliance, the West Virginia-based group that created the fliers. Both fliers listed a local phone number and Web address. "The message to me is hogwash," Assistant Dean of Multicultural Affairs Cathi Clack said. "I don't even like to get into the specifics of what they said because it's just a bunch of garbage." Sid Richardson College junior Krista Brookhart found a flier on her car, which was parked in the Allen Center/Cohen House Lot, around 9:30 a.m. Sunday. "Pretty much we were just disgusted," Brookhart said. "We also felt sort of violated that someone can come on our campus and put some sort of hate material up like that on our property." Ryals said university policy prohibits anyone leaving solicitations on cars regardless of their content. "Even if it were a restaurant here in Houston putting out fliers, we would react the same way," he said. Ryals said trespassers found on campus are issued a criminal trespass warning and are subject to arrest if Campus Police catch them again. "We'd advise anybody that if they wanted to put any type of flier anywhere on campus ... they would need to go through the President's Office," Ryals said. Laila Hlass, a Hanszen College junior, found the fliers with Brook-hart. "When I first saw it, I was just really shocked that there was a group in Houston that's distributing something that's just blatantly racist and hateful," Hlass said. BSA and Amnesty plan to post fliers expressing concern for the "overall racial climate in the surrounding community," Will Rice College senior Andrea Hinckson said. Students will also distribute ribbons and hope to organize a walk- out/teach-in. "We can come together and show our disappointment, our dismay against pervasive ignorance and intolerance," Hinckson said. According to the organization's Web site, members of the National Alliance believe that, "What we must have ... is a thorough rooting out of Semitic and other non-Aryan values and customs everywhere." The site continues, "After the sickness of 'multiculturalism,' which is destroying America, Britain and every other Aryan nation in which it is being promoted, has been swept away, we must again have a racially clean area of the earth for the further development of our people." The National Alliance was founded by William L. Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. The novel, first published in 1978, is about white supremacists who blow up FBI headquarters using a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil. The novel also gives detailed instructions on how to construct a bomb similar to the one used in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995. Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the bombing, was carrying a page photocopied from the book when he was arrested after the bombing. - back - |
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