Sometime last Thursday night, 34 members of the Grinnell College queer community received anti-queer letters, according to Stephen Briscoe, director of Security. The letters came one day after a rally responding to a bias-motivated crime in a South Campus hall.
Printed on the inside of each letter in large bold font were slurs and epithets, many including gender-specific, anti-queer attacks matching the gender of the recipients. Among the slurs were "Fear God, not Fags" and "You can't stop us fag--go and get some pussy." Most of those sent letters were in the campus queer community, although some were not active.
While Briscoe said that security cannot currently say who may have sent the letters, he suspected the perpetrators are part of the college community. "I think it was someone on campus, to be honest," Briscoe said.
Sheree Andrews, associate dean and director of Student Life, said whoever sent the letters likely had information about the queer community. "It was clearly somebody who had access to a directory and it was somebody who was on campus or could come on campus," said Andrews. "It was someone who knew who was associated the LGBTQ community."
Briscoe said that security could not yet say whether the incident is connected to last weekend's anti-queer vandalism but that they are pursuing a number of leads. Both Briscoe and Assistant Director of Security Russ Motta said that they are currently talking to Vantus Bank about reviewing the surveillance camera for the bank's ATM in the post office and have also looked at electronic records to see who used the post office's P-card reader that night.
According to Thomas Bateman '10, who received one of the letters, recipients were contacted by Interim Vice President of Student Affairs Elena Bernal who then set up a meeting to discuss the mailings. "She wanted to make sure we were okay and find out what we wanted to do about it," Bateman said.
Not all the students were completely comfortable with the meeting. Jose Segebre Salazar '09 was somewhat disturbed that the e-mail's list of recipients was not hidden, meaning they had been distributed to individuals outside of security. "If you want to talk about it, that's fine," he said. "But just the fact that there's a compiled list that's gone outside of police record--it's kind of scary."
In an all-campus e-mail, President Russell K. Osgood expressed anger at the continued acts of intolerance. "We are very saddened and angered by what has happened. Those who engaged in these cowardly acts will find no solace in our community," Osgood wrote.
The centerpiece of the campus response was a meeting in JRC 101 with an apparent attendance of nearly 300 students, faculty and staff. Bernal and Johanna Meehan, Philosophy, delivered opening remarks emphasizing that the message of the gathering was one of community and love, not one of hate.
After the opening discussion, organizers unveiled the gathering's primary activity--love mail. Attendees took advantage of crates of paper and art supplies to make love letters for their friends and peers. "In response to the hate mail, the most beautiful thing we've come up with is love mail," Bernal said.
Again emphasizing the positive responses to the anti-queer acts, Bernal also said that the letters revealed some sense of desperation. "Because last night was so powerful," Bernal said, "the response back from folks who did not want to see that happen, who are living with this latent anger ... had to come back just as hard as what happened the other night [with the rally and march]."
Some students, like Segebre, felt that the magnitude of the response to both the vandalism and mailings incidents lent them too much legitimacy and impact. "We should not give them so much currency as to disrupt our personal lives," he said.
After an all-campus forum in the Stonewall Resource Center (SRC) on Tuesday, many of the 34 students spoke at an event in JRC 101 on Wednesday. Many students expressed their anxiety and new fears about being on Grinnell's campus. Afterwards, audience members wrote questions on index cards, which the students took turns answering.
While Andrews said she was upset by the mailings, she reiterated the importance of responding in a positive manner. "We want to go into a very positive vein with this," she said.
Bernal emphasized college services as a means of coping with the events. She urged students to take advantage of resources in the Mental Health Center, Student Services and their friends. "Everybody's waiting to throw their arms around their brothers and sisters at Grinnell in support," she said.
Bernal also categorically rejected the notion that the incidents mean that Grinnell College is not a safe and accepting community. "If this wasn't an accepting community," Bernal said, "you wouldn't have the hundreds of people ... within a few hours of an e-mail."
--additional reporting by David H. Montgomery
