Administrators worried about minorities in History Department

Administrators close to two black graduate assistants involved with the recent debate over a history professor's use of an article some say is "inflammatory" and "racist" say the History Department has created an environment unfit for minorities.

The department, which is in the process of picking new leadership unrelated to the debate, will have to overcome the divisions created by the recent uproar as well as prove that graduate assistants can be protected from professors, administrators said.

Seymour Bryson, associate chancellor for Diversity, said two of professor Jonathan Bean's teaching assistants came to him for help after Bean asked then to pass out a handout they called racially charged. Bryson said the department has left these two students no choice but to continue learning in an environment that has no protection for minority students.

He said the students have been left out of the debate because professors are more concerned with the "sacred cows" of higher education - academic freedom and responsibility.

"What is going to happen at the end of this journey?" Bryson asked. "The professors will be taken care of, but what about those students?" The Rev. Joseph Brown, chairman of the Black American Studies program, asked both of the teaching assistants not to talk to the media because they would be thrust into the center of a debate where they would be the targets.

Professors have said the teaching assistants initially took offense to an article about a series of killings in the San Francisco Bay area called the Zebra Killings used in Bean's entry-level American history course. For the past month, the History Department has been trying to sort out the details of an incident involving Bean's use of an article taken from frontpagemagazine.com about the Zebra Killings. The article details the 1970s murders where, according to the article, there were 71 cross-racial murders.

A 1981 Supreme Court ruling about the Zebra Killings states, "Between December 1973 and April 1974, 12 persons were murdered and six others were wounded," a direct contradiction to the article. The article also calls the murders a "set of serial killings" that was carried out systematically by a group of blacks. The court called the killings a "series of vicious random killings."

The assistants have received e-mailed articles from anonymous people from a Web site called majoritynews.com. The Web site displays a picture of Hitler hoisting the flag of Nazi Germany above his head. The article called the teaching assistants "a couple of African ingrate two-bit associates who have done little in their lives."

The debate appeared to be coming to an end on Tuesday when, according to Bean, the College of Liberal Arts dean sent Bean a draft of a letter clearing him of any wrongdoing. But Brown said the issue runs much deeper than just Bean's choice of handout. He said the department now has to overcome a public airing of its dirty laundry and prove it cares about its minority students.

"This has turned into the academic version of civil wars in Africa," Brown said. "It seems like it's never ending." Amy Sileven, outgoing president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council, said in the eight years she has been on campus, there has been no issue as important to graduate assistants' rights as this. "They are in effect whistle blowers," Sileven said.

She said the issue has pushed graduate students one step closer to unionization. A few days before the issue became public, the Illinois Education Association had an informational meeting about forming a graduate student union. "This is the best catalyst for unionization that has been on campus in the past eight years I have been at SIUC," Sileven said.