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UK's racial views challenged
Human-rights panel is on campus today

By Nancy C. Rodriguez
nrodriguez@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is joining the outcry over a racially charged cartoon published Oct. 5 in the University of Kentucky student newspaper.

In a meeting on the UK campus, the commission's board is expected to pass a resolution today that calls on UK's administration to clarify its "position on racially offensive publications" and to "vigorously" investigate an incident in which a threatening message including racial slurs was scrawled on the dorm room door of an African-American student.

"Sometimes we hold meetings in locations where there has been unrest, or where there have been issues of concern that relate to civil rights," John Johnson, the commission's executive director, said through a spokeswoman.

The commission is the state agency charged with enforcing the state's civil-rights laws and investigating discrimination complaints. UK President Lee Todd is expected to speak at the meeting, according to university officials.

UK senior Christopher Harper, president of the Black Student Union, said many students are still upset over the cartoon and the reported dorm room hate crime in the days after its publication.

Harper said he and others feel university leaders "are trying to brush the whole situation under the rug."

"And that's not acceptable. That's why so many students are still on fire," he said.

Harper said Todd is supposed to meet with student organizations to discuss diversity on campus, but a date has yet to be set for that meeting. Johnson sent a letter to Todd last week expressing concern over the cartoon and the racial tensions on campus that followed its publication.

This week Johnson sent a second letter to Todd, in which he offered the commission's assistance to the university, including providing diversity and multicultural training.

Law student Brad Fletcher drew the cartoon depicting a black man, bare-chested on a slave auction block. His left leg was bound by a chain. A white auctioneer refers to the "slave" as a "young buck," while taking bids from three fictitious fraternities whose names indicate that they are racist: Aryan Omega; Kappa Kappa Kappa (KKK); and Alpha Caucasian.

Keith Smiley, editor of the UK student newspaper, the Kernel, apologized for the cartoon. The opinion page editor resigned after Smiley declined to run a column defending the cartoon.