A day after racially threatening letters prompted the evacuation of black and Latino students from Trinity International University, some returned Friday to the Bannockburn campus under heavy security.
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The events–triggered by a series of three anonymous letters to minority students, all written on notebook paper apparently in the same handwriting–shook the normally quiet Christian school.
“It was terrible,” said Myleson Collins, an African-American student who was at an assembly Thursday where school officials broke the news of the letters and outlined the evacuation.
“I saw students crying. I didn’t know what was going on. I was just praying,” he said. “We got segregated real quick. It felt like the 1960s with Martin Luther King. They didn’t tell us where we were going.”
Collins, a senior from Chicago, said the latest letter was sent to a friend of his, a black female student who told him what it said. The letter said that the writer had seen the student in church and that she was `lucky’ because `I forgot to put bullets in my gun,'” Collins said.
School officials had called a meeting Monday to alert minority students about the first two letters, which contained racial slurs and hate messages aimed at black and Hispanic students, Collins said. But when the third letter suggested violence, officials took the more drastic action of urging the evacuation.
Dozens of black and Latino students went home or stayed with faculty members, while the school sequestered 43 others in an undisclosed location.
“When the third letter came to the attention of the administration [Thursday], we decided to act with the utmost precaution to ensure the safety of our students,” said university spokesman Gary Cantwell. “Trinity has an emergency response plan that was quickly put into place.”
Some whites, who said they feared a repeat of the Columbine or Minnesota school shootings, also left.
The notes were delivered through the in-house campus mail service, officials said. There are two drop boxes on campus, one in the student center and one in the main mail center, students said.
Chief Kevin Tracz of the Bannockburn Police Department said, “I’m hoping it’s a prank and nothing more of a serious nature.”
University security and Bannockburn police kept up a highly visible presence on the tree-lined campus, as students scurried to class through rain and gloom.
“A lot of us are angry that people would [make threats],” said Kim, a white senior in her 30s who declined to give her last name. “It was really sad as we helped our friends get ready to go. That’s what makes it hit home.”
The Christian liberal arts school at 2065 Half Day Rd. has 1,000 undergraduates and more than 2,000 graduate students. About 74 percent of the undergraduates are white, 13 percent are African-American, 3 percent are Asian/Pacific Islander, 4 percent are Hispanic and 6 percent are other, officials said.
The decision to evacuate was announced around 4:30 p.m. Thursday after the third letter was discovered, Collins said.
School officials told all minority students to gather in the recreation center, where they were told what was happening, Collins said.
“It was really terrifying,” he said. “I don’t want to go back.
“As we left the recreation center, all the white kids were looking at you, and some of them were crying,” Collins said. “It hurt so much for the first time I cried.”
William Washington, senior vice president of student affairs and dean of students for Trinity, said he spent Thursday night off campus with the evacuated students, discussing the letters.
“I would describe the attitude of our students as upbeat, appreciative and eager for things to get back to normal and return to campus,” he said in a statement.
Parent Debby Reilly of McHenry said her son, Chad, a freshman, 19, arrived home Thursday night with three teammates on the varsity basketball team. All four are white.
Reilly said she was happy school officials took the threats seriously.
“My son’s friends are from all different backgrounds. They all get along great,” she said.
But she shared his concerns and supported his decision to come home.
Another of the players, sophomore Brady Grundmeier, 19, said past events influenced their decision to leave.
“It’s really weird,” Grundmeier said. “With Columbine and the Oklahoma bombing [both happening in April] and what just happened in Minnesota, you just can’t brush anything off.”
At a news conference on campus, the president of the student body said the threat “outrages us personally and as a community.”
“In general, students feel very safe,” said Steven Wilson, a senior from Cincinnati. “They are excited to get the other students back on campus. This is very out of character for our community.”
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Watson Jones, a black student who was among those evacuated Thursday night, did not attend classes Friday. He said that although his classmates were not letting the situation get them down, “we felt threatened. We were afraid.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson said he met Friday at an undisclosed nearby church with some students, professors and parents who are black and Latino.
“It’s not just the black students that are targeted here, but the entire campus,” Jackson said. “There’s nothing about this school, or any place, that makes it safe from violence. People of faith must have courage in the face of these threats.”
The FBI is working on the investigation with university officials and Bannockburn police to determine if a violation of federal civil hate-crimes laws had occurred, authorities said.
“We do have agents on campus today conducting an investigation,” Ross Rice, a special agent and spokesman for the Chicago office of the FBI, said Friday.
Rice said no one had been arrested or charged as of early Friday.
Although unprecedented for Trinity, hate crimes on college campuses are not rare, said Mark Potok, a hate-crimes specialist at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit group that studies civil rights issues.
“As shocking as this might seem, hate crime incidents on college campuses are really very common,” Potok said.
Potok said many college students aren’t accustomed to interacting with people different from themselves.
“You very often on campus get kids who are coming out of culturally and racially homogeneous places, and really having their first interaction with people quite different from them,” he said.
Several white students at Trinity said the threats brought to life a division no one wants.
Lauren Poierier, 20, a sophomore, said it felt weird to walk around Friday on the largely empty campus.
“It makes me feel sad that the minorities have to go through this and feel unwanted,” she said.
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