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In an effort to help announce their new meeting
times and to help recruit students to their club,
Project Pride, Shoreline’s LGBTQ&A (See sidebar)
club representatives, Adam Rost and Matthew
Hicks made posters and placed them on different
bulletin boards on campus.
The next morning, they found that most of the
posters had been torn down for no apparent reason.
If this would have been the first such occurrence,
that would be one thing. Unfortunately, a
similar event happened at the end of last quarter
as well.
The first incident occurred in early December
when the Psychology Club and Project Pride joined
forces to run a toy drive for kids. The posters were
torn down and the toys that had been donated were
stolen. A complaint was logged with campus security
who have stepped up vigilance, but there is yet
no suspects to the theft.
In a phone interview about the second incident
with one of Project Pride’s advisors, Brooke
Zimmers (the other being Rachel David) said,
“They (the students) got a good response from both
campus security and Andrea Rye, Vice President of
Student Services. They (the students), worked as a
group to decided what to do next, we (the advisors)
made sure that security was notified.”
As soon as campus security were informed about
the second incident, all security officers were informed
and emails were sent out to ask for an increase
in vigilance and to report any unusual activity around the bulletin boards.
“We are taking this very seriously but
without knowing who is doing it, there
isn’t much that can be done unfortunately,”
said Sergeant Becky Gibler of
Campus Security. “We are very concerned
because incidents like this, when left unchecked
can easily grow and turn into
‘hate crimes.’”
The tearing down of the posters is considered
to be a “biased incident” rather
than a “hate crime” because there was no
injury to anyone or damage to property.
According to Sgt. Gibler, when “vandalism”
is added to a “bias incident,” it then
becomes a “hate crime.”
“We must rely on both the staff and the
students to keep a watchful eye,” said
Gibler.
There is so far no suspect in either
incident.
If you have any information regarding
the disappearance of the Project Pride
Posters, contact Campus Security at (206)
546-4633 or better yet, drop by their the
Security offices in Room 5102 of the FOSS
building, next to the bookstore.
What is Project Pride?
It’s the Gay, Lesbian, Transsexual, Queer & Allies club on campus.
Their goals are to support and promote tolerance, understanding, hope and encouragement to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, queer or questioning peoples and their allies.
Meetings are every Friday at 12:45 p.m. in Room 2946.
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