Here's the objectives of the recently reconstituted Hate Crimes Commission:

Identifying safety concerns and issues.

Updating the Student Code of Conduct to specifically address hate-related incidents.

Creating a comprehensive system for reporting and responding to harassment and hate-related incidents.

Formally evaluating the current climate on campus, encouraging dialogue to improve understanding.

Encouraging awareness, education and outreach, including enhancing opportunities for dialogue to improve understanding of the root causes of hate and bias.

What's missing? Addressing the ties between lax campus security and an understaffed police force and Hate Crimes. Hate Crimes are crimes first, after all.

Of course, many of the members of this Committee have already made an ideological committment to the idea that police either make worse or actually cause Hate Crimes. The Hate Crimes group started in the Spring primarily through the urging of upset Jewish students was quickly captured by Progressives and BAMN members. It still has all that, but now it's huge and unwieldy.

An honest assessment of Hate Crimes would start with the understanding that most are perpetrated by off-campus people. The Swastikas... the attack on the Sikh student last Spring... all these are probably caused by non-students. So who cares about an 'open dialogue?' I've never seen any evidence that these dialogues lead to anything but screaming matches and feeling pissed off. And are any of the people attending these dialogues the same ones scrawling swastikas? Not likely. 'I hate those Zionazis... but lets see what they have to say.'

The 'updating of the Student Conduct Code' should also be sending off warning bells in ACLU-minded types. This could easily turn into Stalinist Speech Codes, where anything 'contributing to negativity' is banned and the right to prosecute people for free speech is enshrined. I had hoped American campuses had gotten beyond that.

Real combat of Hate Crimes would require the recruitment of more police, more lighting, and better response times. Especially since most of these incidents are done in the dead of night when there's no lights around, or by outside people who run in, do something awful, and run off again. There's really no way for Cal students to combat that except by good security. Besides, we need more security protection anyway.
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