“One of my main issues with this university is it’s always been hands-off,” Blake says. The students “are the government of the school, we’re not going to do anything, you control it.”

“We have what is called student self-governance,” spokeswoman Wood says. “Students are very involved in any discussion about what is happening in their community.”

Blake says the university must be more proactive in expanding the ability of disciplinary bodies to investigate and punish hate crimes.

“You deal with it, it’s your job to make me feel safe,” Blake says of the university. “And if you ask me, you’re doing a horrible job at it.”

THE HOMEFRONT

Here at Harvard, students were cautiously optimistic that the incidents will generate increased awareness on the issues of race and discrimation.

“The curse is that [the incidents] happened and the implications are psychological for the students there, black and white,” says Lawrence E. Adjah ’06, the former president of the Black Students Association. “The gift of it all is that it spurred conversation and dialogue and made people confront the issue of race.”

While racial incidents have not happened here, that does not mean bigotry is absent, cautions Kwame Owusu-Kesse ’06, the former president of the Black Men’s Forum.

“While I do not believe such blatant acts would take place on our campus, I do believe other, more subtle forms of racism and prejudice can and do exist here,” Owusu-Kesse writes in an e-mail. “We, as a community, need to recognize that we do not live in a colorblind society and we must continue to educate ourselves and each other on race issues.”

—Staff writer David Zhou can be reached at dzhou@fas.harvard.edu.