“You don’t have to be beaten up to feel pain,” Marine said to the crowd.
Margaret C.D. Barusch ’06, co-chair of BGLTSA, said the organization often receives hate messages via e-mail. Barusch read out loud some of the last lines of the hate mail, which included, “Stay the fuck off my campus,” and “You are sick, we will crush you like the little bugs you are.”
After the rally, BGLTSA co-chair Jordan B. Woods ’06 said that the large turnout indicated the strength of the Harvard community’s reaction against last week’s hate crime.
“I think that the basic sentiment on campus is that hate crimes affect everyone,” Woods said.
Class Marshal Sheria D. Smith ’05 said the student body as a whole should be reacting to the event.
“Hate crimes against all groups should be treated the same by the administration,” Smith said, adding that homophobic slurs are as offensive as racial slurs such as “nigger” or “kyke.”
Several administrators spoke at the event to share their reaction to Friday’s incident.
Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II said the incident was “an awful crime” and served as a “reminder that there’s a lot of work to be done.”
After the rally, McLoughlin stressed the College’s commitment to taking the issue of homophobia seriously.
“We are not sweeping this out under the rug,” he said, adding that the administration will work with students on more rallies if they are interested.
Students from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School were also present at the rally with signs showing support for the BGLT community.
Tanene Allison, a student at the Kennedy School of Government, read a poem at the rally that she had written in reaction to the incident.
“Our lovin’ at times is too much for them,” she recited.
About 25 participants at the rally carried signs and chanted en route to the location of Friday’s incident, on Bow Street near the Harvard Lampoon, to “take back” the scene of the assault and hold a moment of silence.
—Staff writer Liz C. Goodwin can be reached at goodwin@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Victoria Kim can be reached at vkim@fas.harvard.edu.