Safety and Security and the Hanover Police Department are combining their efforts in their search for the person who wrote a series of racial slurs on the door of a room occupied by two Asian students on the first floor of Little Hall.
College Proctor Bob McEwen, who said he is heavily involved in the investigation, said the racial slurs were written "sometime either late Sunday night or early Monday morning," and that the two victims, Jon Jun '98 and Michael Yoo '98, reported the incident to Safety and Security early Monday afternoon.
Jun said the racial slurs included a variety of derogatory phrases, including "chink" and "bastard."
The racial slurs were written on the door itself and on the victims' name tags which were taped to the door, McEwen said.
Pat Murray '98, the Undergraduate Advisor on the first floor of Little, said he hung the name tags on all the doors on the floor at the beginning of the year to identify the inhabitants of each room on the floor. This labeling is a common practice in UGA groups.
"They wrote on [the paper], they wrote on the door itself," McEwen said. "There's quite a bit all up and down the door."
Yoo said the graffiti was on a "very visible portion of the door."
McEwen said the racial slurs were written with a magic marker the investigators believe was taken by the perpetrators off of Murray's door.
Jun said the slurs were written with a green marker, and Murray confirmed he had a message board and a green dry-erase marker, which could have been used to write the graffiti.
Yoo said he was extremely angry when he discovered the racial slurs.
"This is something that really pisses me off," he said. "When it's been happening to you all your life, and when you come to college, especially Dartmouth College, you don't expect that to happen to you."
Murray said Jun and Yoo will relocate to another room on campus, and Yoo confirmed he and Jun were "moving out."
Jun said the decision to move out was made yesterday afternoon and was "basically a spontaneous thing.""Our moving out should not be interpreted as retreating," he said. "We just don't want to have to deal with this anymore. But we're not afraid to confront whoever has done this."
"I felt very much offended and annoyed, but not intimidated," Jun added.
Chris Chambers, the Area Director for the west side of campus, spoke to Yoo, who Chambers said was "very upset."
"I think right now he's feeling very upset and unsafe ... and we're doing the best we can to accommodate his needs," Chambers said.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton noted the irony of the incidents occurring on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
"It is sadly ironic that this kind of behavior could occur at about the time that Dartmouth College and the rest of the nation was engaged in contemplating a message of love and humanity taught to us by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.," Pelton said.
McEwen said Safety and Security and Hanover Police are "really deep into the investigation."
"We've done a number of interviews and we're still interviewing people to gather as much information as we can," McEwen said.
Pelton said the College will assist in the investigation.
"The College ... will do all that it can do to identify the individuals who were responsible for this behavior and take appropriate actions," he said.
