Senseless Beating at Morehouse

[ClassyLady]

College beating stirs up concerns
Morehouse sophomore charged in bat attack
By PAUL DONSKY
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer


A Morehouse College sophomore is charged with beating another student on the head with a baseball bat last week after the victim allegedly looked at him in the shower.

The victim was hit several times in the head during the Nov. 3 attack, which occurred in a dormitory bathroom, school officials said. The student, whose skull was fractured, is in the Morehouse infirmary after being released from Atlanta Medical Center Wednesday, said Eddie Gaffney, Morehouse's dean of student services.

The beating victim is recovering and doing well, Gaffney said.
Sophomore Aaron Price was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. Morehouse officials say Price has been expelled. He was released from Fulton County Jail on Nov. 4 after posting $10,000 bond.

The case has rocked the Atlanta University Center, the cluster of private, historically black colleges that includes Morehouse. Some gay and lesbian students believe the beating may be a hate crime.

Authorities could not say what the victim's sexual orientation is, whether that was relevant to the incident or whether the confrontation may have been the result of some other misunderstanding.

Some students at Morehouse, an all-male college, say they can understand what might have motivated his attacker.
"A lot of people believe that he deserved to get beaten up if he was looking in the shower stall," said sophomore Mubarak Guy, who described himself as a friend of Price. "But everyone thinks the bat was a little extreme. . . . Nobody deserves to get beaten with a bat." Guy said students are "very wary" of any action that could be misconstrued as a gay overture.

Erin Edwards, a sophomore at nearby Spelman College and a member of the school's lesbian club, said the attack has exposed what she called Morehouse's homophobia.

"It just hurts to know that there are people capable of doing something like that over something so trivial," she said. "I mean, we're all different."

School officials say the case is still under investigation and that it's too soon to say if it was a hate crime.

"Irrespective of motivation, Morehouse has a zero tolerance policy of any act of aggression," said Gaffney, the college dean.
Gaffney said Morehouse police are cooperating with the Atlanta police in investigating the incident. But Atlanta police spokesman Sgt. John Quigley said the department is not involved in the case.
Morehouse refused to provide the Journal-Constitution a copy of the arrest report, and details were sketchy. According to a brief incident report, the beating victim told campus police he was attacked as he prepared for a shower in the first-floor bathroom at Brazeal Hall, a dorm for upperclassmen. Students said Price turned himself in the next day after speaking with his father, a Chicago minister.

The victim, a music student at Morehouse, is a member of the college glee club.

News of the beating has spread to Atlanta's gay and lesbian community. About 15 people from several groups met last weekend to discuss the case, said Craig Washington, executive director of the Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Center.

"People are appalled, and I think people are concerned that this could happen at the jewel of black academia: Morehouse," he said.

Cathy Renna, spokeswoman for GLAAD, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said vicious on-campus attacks are rare. "We generally get calls about things like hateful e-mails or grafitti on dorm walls," she said. "It sounds like yet another version of the gay panic, a feeling from a heterosexual student that someone made a pass, whether or not that was the case," she said.

-- Staff writer Patti Ghezzi contributed to this report.

[AKA2D '91]

I guess these acts of violence are not limited to Greeks.

[Blackwatch]

As a former "Man of Morehouse", I heard the ridicule from some of my friends back home and some other students (men) in the AUC about the fact that we were a men's school. "Why would you want to be around a bunch of dudes all day?" "Must be a whole lotta gays at 'Da House'?" etc. I know the nervous tension that some Men of Morehouse may have concerning the homosexual students there. With that being said, I think that we as a black community need to rise up and face the facts, homosexuals are part of the black community, period . Being homosexual does not make you not black. With all the talk about "strong Men keep comming through "Da 'House" and " the Morehouse Mystique" and over "125 years of tradition of producing leaders", Morehouse specifically and the black community in general must address the issue of homosexuality in our community honestly and realistically.

The fear is that any attention paid to the homosexuals in our community would be construed as affirming homosexuality, which is not the case. We cannot sit back and condone black on black crime in the name of not condoning homosexuality. I believe the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong, but I also believe the Bible when it says love you neighbor as you love yourself. I have homosexual "neighbors", as well as drug addicted "neighbors", pimps, prostitutes, thieves, liars, covetors, etc. ad infinitem who are my "neighbors". No one seems to target them for abuse of this nature, so what is it about homosexuality that warrents this type of reaction from us? Protecting the homosexual's right to not get beat over the head while in college has nothing to do with condoning homosexuality. We as black folk should understand oppression, so let's not oppress our homosexual brothers and/or our lesbian sisters.

There is something to be said about so called "flaming homosexuals" or people who are unashamedly homosexual. As I understand it, from sources on campus, the victim was looking for his "partner" in a shower stall in the dorm. So he was going through the stalls, opening them. He opened the wrong one and the man who was taking the shower told him to leave and closed the shower curtain back. Either the victim reopened the shower stall or prevented the alledged perpetrator (AP) from closing it completely, continuing to look at the AP. This made the AP upset, because the victim is a known homosexual who is "out" so to speak. Now, there have been several instances in the past on Morehouse's campus concerning a homosexual club's attempt to get school sanctioning and funding and student backlash against it. The atmosphere is not easy for the homosexual student at Morehouse. With this in mind, people need to take it upon themselves to be as cautious as possible. If it is 2am in Mississippi, and I am the only black man on the road, and the white cops pull me over, I ain't gonna yell "Death to the Conferderacy, I glad you Great granpapi got ran into the Mississippi River by some Yanks!!!!! " Even though that maybe how I feel, I recognize the atmosphere and the context. I will humble myself for the sake of self preservation, recognizing that these guys can kill me in so many ways. It's wrong, but that would not be the best way to fight it, nor change the situation. You are dealing with fragile, young, egotistical men who are constantly fearing for and trying to establish some sense of Manhood. Sexuality is a big part of that manhood ideal, so any question as to their sexuality many times will cause that fear to reveal itself in ugly ways. BY NO MEANS SHOULD THE VICTIM IN THIS CASE HAVE ENDED UP WITH A FRACTURED SKULL, nor am I saying that the violence was justified on any level, I am just saying that self preservation has to be a value in this instance. Looking at a man in the shower, repeatedly, against his wishes, in a situation like at Morehouse College, was not the smartest move on behalf of the victim's part. Am I blaming the victim, of course not, but he should try his best to avoid situations like these that are highly preventable.

The struggle for civil rights in the black community taught us so many lessons, one of which was humility. That is what I see missing sometimes with our homosexual brothers and sisters. Understand at this point in human history, many people do not like homosexuality, and many homosexuals sometimes flaunt their sexuality in those very people's faces, which I think was the situation here. If you think that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, that is your choice. But understand that there are people who find it wrong on many levels, so those are not the people you want to flaunt it in front of, if your goal to to be included in the same struggle for civil rights that those same people are fighting for. Yes, we in the black community need enlightenment about this issue, but flaunting homosexuality is not the way to enlighten many of us. Honest dialogue and mutual respect will, I think, get us there quicker. The black community needs to accept the homosexuals that are within our midst, and the homosexuals in our midsts need to accept some humility in order to see the day when all of their rights are fully protected as well.

Blackwatch!!!!!!

[nikki1920]

Well said!!

[KnowledgeEternal]

As a current "Man of Morehouse", I don't think we should be so quick to call any crime against a gay person a hate crime just like every crime against a black person by a white person is not racially motivated. Their are many factors that have not been reported and only the two people involved know the true story.

The story that I heard from the RAs at Brazeal is that the attacker(Price) was showering when the other guy(Love) looked into his stall. Price basically cussed him out and in a nutshell told him to mind his f*cking business. Love said he thought that Price was his roommate and apologized;b ut he didn't close the curtain and kept looking in. Price left the bathroom and went to his room. He came back with a bat, supposedly to threaten Love(mind you that Love is around 6'2" and Price is about 5'4"). When he came in the bathroom with the bat, Love rushed at him and Price hit him with the bat multiple times.

That is the basic story that I got from most of the RAs and residents over there. So basically there are two sides to everything.

Personally, I would have been very upset(read: pissed) if old boy pulled that mess with ME when I was in the shower; but I don't condone hitting anyone with a bat.

I do think that homophobia is a major issue on campus that many students and, to an extent, the administration don't want to deal with. In fact, The SGA tried to hold a discussion about it yesterday and the school cancelled the event and cut the SGA from having ANY events. The administration took away the voice of the students because they did not want homophobia and violence discussed on campus. Anyone else see a problem with that?