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.