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One week after Washington State University’s Week Without Violence celebration, the Pullman community was shocked by four attacks against Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender individuals whose incidents were separated by days.
On Oct. 16, Kristopher Shultz, WSU junior, was walking home for a book when he said he heard someone shout at him. The moment he turned around, his face was met with a fist, followed by kicks in his side.
The next thing he said he remembered was waking up at 4:30 a.m. in the comfort of his home. Later that day, he went to Student Health, filed a police report and received CAT scans at the hospital. Shultz said he had worn a skirt to campus the day prior to the assault, which received some negative comments from students. He speculated that this was the motivation behind the attack.
Two days later, another individual perceived to be a member of the GLBT community was assaulted by a group of individuals wearing Halloween masks on College Hill in Pullman.
At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jackson Hogan, junior, was attacked in a campus-parking garage while walking to the elevator.
“A guy passed, I said a quick ‘hi’ and kept walking,” Hogan said. “Then he turned and started kicking and beating me.”
Hogan went to the Women’s Transit Office where a police officer was called in and a report was filed.
Shultz said when he went into Student Health, he was told he was the fifth person to come in that week after an assault.
Earlier, on Oct. 12, a student’s door had been vandalized with anti-gay slur much like the Sept. 29 incident on the University of Idaho campus.
These assaults followed WSU’s Pride Week and Week Without Violence, two weeks in which the GLBT community was very visible.
The GLBT student group at WSU met on Tuesday and Wednesday with school administrators and campus police to discuss the situation.
“We’ve been meeting with various campus administrators, but the students felt like they were unheard,” said Nikki Hahn, WSU’s GLBT president. “The administration wasn’t taking things seriously and students felt betrayed.”
Wednesday, Hahn met with WSU President Elson Floyd, who said he would give a public statement on the issue by the end of
the week.
“It’s ridiculous, the kind of lack of response and knowledge on campus about these attacks,” she said. “Information isn’t out there yet and it’s unacceptable.”
Hahn said all the attacks were based on the perceived identities of the victims — because three of the victims being transgender — and find this scary.
Neither Shultz nor Hogan dare to walk anywhere alone now, they said.
In response, the WSU student Senate passed a resolution to condemn these acts as hate crimes thus serving as a “call to action.”
The administration has been careful with the use of language and reluctant to call the crimes hate crimes, Hahn said.
“We had an entire Pride Week of events, followed by Week Without Violence and we were very visible as a queer community,” Hahn said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Jackson said the community will not be silent about these incidents and they plan to act.
“We are here, there’s a very large queer community in Pullman and Moscow,” he said.
Shultz said, the actions aren’t going to be tolerated and the appropriate action will be taken.
The sudden nature of attacks left the victims unable to identify the perpetrators. For now, the GLBT group at WSU plans to hold self-defense classes that are GLBT oriented and raise awareness, Hahn said.
“Personally I am pissed off and afraid – I think that is the general consensus of this group,” said Co-Chair of the UI Gay-Straight-Alliance P.J. Berger.
Berger said the UI GSA should become more active and urge the administration to have something in place in case an assault happens on the
Moscow campus.
“We are outraged as a community,” said Co-chair Tara Gene Malmquist. “Whether it happens at UI or WSU, it affects us the same … We stand together unanimously with WSU and we won’t stop bringing attention to this until it is dealt with on
both campuses.”
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