Hundreds of students at the Claremont Colleges marched in protest and administrators canceled classes at five of the system's campuses Wednesday after vandals attacked a visiting professor's car and painted it with ethnic slurs.
The incident, which police classified as a hate crime, apparently occurred as the professor was speaking at a forum about racial intolerance at Claremont McKenna College on Tuesday night.
Vandals smashed the car's windshield, slashed all four tires, stole more than $1,700 worth of personal property and covered the car with black spray paint, according to police.
On Wednesday, more than 500 students and faculty members held teach-ins across the system's campuses, and some said they feared the colleges were experiencing a series of hate crimes.
"It cannot be passed off as just an attack of violence," said Jaqueline Dubois, a student organizer. "I think people are scared."
The attack is the latest in a string of incidents. Earlier this year, four students stole an 11-foot cross from an art class and set it afire. The next month, a student discovered a racial slur written on a picture of George Washington Carver, a black agricultural scientist.
College administrators have offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the car vandals. A spokeswoman for the FBI said federal agents were helping Claremont police with the investigation.
"This is one of the most serious incidents that I've experienced here in Claremont in my last 26 years," Claremont Police Lt. Stan Vanhorn said. "The car had been viciously vandalized."
The owner, professor Kerri Dunn, has taught social psychology and introductory psychology at Claremont McKenna College for two years. Dunn said she had been outspoken in her classes on the issue of racial intolerance, and she suspected that the vandalism might have been committed by one of her students or a friend of the student.
"I definitely believe I was targeted. I was speaking out, and one of the things they wrote on my car was 'shut up,' " Dunn said. The instructor said she was raised Catholic and had been converting to Judaism, and that one of the slurs on her car was anti-Semitic.
"How else would they believe I was Jewish unless they were in my class?" she asked.
Dunn said the attack might have been prompted by her comments in class Monday, when she urged students to speak out against earlier racial incidents. "I kind of got on a soapbox and asked what was wrong with them," Dunn said.
