Vandalism Unifies Linked but Distinct Colleges in the Battle Against Hatred

Pitzer is known for its liberal activism. Claremont McKenna has been a breeding ground for political conservatives aiming at the high reaches of government and business.

Scripps, a women's college, specializes in languages, music and the arts. Heavily male Harvey Mudd focuses on science, math and engineering.

Pomona, the oldest of the undergraduate schools, is also the most prestigious. It was rated the fourth-best liberal arts college in the country in the most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings.

But the varied group -- which also includes two graduate institutions and has 7,500 students overall -- has been pushed in recent days to find common ground in the face of a crisis.

In an unusual step, the five undergraduate campuses were closed Wednesday after a visiting professor's car, in what police classified as a hate crime, was spray-painted with ethnic slurs and had its windshield smashed and tires slashed the night before.

The professor, Kerri Dunn, a white woman who is converting from Catholicism to Judaism, spoke Tuesday night before at a forum at Claremont McKenna on racial intolerance.

Sensitivities were raised earlier this year by other incidents. In January, four students stole an 11-foot cross from a dormitory courtyard at Pomona and set it afire at Harvey Mudd. Last month, a student discovered a racial slur written on a picture of George Washington Carver, the black agricultural scientist, at a Claremont McKenna dorm.

Students and faculty said the events were particularly unsettling because the vast majority of undergraduate students live on campus, close together.

"You fear that someone who is violent and underground is living in your midst, not in an off-campus residence," said John Seery, a professor of politics at Pomona who has written extensively about liberal arts colleges.

Seery said the degree of tension was new at the campuses, but that "issues of inclusion and race and gender and sexuality have always been hot-button issues and contested and passionate. We've been struggling with these issues a good time, to varying degrees of success and failure, but there was something extraordinary about this last incident."