Hate crime investigation at UCSC have students concerned

Nearly a month later and there are still a lot of questions about the way UC Santa Cruz handled a fight on campus which students call a hate crime.

Santos De La Paz is senior at UC Santa Cruz and says he never expected that in a tolerant place like Santa Cruz, a fellow classmate would be beaten up because of his sexual orientation.
“When one member of the queer community is attacked we are all attacked,” said de la Paz.

What was more upsetting to de la Paz were articles in various school papers and the UC Santa Cruz police report after the incident last month. He says they were written very vaguely, making the incident seem like just any old fight between a couple of guys, “We had to speak with our friends and kind of get the one on one on what really happened and it clearly wasn’t a fight.”

Administrators say during the fight four people were injured. UCSC Police made two arrest, one was a student.
The fight took place near the Kresge Apartments and now de la Paz is asking the administration to take preventable measures on something he says was a hate crime.

Chancellor George Blumenthal says the campus is investigation the recent assault as a possible hate crime.

“Well it’s very unfortunate and we’re concerned about it. It makes us ask what can be done?” said oublic information officer Guy Lasnier.

De la Paz says the school has a lot of resources like counselors for therapy but not so much prevention.

“Plan workshops for people on queer transgender, non-conforming information, they exist and this is information on them. They are not people you should fear because you don’t understand,” explains de la Paz.

Now de la Paz has helped gather 1,700 signatures on a petition requesting the university hire a professional staff person that is trained to deal with trans issues.