Last week, Student Affairs and Elena Bernal, Vice President for Diversity and Achievement, released a Hate Crime Response Policy—a year and a half after the hate crime on campus occurred, spurring the need for an institutionalized policy.

While we are excited that progress is being made towards defining and responding to hate crimes, the lengthy wait after the inciting event and the miscommunication from the administration regarding the document is frustrating. While it remains unclear why prompt action was not taken directly following the events of spring 2008, it is certainly disappointing that Grinnell students have had to wait so long for a policy to be implemented.

On top of this, insufficient information regarding the state of the document, and the means by which Grinnell College students could respond to the document further an aggravated an already incensed community.

Given the administration amended their previous five-day deadline, we are pleased that students are being offered an opportunity to consistently look at the policy and make changes as necessary but nonetheless this miscommunication could have been avoided.

We hope in the future that the administration will make their policy-making procedure more transparent and accessible to the Grinnell College community.