Trinity Students Return

Minority students at Trinity International University in Illinois returned to classes on Monday, a week after 43 of the evangelical college’s black and Latino students were evacuated to a hotel in response to threatening racist letters sent through the campus mail. Last week, after three students — two black and one Latino — received letters containing increasingly violent threats and all sent within the anniversary dates of the Columbine school shooting, Hitler’s birth and the Oklahoma City bombing, the school urged 200 of its 300 minority students to leave their dormitories. Jesse Jackson met with the letter-recipients last Friday, and praised the school’s record on race and its response to the threats with student support services and added security, and upon the evacuated students’ return, many of their classmates wore yellow T-shirts from an African-American event last winter as a show of solidarity. Update: The Chicago Tribune reports on the strange conclusion of this case, with the arrest of an African-American female Trinity student who allegedly sent the letters because she was unhappy at the school and wished to convince her parents that it was a dangerous environment. The unidentified woman has been charged with disorderly conduct and committing a hate crime.