Reana Dixon, valedictorian of her class, came to UND last year from Devils Lake. She is half African-American and half Caucasian and had just won a Special Award from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for a paper she had written [ Identification of Molecular Markers Linked to Morphological Mutant Traits in Barley Reanna Colleen Dixon, 18, Turtle Mountain Community High School, Belcourt, North Dakota].

During her first semester at UND, Reana was walking down University Avenue and was in front of the International Center, when a car full of White boys drove by, opened the passenger window and threw a bag of garbage all over her. This was not paper garbage, but organic rotting garbage with things in it like coffee grounds and eggshells. The boys in the car began screaming "Nigger" at her and one yelled for her, "Leave our UND campus Nigger and go back to where you came from".The car sped off.

During Reana's second semester a worse and scarier incident happened. Reana was taking a ceramics class. All of the students in class were to take the pieces they made for the day and put it on a big tray to dry overnight. There was no way to tell whose pieces were whose. Reana put her pieces on the tray with everyone else and the next day, someone had carved the word "Nigger" into each of her pieces. Reana was shocked and terrified. As there was no way of telling which pieces were hers randomly, this meant that the person who did this had been watching her!

Reana reported this to her professor immediately and meetings at UND were arranged, the final one being with UND President Charles (Chuck) Kupchella."He didn't even look me in the eyes once in the whole meeting" says Reana. I felt like he did not care."

Reana has since baked these pieces and intends to show them as they now are. "They are still art to me, just new art" she says.

[postscript: Reana, feeling threatened on campus and feeling as if she had no recourse, left and found a new University to attend fall of 2001.]

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