Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993 TAG: 9305020136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA LENGTH: Medium
Jacobowitz, 18, stands charged with racial harassment under the school's speech code. If upheld, that could carry sanctions ranging from a warning to expulsion, although Penn officials and experts in black culture said in interviews that "water buffalo" has no history as a racial epithet. The case is to be heard by a student-faculty panel.
Jacobowitz's cause is being championed by critics of speech codes and "political correctness" on campuses and by the Jewish press. He is an orthodox Jew.
University President Sheldon Hackney, President Clinton's choice to head the National Endowment for the Humanities and a supporter of the school's speech code, has come under heavy fire for refusing to intervene in the case.
"I'm quite sympathetic with Eden Jacobowitz," Hackney said, "but I thought it was much better to let the process work. Our process is set up so that people who feel wronged, whatever the alleged wrong, can bring a complaint and have it adjudicated."
The case is the second recent instance of racial tension at Penn to receive national attention. Two weeks ago, black undergraduates confiscated 14,000 copies of the student newspaper to protest alleged racism - in particular, writings of a columnist viewed as hostile to blacks.
Jacobowitz's case began as five black sorority members stomped and yelled outside his dorm as part of an initiation ritual. Many students hollered epithets, some of them racial. The women, incensed, summoned university police. Only Jacobowitz admitted yelling.
He said in an interview and told a university investigator that he meant nothing racial. Born in Israel and educated at Jewish schools, he said he was thinking of the Yiddish term, "behema," translated as "water oxen" and used as slang for "fool" or "stupid person."
"It's usually used Jew to Jew," Jacobowitz said.
But the investigator, assistant judicial inquiry officer Robin Read, ruled the term was a racial slur. Jacobowitz said she asked whether he was thinking of "a large black animal that lives in Africa." Water buffalo are native to Asia.
Read gave Jacobowitz a choice of leading a racial-sensitivity session and having the charge go in his record, or going to trial before a student-faculty panel. He chose a trial.
Several faculty members and students who asked not to be identified said the women consulted administration staff members who urged them to drop the charges. Elijah Anderson, a Penn sociology professor and authority on African-American language and culture, said he had agreed to testify as an expert witness for Jacobowitz.
The case has drawn little attention among students black or white.
"People are spending all this time trying to figure out whether `water buffalo' is a racial slur," said Martin Dias, a senior and former president of the Black Student Organization. "Black students have a lot of problems in this school. If someone calls me a water buffalo, I give them the finger and walk."
Jacobowitz said his parents have urged him to transfer to Yeshiva University in New York. But he wants to stay at Penn, having chosen it, ironically, because it offered diversity.
"I wanted to experience life, people from different environments, not just Orthodox Jews," he said.
by CNB