THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 30, 1995 TAG: 9510300063
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ASHLAND, VA. LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
Students at Randolph-Macon College awoke Sunday morning to find fliers bearing the telephone number of a Ku Klux Klan hotline tacked to utility poles, on windshields and blowing around the campus.
Ashland police arrested two men about 11:40 p.m. Saturday. One was charged with posting bills on utility poles in violation of a local ordinance, a misdemeanor, and the other faces a misdemeanor concealed weapons charge.
The identities of the men arrested were not immediately available.
Lt. William Martin said he saw a man get out of a car and tack one of the fliers to a utility pole. Martin said that when he pulled the men over, he found documents featuring a KKK letterhead in their car.
A Sandston phone number on the flier is for an answering machine with a rambling, 3 1/2-minute message from ``the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.''
The man's voice asks callers if they are tired of a series of issues he labeled ``anti-white, anti-Christian and anti-American,'' then gave an address for the organization. The message also urged callers to ``fight back'' and do their ``duty'' by voting.
The appearance of the fliers came not long after the private school and some members of its student body of about 1,100 clashed over the display of a Confederate flag.
Randolph-Macon spokeswoman Linda Evans said a student displayed the flag in late September at a tailgate party before a home football game. Some people who attended the game were offended, she said.
``The college asked him to take that into consideration,'' Evans said, ``and some students got a little bit upset.''
In subsequent weeks, several similar flags appeared in dormitory windows.
Evans said she didn't know if the controversy over the flags was connected to the distribution of the fliers early Sunday.
``The college's position is and always has been that students have every right to fly the Confederate flag,'' she said. ``We really just wanted to make the student aware that there were some complaints and he had offended some people.'' by CNB