By Kara Augustine
Late Friday afternoon, an e-mail message marked ‘urgent’ was sent to students from President James Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willihnganz. The e-mail was addressing a stabbing incident of campus.
According to the e-mail, around 5 a.m. on Friday April 10, a black male student was dropping off a female at a residence hall. The male then was involved in an altercation with four white males (which included two students). Between West Hall and the Phi Tau fraternity house, the altercation turned into a fist fight between the black student and a white non-student. The female who had been dropped off then returned to the scene and allegedly stabbed the white non-student several times. The stab wounds were non-life threatening and the white male was taken to the hospital.
According to John Drees, Vice President of Communications and Marketing, Montequa Jackson was arrested and charged with first degree assault.
“It upsets me that university students are to blame for this incident,” Freshman psychology major Meghan Rouse stated. “We students should be working as a community to make the campus a safer place. Occurrences like this only make it more difficult for the university to increase the sense of and the actual security.”
Although the cause of the incident is still being investigated, the e-mail made a point to describe the involved persons’ ethnicities.
The e-mail stated, “As a university, we must continue to work together to build an atmosphere of respect and trust. We must not participate in or allow hatred and violence within our community.”
On Saturday, sophomore Jermaine Stafford, who says he was involved with the incident, along with community leader Christopher 2X, held a press conference in hope to “diffuse” the situation on campus.
Drees explained that the university was not aware the press conference was going to take place.
According to the e-mail, the University of Louisville is reacting to the incident in several ways.
First, the university police are investigating the incident, which still continues. They are trying to determine what crimes were committed. Witnesses have been interviewed.
Second, leaders from Student Affairs and from the Cultural Center are meeting with students and student groups that may have an interest in the incident.
According to Drees, the university tried to assemble these meetings as soon as they could on Friday afternoon. Involved organizations included student leaders from the Association of Black Students, Student Government Association and Residential Student Association.
According to Drees, these meetings with student leaders were for several reasons.
“[We wanted to] make sure students had the facts as we knew them at the time,” Drees said. We also wanted to find out if students had any info we didn’t have. Finally, we wanted to reassure the university was taking it seriously and investigating it on several different fronts.”
Students have varying reactions when it comes to this incident.
Savannah Pittman, freshman biology and nursing double major stated, “It is unfortunate that this happened, but I’m not really worried about my safety on campus. It sounded like the people were already fighting and it wasn’t just a random act.”
“I think it is very sad that violence has become a reality when it doesn’t need to be,” said freshman biology major Kat Navaro.
The e-mail stated, “We want to reassure you that student safety is a priority at the University of Louisville. We are taking this matter very seriously, and we will address this through our police department and through the student disciplinary process.”
