Racial Incidents

A Columbia man was found not criminally responsible because of his mental condition yesterday for racially harassing two boys in his neighborhood last fall.Jeffrey Clayton Stanley, who is white, was referred to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for an evaluation to determine the type of treatment he should receive for his condition.Mr. Stanley, 33, of the 6200 block of Copper Sky in the Owen Brown village, is accused of shouting racial slurs at two black youths, ages 12 and 13, as he charged toward them while they played basketball near his home on Oct. 27."

During the past school year in Howard County, official recorded almost 90 incidents of racial conflict and other forms of intolerance in a nine-week period.That's good news.Tracking and dealing with those incidents -- not their number -- is evidence that the school system is making progress in how it handles racial incidents, said local and state officials.A year ago, no one kept track of the number of racial and other hate-related incidents occurring on school grounds. Students who hollered racial epithets or scrawled them on walls drew little reaction from principals and teachers.

Like most professions that are specialized, education constantly uses strange and bureaucratic words to describe the simplest things.For the outsider, this "language" can be confusing and frustrating. In most cases, for example, a word such as "create" is always better than "formulate" or "institute," but the professional educator typically opts for the latter.Once and a while, however, a technical phrase comes along that does seem appropriate. Case in point is the phrase "signal incidents," which is currently in the vernacular of the Howard County public school system.

The newest member of the county's Human Rights Commission wants to reduce prejudice in schools and increase tolerance among students.Shamim Sinnar, a 17-year-old Wilde Lake High School senior, starts her position this week as the commission's first student representative. She has all the privileges of being a commissioner, except that she may not vote in the commission's decisions."I want to improve communication so students do know I am the commissioner," she said. "Since the commission has no ties with the school system, I want them to know that they can come to me with concerns outside of the schools as well."

As the county schools' new human relations coordinator, Jacqueline Brown is responsible for achieving the schools' top goal this year: improving the human relations climate.It's a task she believes that she is more than ready to tackle."It's a matter of hitting the ground triple-running," she said of her new responsibilities that encompass a greater vigilance of hate-bias incidents.Before joining Howard County schools, Ms. Brown was an associate professor of counseling psychology at Bowie State University.

The county Human Rights Commission is eager for a public hearing on the way local school officials respond to racial incidents. So eager, in fact, that the commission will staff and pay for a hearing if the state will hold one here.The local commission has no authority over the school system, but the State Commission on Human Relations does. Earlier this month, the state commission issued a 68-page draft report accusing the school system of taking a "head in the sand" approach to racial incidents.

The Maryland Commission on Human Relations, which had considered scheduling a public hearing on the handling of racial incidents in the Howard County schools, decided yesterday that it will solicit only written comments as it prepares a final report.The decision came during a commission meeting in Baltimore attended by Superintendent Michael E. Hickey and school board Vice Chairman Dana F. Hanna. The commission last month released a draft report criticizing the schools for adopting a "head in the sand" approach to hate and bias incidents.

A Bowie State University professor has been named the school system's new human relations coordinator, a redefined job that entails greater vigilance of hate-bias incidents.Jacqueline F. Brown, associate professor of counseling psychology in the university's Adler-Dreikurs Institute of Human Relations, will start Sept. 14.The announcement follows the Aug. 18 release of a Maryland Commission on Human Relations report, which criticized Howard County schools for taking a "head in the sand" approach to dealing with racial incidents.

The Maryland Commission on Human Relations says Howard County schools have taken a "head in the sand" approach to dealing with racial incidents, and claims some problems have been ignored because principals and teachers are uncomfortable dealing with them.A 68-page draft report, released Tuesday, follows a four-month study into the schools' handling of racial, religious and ethnic intolerance. The study is the most extensive the commission has made of a school system. It was begun at the request of the county Human Rights Commission after a series of hate-bias incidents on school grounds.

Vandals defaced four schools and businesses with racial epithets in Howard County in a series of hate incidents over the weekend.The incidents are the most recent to occur in a county whose reputation for racial harmony has been tarnished by a string of such events recently.Since the beginning of this year, police have recorded more than 25 hate incidents. There were 53 racial, religious and ethnic incidents reported last year. The incidents range from a fight involving racial slurs at Glenelg High School to mailing of hate literature to graffiti on school walls.