Hate crimes, a growing phenomena on college campuses across the country, have surfaced at NIU.

Hate letters and racist fliers were sent to NIU student organizations such as the Black Student Union (BSU) and BROTHERS.

BSU President Chris O’Banner said hate mail he and BROTHERS Acting President Michael Bonds receive is related to controversial events on campus, such as black Muslim Leader Louis Farrakhan’s NIU visit on Jan. 30.

“We get letters at the BSU that correspond to issues in The Northern Star,” he said.

Judicial Office Director Larry Bolles said hate crimes “can be just about anything, but it is the motivation of the perpetrator you must look at.”

ate crimes usually involve violence or intimidation directed toward a person or group of people and can be of an ethnic nature, Bolles said.

One letter sent from Marietta, Ga., offered to send the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in response to Farrakhan’s visit, O’Banner said.

Theresa Brown, president of NIU’s Gay/Lesbian Union said the GLU has not “really had trouble” with hate mail or crimes.

Brown said the GLU receives occasional “prank” phone calls in which students give other students’ names and phone numbers.

However, O’Banner said there has always been a problem with racist fliers and newspapers, such as The Truth at Last, on campus. Racist fliers appear on campus at least once a year, he said.

Copies of The Truth at Last were illegally inserted into some issues of the Star in January.

O’Banner said the last flier found on campus was a “White Power” flier that some students found in their residence hall mailboxes last semester.

Some students receiving the fliers say nothing because they are afraid for themselves or fear nothing will be done about it, O’Banner said.

Bonds said BSU and BROTHERS might not even see the fliers unless someone reports them to the police or tells BSU or BROTHERS members.

“The problem you get into is the problem of free speech. No matter how obnoxious it is, it’s probably protected,” said NIU Legal Counsel George Shur.

“No one at the dorms’ front desk ever sees” the fliers or papers, yet, somehow it ends up in mailboxes, Bonds said.

James Brunson, Grant Towers Area Coordinator and Jim Rooney, Stevenson Towers Area Coordinator, said they did not know of any racist fliers in the residence halls.

Bonds and O’Banner said copies of the racist newspaper Thunderbolt were found at apartment buildings, fraternity houses and the residence halls, but do not know who sent them.

O’Banner said the people who distribute racist fliers and newspapers are “all over campus, all over DeKalb, but nobody ever catches them.”