The Black Student Union plans to implement a supplemental hotline to help combat the lack of response to the NIU Discrimination Hotline.

The discrimination hotline is ineffective because victims and witnesses are not using the hotline to report incidents, said Larry Bolles, NIU Judicial Office and hotline director.

In an effort to document more cases of discrimination, the BSU is planning another hotline that will provide night service. The current hotline is in service from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

BSU President Chris O’Banner said the BSU hotline might be operating by February. “We’re still trying to get the bugs out,” of the proposed hotline, he said.

Bolles said often racial incidents occur when the NIU hotline is not operating.

More racial incidents might be reported during night hours to the proposed BSU hotline, O’Banner said. Callers might feel more comfortable talking to other students, operating the BSU hotline, O’Banner said.

Bolles said he is aware of many racial incidents that were never officially reported. Many victims do not use the hotline to report racial incidents, despite the relative ease of reporting an incident over the phone, he said.

Many incidents go unreported because the victims think it will not do any good, Bolles said. Witnesses often feel there is no real reward for reporting racial incidents, he said.

“I like the idea of a hotline, but we haven’t seen any significant results,” Bolles said. “Cases reported to the hotline are rarely solved,” but more cases might be solved if there were more callers giving information, he said.

“Bits and pieces” of information from one incident might be added to information from another to determine suspects, he said.

Often victims of discrimination do not call the hotline because the lack of immediate results.

“If a person calls 911, they get a police car, at the very least,” Bolles said. The results of a call to the hotline are less dramatic.

Another problem is many minority students do not think it is “cool” to file a complaint and some students say, “‘I’m OK, no complaints, I won’t file a complaint,'” Bolles said. Such students often plan to take care of incidents themselves, he said.

Since victims rarely report racial incidents, there are few documented cases at NIU, Bolles said. However, this does not mean NIU does not have discrimination problems, he said. This misinformation adds “fuel to the fire” of NIU racial tensions.

In the ongoing problem of NIU racial tension, student integration might be a solution Bolles said. Students need to “intermingle” with different races.

Black students, who often feel like outsiders at NIU, need to be more involved in campus life and socialize with white students, he said.

Blacks from inner-city areas do not integrate with white students because they see NIU as an “unfriendly” suburban campus, Bolles said.

The current hotline is a “cosmetic” solution to the deeper problem of discrimination, he said. The problems at NIU require changes in behaviors, and will not be solved by the hotline, Bolles said.

The hotline began in 1987 after Jesse Jackson was verbally abused coming out of the BSU office, Bolles said.