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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us May 28, 2005 Vigil calls attention to hateful SOU events Scores stand on the Plaza after cloudburst to show support for threatened sexual minorities By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings Danielle Mancuso , director of the Queer Resource Center at Southern Oregon University, speaks at the Friday night vigil on the Plaza. Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings A retired Ashland couple joined more than 70 Southern Oregon University students and staff, local elected officials and concerned residents at a rally and vigil at the Plaza to focus the community’s attention on multiple incidents of hate at the university in the past month. “Smarten up folks!” Cherie Garland told the crowd. “These are our kids. If we don’t love them, who’s going to love them?” Cherie and her husband, Gerald Garland, came to the 8 p.m. event at the Plaza to show solidarity and encourage others to support those who have been victimized by a series of fliers found on campus threatening two students and the homosexual community in general. The fliers, which first appeared on May 9, have escalated from gay-baiting to violent threats this week. The Garlands’ two adult children — a son and a daughter — are both homosexual and the parents have been involved with PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) for years. “We knew we had to be here because this is the issue we feel most strongly about,” Cherie Garland said later. “I just couldn’t believe would happen in our perfect little city.” Busy day The rally and vigil cap a day spent addressing the hate activities at the university, which began with an alleged incident of intimidation against a Roger Wert, a 19-year-old male SOU student, in the early morning hours of April 30. State Sen. Alan Bates , right, D-Ashland, and his wife, Holly Easton, attended the vigil Friday. Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings A slate of 15 local leaders brought the situation to the public Friday morning at an SOU press conference. Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland, Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, and Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, joined SOU President Elizabeth Zinser, Ashland Mayor John Morrison, Ashland Police Department Master Sgt. Teresa Selby and other university staff and students to discuss the issue. University officials held informal discussions with students in the Stevenson Union Friday afternoon and the Abdill-Ellis Lambda Community Center organized the evening event downtown. “It’s all about beginning,” Zinser said Friday evening. “We’ve got a lot of really good momentum and a lot of really strong commitments from the community.” Zinser said she hoped this would be inspire openness and communication throughout the campus and the community. Others share her aspirations. “We simply have to improve the lines of communication and the press releases,” Ashland City Councilor Kate Jackson said to the crowd, explaining she only found out about the situation at SOU Friday morning. “... the threats and the sense of fear — it’s something I just didn’t realize was happening at this level on this campus.” “The reality is, it’s gone on for 19 days,” Pam Ogren, a student advocate with the Queer Resource Center at SOU, said Friday night. Ogren said the campus has taken steps to deal with the hate issues on campus prior to Friday, but wanted to see more support from university administration. QRC advocacy work has increased 200 percent since the hate incidents began, according to Ogren. “Many promises were made and I’m trying to be optimistic,” Ogren said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The university has laid out a series of steps to educate the campus community, will encourage SOU employees and students to take an ally training course and will commission a campus climate assessment committee. “We have Zinser’s ear ... Everything’s happening because of her,” said Wert, who is the president pro-tem of the student senate and was heavily involved in linking the campus with local leaders to address the incidents of hate. “I really feel that their involvement has added energy to change. We’ve been so reinvigorated.” Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. 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