Letter from Gerhard Casper
to Stanford community regarding racist email
Saturday morning of Memorial Day
weekend a racist and otherwise highly offensive e-mail
was sent to Stanford addresses attacking Stanford
students identified by appalling epithets, the Stanford
administration and, indeed, the entire university. The
e-mail purported to come from a Stanford graduate
student.
As I write this we have not
identified the author and I urge the Stanford community
not to jump to conclusions. In the world of information
technology it is very easy to mislead about identities.
The Stanford police at present do not believe that the
alleged source is the author and the computer security
specialist has concluded that the message was not posted
from his account.
We have identified the server
that was used and have closed it down. If our
investigation generates further information that can be
communicated, I, the Provost or a person on our staff
will tell the campus in a timely fashion.
Vice-Provost James Montoya and
Dean of Students Marc Wais and others from Student
Affairs will be available on Sunday evening at 7 o'clock
in Tresidder Oak Room to meet with members of the
Stanford community, especially those that were the target
of the e-mail.
I should like to make three
additional comments.
(1) It goes without saying that
the views expressed by the individual who sent the
message are highly deplorable, personally offensive to
me, and, I trust, will be rejected by the entire
community.
(2) When and if the perpetrator
of this unsolicited mail is identified, we shall use all
the means available to us to take appropriate action.
University policies concerning computer and network use
are well articulated.
(3) In the world of information
technology an aberrant individual can use a tool like
this to create trouble. As an academic community we need
to be particularly careful before generalizing from an
incident like this. In my many contacts with students, it
has been one of my greatest satisfactions to know how
good and respectful relations are in this very diverse
community.
Gerhard Casper
President
SR
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