By Greg Smith/AP
A three-week span of racist threats, terror and intimidation at the University of Iowa’s College of Dentistry ended on April 20 with the arrest of a second-year dental student.
Tarsha Michelle Claiborne, 23, of Baton Rouge, La., was charged with sending racist and threatening e-mails to minority classmates in the dental school as well as sending a bomb threat via e-mail that closed the program on April 19.
Authorities at Duke University, Guilford College and three other campuses have investigated hate-crime reports in the past 22 months only to discover they were hoaxes.
Claiborne, who is black, is charged with a felony count of threats in violation of individual rights related to the bomb threat made April 18.
She also faces lesser charges for allegedly sending a string of e-mails and making other threats that warned of violence if minority students did not withdraw from the dental college.
The dental college has an enrollment of 381 students, of which 49 are minorities, or 12.8 percent. They include 18 Hispanic students, 15 Asians, 13 blacks and three American Indian-Alaskan natives.
The dental building was closed on Wednesday, April 19, after the bomb threat. After an extensive search turned up nothing, it reopened the following day as faculty, staff, students and patients were searched as they filtered through a single entrance.
“I’ve been having nightmares since this all started,” said Dana Vetter, a white third-year dental student from Mount Pleasant. “It’s been pretty scary, but I feel totally safe now.’’
Ann Rhodes, vice president of university relations, said at a news conference that the suspect’s motives were still unknown.
“We don’t have a clue,” she said.
Rhodes said she could not discuss Claiborne’s academic status. She also said she was not aware of any ill feelings Claiborne had toward the college.
“I don’t have any reason to believe there were major problems there,” she said.
Rhodes said authorities, including the FBI, located the computer that was used early in the investigation.
Claiborne was arrested at 12:30 a.m. on April 20 at her home. She was being held at the Johnson County Jail on $52,000 bond.
Although the police complaints say the learning center is at the dental building, it is located a few blocks away at the College of Medicine complex.
Authorities set up a surveillance videotape in the computer area of the Pathology Learning Center after the second e-mail was sent on March 30, Rhodes said. The suspect was identified on April 19 afternoon by an administrative staff member in the dental college, she said.
Court records said Claiborne “was seen on videotape leaving the Pathology Learning Center” and that she confessed when she was arrested.
“At this time, they are confident that she is the person who sent the e-mails,” Rhodes said.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, authorities on at least five other campuses—Duke, Guilford, St. Cloud State University, Eastern New Mexico University and the University of Georgia—have investigated hate-crime reports before learning they were hoaxes.
Claiborne also is charged with one count of criminal trespass-hate crime for an April 4 incident in which red noodles were left on another black dental student’s doorstep with a note referring to a dead black man’s brains.
Under the Iowa Code, a hate crime is one committed against a person because of that person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, age, or disability.
Claiborne also faces six simple misdemeanor charges for three previous threatening e-mails on March 28, March 30 and April 6.
“She was in one of my classes and she seemed really normal,” said Julie Farrell of Ottawa, Ill., who is in her second year in the program and is white. “So it was a pretty big shock when we found out. I’m relieved, but I’m also sad that, obviously, something is so wrong mentally.”