December 2018 Incident

Dear community members,

I want to thank Dr. Grollman for bringing this video to our attention. They contacted one of my Detectives for our information. I also support their comments that have been made related to this incident within our campus and to the news media.

We went into this initial investigation with the intent to find something. We reviewed the video and expanded our scope and this is what we found.

There was nothing here that could lead to a criminal charge. On this clip you will see the word JUUL; one of the students who participated in this recently quit the use of JUUL and wrote it on the top of the house because he did not like it.

You see the term hit or miss which can be a hashtag similar to smash or pass from a rap song related to breakups and hookups. And you see the twisted cross swastika which was added to the house because both students did not like what it represents.

What is not fully shown on this clip that we received is the two students destroyed the house and what was written on it by dropping it out of the upper floor window when it was finished.

There were two students involved in this event, and their inside joke (their term) blew up with their decision to use social media.

Unfortunately, the needs of media to meet timelines for the noon, or 5 pm and 6 pm slots do not always fit in our effort to find out what exactly happened.

Our University of Richmond Bias Response Team composed of individuals I highly respect will be meeting to further discuss this issue and how can the University strengthen our ability to support our values.

I share this not to condone what they did and some of their decisions but to provide you with a fuller context that goes beyond the soundbite. I won’t be speaking individually about this incident in the future, because I intend to support the efforts of our Bias Response Team.

This has been a tough week for all of us and each situation related to daily disruption of normal activities, the loss of a community member, and the recognition of the impact of the use of symbolism has on our community members all need to be treated with thoughtfulness, respect and professionalism.

Dave McCoy
Associate VP of Public Safety and a UR community member

Note: This notice was amended on 12/15/18 to update pronoun usage.