In September, a black female student discovered a racist comment scraped into the door of her dormitory room at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. A week later, the faces of six black students were crossed out with a magic marker on a photograph hanging on a dormitory bulletin board at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Conn.
Now, one week since at least 23 black students at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., received letters in the mail that students said read, "bang bang get out of here," the unsolved incidents are sparking painful soul-searching by administrators and students. They have reawakened worries about race relations on prep school campuses.
A half century after the nation's most prestigious preparatory schools undertook major recruitment and aid initiatives to transform their all-white student bodies, significant numbers of blacks, Latinos, and Asians attend today, and the schools trumpet the diversity of their student body. But some minority students say the cultures of the campuses have yet to catch up with the marketing.
"People are always saying to me, 'I don't understand why you can say the N-word and I can't,' " said Sam Burwell, a 16-year-old black student at Phillips Academy Andover. "I still have to explain that here, and that's weird. Even after I tell them, sometimes they don't get it."
At St. Paul's, where 8 percent of the 524 students are black, tension over racial divisions surfaced last week after news of the hate letters surfaced. Some white students approached their black peers to offer sympathy and express shock, but some African-American students responded angrily, saying such gestures should have come before the letters arrived.
"The students of color felt that not everything they were saying was sincere," said John, an African-American student at St. Paul's who received one of the letters. "I can see that because after the incident, it was like people felt they were socially obligated to go out of their way to offer condolences." School officials asked that his last name not be used for safety reasons. Authorities are investigating the source of the letters.
School rector William Matthews said school officials had met individually with the targeted students and had held all-school meetings to discuss the mailings. He said that most students who received letters "felt enormously supported by the adults in this community."
But Matthews acknowledged that "there are some who received this letter that do feel that they haven't been supported as much as they would have liked and wish that it hadn't taken this incident to bring this out."
"One of the learning pieces for us all is that point," he said. "We need to integrate into our daily life, not just in crises, opportunities to support them."
Word of the hateful messages sent to St. Paul's students spread quickly among prep school students in the region, particularly those from minority groups, many of whom know one another from programs such as Beacon Academy in Boston, which readies students for prep school. For many, it provoked bitter feelings about the persistence of racial problems.
"There was a frustration among students that, as much as we talk about it, racism is still an issue," said Heather Flewelling, director of student multicultural affairs at Milton Academy, where whole class periods, at students' behest, were devoted this week to discussing the St. Paul mailings.
School administrators said that overt racist attacks are extremely rare at preparatory schools. Shana Harris - a graduate of Phillips Exeter and a director of Prep For Prep, a New York City program that helps minority students prepare for the rigors of private schools - said that aside from the recent New England incidents she could not recall another instance in which African-American prep school students had been targets of attacks.
What is more pressing, say students, is the abundance of cultural misunderstandings by white students who have had limited contact with minorities. Some white students mistakenly assume their minority classmates are like blacks they see portrayed in the media, say minority students.
"They're always asking me questions like, 'Do you wear Rocawear clothes?' " said Carlos Lopes, 16, of Charlestown, who attends Tabor Academy in Marion, referring to a brand of clothing popular among hip-hop artists. "They assume I know how to rap and how to dance. I do dance, but I don't rap."
Lopes said white students also constantly questioned his language and tried to mimic phrases he used such as "mad corny," which means silly, until he modified the way he speaks.
Aldel Brown, a black senior from Hyde Park who attends St. Mark's School in Southborough, said he, too, feels closely watched and often like a specimen.
"Everything I do is magnified," he said. "That's why I keep quiet. When I'm home, it's like I am free. At school, I have to remind myself that I am here for the education, not the social life."
Brown said he would like to have more open forums to talk about cultural differences. But he said that at his school, even when opportunities arise, students are not always willing to have open discussions.
For example, at an all-students dialogue on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, Brown said the auditorium fell silent when he questioned why the school's varsity basketball team has seven minority players and seven white players but the varsity tennis team has just one black member, him.
"There was this total hush in the crowd," said Brown, an aspiring lawyer who attended a Westwood middle school through the Metco program before enrolling at St. Mark's. "No one wanted to talk about what was going on and the truth. Everyone is afraid of the truth. And it's sad because we want to be a close-knit community, but in actuality we don't talk openly about race issues or differences within ourselves."
John Warren, head of school at St. Mark's, said the school has tried to foster discussions in small student gatherings and to encourage students to offer ideas for building a "respectful, comfortable community for everyone."
Kelicia Hollis, 17, of Little Rock, a senior at Phillips Academy Andover , said she has not experienced the same level of scrutiny and that she feels accepted on her campus. Even so, she said, white students often assume there are no differences between racial groups, particularly when a black American is a leading Democratic presidential contender.
"I hear a lot of people say that racism and stereotypes don't exist," Hollis said. "But it's important to remember that we're different and that we won't always see things the same way."
