The controversy over the tourism boycott of South Carolina has hit many Northeast college campuses, and some of them have already taken steps to support it.
In response to the NAACP boycott, Temple University and Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Franklin & Marshall, Carlisle and Swarthmore colleges, which are all eastern Pennsylvania schools, have decided to cancel all their athletic teams' spring break trips to South Carolina.
Haverford College became the first of these schools to officially support the boycott when its women's tennis coach, Ann Koger, told administrators that she didn't want to take her team to a Hilton Head, S.C., tournament over spring break. Koger, who is black, said she was moved to change her plans when she saw the Martin Luther King Day protests in Columbia, S.C., on the local television news.
"I am glad to see that people and organizations are taking a public stand over their feelings," said Koger. "People have a tendency to stand but not act."
Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr soon followed Haverford's lead. Tom Krattenmaker, director of public relations at Swarthmore, said that coaches, administrators and student-athletes were all in favor of supporting the boycott. "It's been pretty close to consensus that this is what's right to do," he said.
In a Feb. 11 statement, Dickinson College president William Durden echoed the sentiments of administrators from the other boycotting schools when he said, "Dickinson College will not endorse the activities nor forward business for any entity-in this case the state of South Carolina-that appears officially to celebrate such a painful time for our nation and our people-when we were divided, North and South, and when a good portion of our people were held in slavery."
Officials at all the participating schools agreed that they could have made a more powerful statement if they had made the announcement as a group. "If we did this again, we would have made the decision together," said Greg Kannerstein, athletic director at Haverford.
Officials at Guilford College in North Carolina considered canceling the women's tennis team's planned spring break trip to South Carolina, but decided against it after considering the hassles that would accompany planning another trip.
Meanwhile, a debate similar to the one at Duke rages at campuses where students traditionally vacation in South Carolina after finals week.
In a series of columns in The Yale Daily News, students have debated the merits of changing the destination of "Dead Week," the week between finals and graduation when seniors typically vacation in Myrtle Beach.
"If we spend our senior break swimming in the waters of Myrtle Beach, we will also send a message to all those here and outside the University who support and work for civil rights in this country," wrote Yale students Rebecca Iniger and Simon Rodberg in a Feb. 18 column.
The boycott has not stirred as much controversy on the campus of the University of Virginia, another school that sends a large number of students to South Carolina in May, said UVa NAACP President Philippe Devieux.
"I know a lot of people are not really thinking about the issue," Devieux said.
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