May 14, 1993: Controversial 'water buffalo' case continues

Late one night in January, Jacobowitz shouted to a group of black sorority women allegedly making noise outside his High Rise East dormitory room, calling them "water buffalo." He was accused by five of the women of violating the University's Racial Harassment Policy, although he has denied his words carried any racial connotations. Jacobowitz said he has maintained his innocence to the Judicial Inquiry Officer and to Hackney himself since he was first approached about the incident. In March, he rejected Assistant JIO Robin Read's proposed settlement of the case, opting instead for a formal hearing. · Though the charges against Jacobowitz were dropped, his case polarized the campus in the spring of 1993 and made the University a focal point for the simmering national debate over political correctness. The intense scrutiny jeopardized Hackney's nomination to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, although Hackney eventually was confirmed by the Senate. But perhaps more importantly, the case forced Penn and other universities to confront the balance between pluralism and free speech. Penn's own "speech code" was a casualty of the ensuing debate, which also produced an intense examination of Penn's institutional relationship with its minority communities.