Sorority sister felt 'silenced' under national spotlight

Going back to the very beginning of that fateful 1993 night -- before shouts of "water buffalo," before judicial proceedings, before Alan Kors -- the voices of the Delta Sigma Theta sisters celebrating Founders' Day rang throughout Superblock.

But that was perhaps the last time the University would hear these voices -- according to the sisters, they were essentially silenced, and incidents tumbled out of control.

"Because of the circumstances of the trial, we were unable to defend ourselves or say anything," DST sister Ayanna Taylor says. "We couldn't address our side of the issue.

At the time, the sisters had no way of knowing that a "five-minute" celebration would lead to months of legal proceedings and controversy.

According to Taylor, students began yelling "a barrage of racial slurs" out of their windows, one of which, she says, was "black water buffalo."

"This [was] not the first time that something like this has happened to a fraternity or sorority," she says. But "this time, we decided that enough was enough."

Enter then-College freshman Eden Jacobowitz -- an unlucky scapegoat by his accounts, a racial harasser by theirs.

"That was who we happened to see," Taylor says. "We happened to see Eden Jacobowitz hanging out of his window.... We pressed charges."

But proceedings didn't go as smoothly as the sisters had hoped. Taylor says that after an editorial was published in The New York Times on the first day of the trial "and because of the fact that Sheldon Hackney was being nominated to be head of the NEH... it became a whirlwind.

"After that, it was difficult for anybody to get a fair trial."

Worse than an unfair trial, however, was the marginalization of what Taylor believes to be the larger issue of the whole affair -- racial harassment.

"We were actually victimized," she says. "And people seem to forget that."

Taylor has not forgotten, though.

"We have always and still to this day say we heard 'black water buffalo,'" despite a police investigation which concluded that Jacobowitz did not yell the word "black."

Taylor says she and her sisters "were being raked over the coals... in the press. We needed to defend ourselves, so the only way we could do that was to drop the charges.... There was never any due process."

Despite the less-than-satisfactory outcome, Taylor says that considering the circumstances, she believes that she handled the situation appropriately.

"We wouldn't have done anything differently because the reason that we did it was to make everyone aware of the overall racial tension on campus," Taylor says.

And there were lessons to be learned from the incident at Penn -- "a microcosm of the real world," according to Taylor.

"What I learned from it at the time is that, unfortunately, everybody has their own agenda, so oftentimes it can affect you negatively despite your efforts to do right," she explains. "It was just a life lesson. That's how I try to look at it, or I will continue to be upset by it. It taught me a lot about people -- and that race matters in this country."

For the sisters, the incident didn't leave when the publicity did. They went from being unwitting to specific targets of racial harassment. If "water buffalo," as Jacobowitz claims, had held no racial undertones before, it certainly did afterward.

The girls received anonymous postcards complete with inscriptions -- "Water buffalo have brains. You do not. Niggers do not have brains," and "What an insult to the water buffalo. You are a black ass nigger."

Still, despite the painful saga, Taylor says she treasures her memories of Penn.

She remains active in the community and now interviews applicants to Penn and donates money to DuBois College House.

She says the experience did not "take away from my experience at Penn."

About This Series Ten years ago, the media descended upon Penn. Prompted by the University's handling of the theft of a Daily Pennsylvanian press run and a freshman's shout of "water buffalo," the national press accused the administration of political correctness run amuck. Now that the controversy has died down, the DP decided to take a look back at the incident, its key players and the issues it raised - such as free speech, campus judicial processes and the role of the media.

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