Dear George,

My guess is most of those individuals fired were African-American males. When our prisons nationally have a wildly disproportionate number of African-American men as inmates, when, by all measurement, "racial profiling" singles out minorities on virtually every highway and interstate in America. Running the legal gauntlet in all regions of the U S and especially,the South is a rather risky undertaking for all minorities especially, African-American males. ......Law enforcement seems to cast a rather large dragnet over this group of American citizens.

We read of case after case of individuals who might be members of Congress, entertainment, sports, media etc., getting caught up in a system that seems to single out minorities in particular and only their fame or public persona keeps them from a wrongful conviction, it would appear to indicate that getting through just the routine of everyday living would pose a particularly onerous task on certain individuals in our society singled out for "special legal treatment". It doesn't take much to receive a felony conviction in this atmosphere.

When I was the owner of a retail auto agency, I was advised (not in writing) to check each and every African-American before hiring because of their "penchant for criminal activity". I had a conversation with the, then, police chief of Charlottesville PD who, with a smile, said, "Harry save your time, if you check, you'll never hire one, because 95% of the them have records". Apparently, the University, knowing the records of these individuals, hired them anyway, and though they may have a perfect legal right to terminate them for ANY reason in the probationary period, it seems to me that firing them solely on the basis of prior records and the criminal activity of one individual is capricious and is tantamount to guilt by association and prior restraint. I think they might have a good legal argument.

Harry Tenney (electronic mail, May 31, 2001).