March 9th, 2004 is a day that ought to live in Claremont McKenna history. It is the anniversary of Kerri Dunn’s hate crime hoax and a stain upon the character of Claremont McKenna’s administration. Despite maintaining her innocence, Ms. Dunn wound up spending some time in prison for faking that hate crime and lying about stolen property. She filed false police reports.
The full coverage of the entire events were covered as per usual by The Claremont Independent. That whole issue is embedded at the very bottom and linked here. (For Facebook readers, click on the title and it should take you there.) I have also posted the entire Los Angeles Times article down below.
All of this could have been prevented and should be remembered whenever there’s an alleged bias related incident. There was, as The Los Angeles Times put it, a “crisis” of hate up at the Claremont Colleges that lead to it. In reality, it was Kerri Dunn, a then 39-year old visiting psychology professor, who played upon deep seated racial animus in our culture to achieve a goal: the division of our student body. And she succeeded, at least for a moment.
Serendiptiy! that nutcase Kerri Dunn lived in Lincoln before moving to Claremont.