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What are the chances UMass Amherst finds senders of racist letters?

It’s the letter that has gotten national attention; Black students condemned for their appearance and intelligence by an anonymous person behind a keyboard.

“I want that Ip address tracked,” said UMass junior Zach Steward.

UMass Amherst students have been calling on the university to take swift action investigating who has been sending racist letters to the Black student organizations. The university has now hired a cyber security firm to assist in the search. Students feel it should be an easy case, but we wanted to find out how easy it is to track down an IP address.

“It’s very difficult sometimes to find out who the original sender or the who originally attacker is just because they’re going through that process of hiding behind either encrypted or other anonymized services. But we have seen examples even just in the past six months, even with the colonial pipeline, where you’ve seen they’ve actually been able to find who was the receiver,” Mark Ostrowski of Checkpoint Software said.

Ostrowski said if the sender, for example, hacked into your computer to send the emails, that’s one layer of detective work authorities will have to go through. The more layers, the more time it will take; but Ostrowski couldn’t give 100% certainty the sender would be caught.

“99.9% level because there could be a situation where we hit something that’s encrypted or again that compromised host, which may not lead back to the original sender,” Ostrowski said.

“The blatantly racist e-mails recently sent to Black student organizations at UMass Amherst and other deplorable acts of anti-Black hatred are appalling and disgusting,” said UMass President Marty Meehan. “While UMass Amherst is still trying to identify the source of these messages, we do know that the messages in no way reflect the true character of the UMass community and we have zero tolerance for such behavior. We are reminded, however, that we all have an obligation to confront the racism that continues to infect our society. As the campus aggressively pursues the source of these vile messages, we must all join in active support of our students, and re-double our commitment to providing a safe, welcoming community for all students. We must treat any such attack on one group as an attack on all that we stand for as a university. My team in the Office of the President is working with UMass Amherst to investigate and to identify the individuals and/or organizations responsible for these hate-ridden messages and hold them accountable wherever they are.”

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Still, students say that’s just the first step.

“I want the University to take this seriously,” Steward said. “I want them to implement some kind of anti-racism training. I want them to make it abundantly clear that as soon as they are found there will be immediate consequences.”

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy also released this statement to the campus Monday:

“We have secured the services of Stroz Friedberg Digital Forensics, a leading national firm in cyber security, to assist us in our investigation of the source of the racist emails that were sent to members of Black student organizations. While we are mindful of the challenges of determining the source of anonymous emails such as these, we are confident that Stroz Friedberg, with its extensive expertise and technical capacity, will methodically follow every lead in pursuit of the contemptible individual or individuals responsible.

We will also fight back against bigotry and intolerance with a series of educational opportunities and action steps to promote understanding and an ongoing commitment to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion:

  • Black Joy, Black Healing and Black Justice Forum – A forum led by the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research (CRJ) and sponsored by the Office of Equity and Inclusion on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021, 5:30 to 8 p.m., location to be determined. The forum will bring together Black students from across the UMass Amherst campus for an evening of community, love and kinship against a backdrop of ongoing anti-Black hatred that will never define or deter us. Food, music and space for healing, joy and reflection will be led by students and faculty of CRJ.
  • Launching the Black Advisory Council – A team of faculty, students, administrators and staff charged with developing recommendations to the Office of Equity and Inclusion that will improve the experiences of Black students, faculty and staff on campus. More details to come.
  • Increased funding for the Center of Racial Justice (CRJ). An opportunity to invest in our internal expertise on racial justice and support the expansion of their capacity to advise on UMass Amherst-specific racial injustices so that our Black community can feel safe and thrive on campus.

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