Two years ago, Howard County school officials pledged they would nottolerate racial bias, discrimination, insensitivity or disrespect.

Since then, they have tolerated plenty.

Today, racial incidents in the schools are on the rise. And educators have inadvertently created an environment where many incidents are dismissed.

In documents and in interviews with more than 150 students, parents, principals and administrators, as well as community leaders and hate-crime experts, The Howard County Sun found that:

* Administrators do not monitor race incidents, which students say occur routinely in the schools. Only the most overt events are reported. Although The Howard County Sun found 16 incidents documented by police and others since 1989, school officials list only half of those as race-related. And schools Human Relations Director Kathleen Griffin, whose job includes investigating complaints, insisted in a recent interview she had never personally dealt with a race-hate incident in her 17 years on the job.

* Educators have never defined racist conduct. Principals use their discretion, resulting in inconsistency among the schools. When one student calls another a "nigger," it is almost never considered racist behavior, said seven of the eight high school principals.

* Minority students believe they have few options when a racial incident occurs. While students say they experience fewblatant hatred acts, they sense covert racism from many students, parents and even teachers.

* A new policy for dealing with race incidents is in the works. School officials declined to release the working version but say it will provide a clear definition of racism and guidelines for disciplining students.

*

That race problems existhere seems paradoxical. Howard County -- and more specifically, Columbia -- often is cited as an affluent, colorblind community to place a homestead and raise children amid integration and racial harmony.

But last year local police recorded more than 50 hate incidents in the county.

The Ku Klux Klan distributed hate literature in Lisbon. A group of skinheads tossed more than 1,000 copies of a white supremacist newspaper on Columbia lawns, prompting angry residents to calla community forum to discuss racial intolerance. And last month, vandals spray-painted "Chinks" on the street in front of a Korean family's home near Ellicott City.

The number of incidents reported on school grounds has grown steadily since 1989 -- before then, there is no record. In 1990, the police began keeping track of racial incidents.

Two angered parents stepped forward in recent months to tell theschool board of their children's experiences: a black second-grader was punched and called a "nigger" by a classmate at West Friendship Elementary School, and a black eighth-grader on a school bus was sprayed with disinfectant by a white fellow student from Glenwood Middle School.

"The more tragic part is these kids are bringing these racist ideas from home and from their peers," said Roger Jones, chairman of the Howard County Human Rights Commission. "It's seething and it'sgoing to grow."

It's unusual for the school board to hear complaints about race incidents in schools, said board Chairwoman Deborah Kendig.

Principals are not required by law to report racial incidents to police, and it appears that they report only the most blatant ones. Last year, principals told police of six racial incidents: three cases of vandalism, two assaults and one case of harassment.

Since1989, police and other sources have documented 16, including five sofar this year.

Jones said parents reported 15 incidents to him in1991 alone. Not all have been documented.

At its monthly meeting last week, the Maryland Commission on Human Relations said it would continue its three-month investigation of how the county schools handle race incidents. Deputy Director Henry Ford, who heads the task force, said the commission may schedule a public hearing in the fall for residents to voice their concerns.

Neglected policy

The school board's human relations policy was revised in 1990 to include strong language condemning hate acts. But the schools have not followed through.

The policy addressed the growing student minority population,which increased from 17 percent in 1980 to more than 20 percent -- or close to 6,300 students -- in 1990. (Blacks, Asians and American Indians are classified as minorities.)

The policy seemed to propel the school system to the forefront of multicultural awareness. The board pledged that schools "will not tolerate nor condone any act of bias, discrimination, insensitivity or disrespect toward any person."

The 1990 revision included a new directive, calling on principals toreport all insensitive and intolerant incidents -- within 48 hours -- on a written form to their supervisors and to Griffin, the human rights director.

Lack of perseverance derailed the plan.

Top school officials do not require that incidents be reported, and have limited or no knowledge of many incidents. By their own admission, principals have not reported many incidents, instead handling them on theirown. School board Chairwoman Kendig said the policy may have fallen by the wayside because administrators became preoccupied with budget problems and the increased emphasis on state performance tests.

Weaknesses in the policy might have contributed. It doesn't define racist behavior, leaving educators uncertain about what constitutes a racial incident. And it offers no disciplinary guidelines.

Principalshave difficulty defining racist behavior.

"Teens are cruel to oneanother," said Principal Gene Streagle of Howard High School. "Do they mean it sometimes? I don't know."

"If, in the heat of the moment, my anger is up and I call you a name, it is because we have an argument over something, not because I've indicated an intolerance," said Principal Bonnie Daniel of Wilde Lake High School.

Only if the comment clearly stems from racial hatred would they consider it so, said the principals and Griffin, who said she's never been told of suchan argument or fight.

"Generally, what we find is that there are other circumstances that are present when a conflict arises," Griffinsaid.

"We've never had one blatant racial incident, when one group hates the other person solely because of color," said Griffin, who is black. "We have many principals who handle very successfully conflicts that arise."

Their opinions are at odds with those of hate-crime experts and community leaders, even Kendig.

"Certain words have certain meanings," the school board chairwoman said. "If one child uses it against another child, that's certainly a racial incident to me."

"When students want to hurt someone, and it could be an incident over shoes or something, when they add those words, it becomes anattack of a different nature," said Karen Wilson, co-chair of the Coalition Opposed to Violence and Extremism (COVE), a group comprising law enforcement agencies, resource organizations and support groups that monitor hate crimes in Maryland.

"The minute the derogatory language -- like 'nigger' or 'chink' -- is used, it is a racial incident," said Jennifer Burdick, head of the Maryland Human Relations Commission.

While racial name-calling is not a crime, it should be reported to the police to track hate trends that may be developing, Burdick said.

Partly because the school system has no definition, no one knows how many race-related incidents have occurred in the schools.Griffin, who is charged with investigating complaints, said she doesn't keep track.

"Why wouldn't they take statistics?" asked Jones, the county human rights commission chairman. "To protect themselves? To protect the perpetrators? I don't understand it."

School spokeswoman Patti Caplan named four incidents, although she said one -- theWest Friendship Elementary School incident in which a black student was called a "nigger" -- wouldn't qualify because the principal determined the white second-graders didn't know the meaning of the word.

Superintendent Michael E. Hickey named six for last year -- the same six incidents that were reported to police.

"A lot of things have not been reported," said Hickey. "I'm not sure if we've provided the mechanisms to make the reporting procedure formal.

"It's a degree of seriousness. It's hard to second-guess principals, because they're there, they know the students."

It is a problem apparent statewide, said Wilson, of COVE.

The number of incidents schools have been reporting is "ridiculously low," she said, because principals are not willing -- or are ashamed -- to admit that their schools may be having problems.

"They don't want to be perceived within their own administration as being out of control or having racial problems," she said.

Two years ago, concerned with racism in schools, COVE initiated yearly meetings with school officials and superintendents across the state to emphasize the importance of reporting race incidents. In Baltimore last year, three incidents were reported to COVE, but Wilson said she knew of 25 others.

"It's a terrible problem," she said. "The agencies that have resources that could be helpful to schools are not being called upon because they (schools) are not reporting and they're trying to deal with it internally."

'We're left hanging'

The fallout sends a mixed message to students that can unintentionally reinforce the very behavior school officials hope to prevent.Stereotypical remarks, cavalier attitudes and ignorance run rampant in schools, minority students say. Often they are offended by racial jokes made in jest and in interracial company.

"I hear racist jokes," said Hammond High School junior Hassan George. "I don't think they mean anything by it. I don't think they know it hurts."

While some minority students don't seem to mind and even participate in racial taunts and slurs, others say they have little choice but to grin and bear it.

"You'll be walking down the hall and white people talk and you overhear, 'I don't like nigger music,' " said Centennial HighSchool senior Yaphett Banks.

The racism isn't blatant, but it's there, and "they'll talk about you, but they won't say it to your face," he said.

Atholton High School senior Emmi Sawyer says many minority students keep feelings and frustrations inside, even while name-calling and racial remarks happen daily at her school.

"It's a matter of people not reporting it," the 17-year-old black student said. "If you were to report it every time, there'd be a backlog."

Centennial junior Maisha Pajardo said she feels no support from her school's administration. "We're just left hanging," she said. "We go on about it for another day. I just wish there were more black people here.All my life, I've been in an environment with white kids."

Wilde Lake senior Gloria Lee said Asian students at her school are called "chinks" and "wimps." "They always think the Orientals are weak or something," she said of other students. "If we don't play good in sports, they call us wimps."

This year, she organized an Asian-awarenessclub at school. When she made the announcement over the intercom, both black and white students scoffed at the idea. "They laughed," she said. "They said, 'What Asian club? They don't do anything.' "

Many white students interviewed complained about minority scholarships and affirmative action programs. They also complained about "militant blacks," who they say blame and base everything on race, and who perform reverse discrimination on whites.

"They carry an air," said a white 16-year-old Hammond High School junior, who didn't want to be identified. "Sometimes, I'm afraid of them."

"Black students use their race as an excuse," said a white 17-year-old Oakland Mills High School senior, who also wanted anonymity. "I think they want to take advantage of it."

Those feelings were echoed last month in a Peoplefor the American Way study on racial attitudes among young people. The study indicates that white students hold many stereotypes. Beliefsthat minorities are lazy, welfare-dependent and prone to crime are commonplace among young adults, according to the study by the Washington-based civil liberties organization.

Wilde Lake High School senior Sarah Paris wishes the schools would offer multicultural-awarenessclasses and programs to broaden students' minds. "From an early age,we need to be aware of the fact that there are going to be differentcultures," she said.

And, just as with physical education, fine arts or practical arts, a class on multicultural studies should be a requirement for all students, she said.

Minority students say teachers and parents are guilty of racist jabs as well. Emmi Sawyer recalled that when she was applying for a scholarship, one teacher told her, "It's not a minority scholarship. You're not going to win."

Mount Hebron High School senior Kali Murray said one teacher remarked to her, "Kali, you're a good black person." And Oakland Mills Senior Aaron McGruder believes some teachers have lower expectations for black students and assume they will be troublemakers.

"Sometimes they'reled more by stereotypes," he said. "They take images they had all through their lives, that black kids aren't as smart. They hear about the SATs and how black people score lower."

Racial slurs, obscenities, stereotypes -- Oakland Mills senior Kenya Edwards, a varsity athlete, has heard them all from parents in the bleachers.

When he played basketball, parents from other schools loudly complained that thepredominantly black team was "athletically superior," deliberately running up the score of the game.

As a bystander, he remembers an incident at a varsity girls soccer game against Glenelg. " 'These girls shouldn't be on the same field with us because they're more athletically inclined,' " he said he heard from white Glenelg parents.

A new conduct code

Testimony from the mother of the second-grader who was punched and called a "nigger" and from the mother of the eighth-grader who was sprayed with disinfectant spurred school officials tostart work on a conduct code to guide principals.

"We felt that because of a series of incidents that occurred recently, and because of what seemed to be a growing pattern nationally of racial extremism,we really needed to give more emphasis and guidelines to schools to deal with those types of incidents," said Hickey.

The conduct codeis expected to take over where the human relations policy ends, providing a definition of hate behavior and guidelines for disciplining students who engage in it, said Associate Superintendent James R. McGowan.

A clear definition of racist behavior establishes the criteria for reporting, and enables school administrators to develop programs to deal with race-related problems, said Cristina Bodinger-DeUriarte, a Harvard-trained sociologist and hate-crime researcher.

She and the state of Maryland -- which passed a hate-crime law two years ago -- have similar definitions of bias incidents: acts of prejudice, hate or violence directed against individuals, groups or institutions because of race, religion or ethnic background, intended to cause physical or emotional injury or property damage.

McGowan heads a committee of community leaders and educators who are drafting the policy,expected to be unveiled at the school board's May meeting. Under thenew policy, any student who utters any type of racial slur or epithet -- even in jest -- will be sanctioned, Hickey said. Among the various disciplinary options for principals is an educational service project through which students can learn cultural diversity.

How complaints will be handled, and whether Hickey, Griffin or another administrator will monitor incidents that occur in the school system remainsunclear. Also uncertain is how actively the schools will investigateincidents as they occur.

Hickey acknowledged the conduct policy may be hard for principals to implement. One high school principal, for instance, told him the word "nigger" is used at his school 50 timesa day, by both black and white students. But he said the school system will schedule a summer workshop to help principals implement the new policy.

The conduct policy is a major step forward, said Rabbi Martin Siegel of the Columbia Jewish Congregation and a member of thedrafting committee. "Before there were pious expressions as to what should be done," he said. "Now they're putting some teeth to it."

More is needed, said Jean Toomer, head of Community Building in Howard County and another committee member. "We need to understand that this is a piece of a puzzle," she said. "We really need a prevention program. There needs to be training of all staff and teachers and administrators in prejudice awareness and conflict resolution, and training of students as well."