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Incoming UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is expected to meet privately this week with members of the college’s Hate and Bias Task Force to discuss last week’s suspected hate crime against seven female Muslim students. 

The students reported that last Thursday night three white males in a car threw water bottles at them and shouted racial epithets at the Vista Parking Lot of the Lawrence Hall of Science, according to a UC Police statement. 

The Daily Cal newspaper reported that one of the men covered his head with a cloth, apparently mimicking traditional Muslim women dress, and another, unaccountably, shouted “East Oakland nigger!” at them. 

UC Police have issued a press release which labels the incident a possible hate crime and are currently investigating. 

Outgoing Chancellor Robert Berdahl issued an open letter to the UC Berkeley campus community last week, condemning what he called “this terrible incident.” 

The Hate and Bias Task Force emerged from a student-initiated committee formed in the spring of 2003 in response to a number of hate and bias incidents on the UC campus, particularly harassment of Muslim and Arab students following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and threats made to Chicano and Latino undergraduates. At the student committee’s request, it was formally installed as a university task force by Berdahl last fall.