University administrators are responding to a fight involving students that may have been prompted by a homophobic slur.
About 10 people, including some UCLA students, were at the scene of a fight that took place on the morning of April 23 near the intersection of Strathmore and Gayley avenues, university police said.
UCPD is still investigating what happened. No one has been arrested, as police are interviewing the people involved.
There were minor injuries that were treated at the scene, police said.
Dean of Students Robert Naples will meet this week with the student to whom the alleged slur was directed and other members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, he said.
They will discuss this incident and what the reaction has been as well as the ways in which Student Affairs can help.
“We’re very interested in providing help and support for the individual,” Naples said. “We are concerned about the LGBT community, and we want them to realize they’re being supported.”
He said he does not know what action, if any, will be taken against students involved because police do not yet know the complete details of what happened.
Naples said he has worked with the LGBT community extensively to ensure that students feel comfortable and safe and cited the LGBT Resource Center as a place students could go for help.
However, he has not had a conversation with students about an alleged hate incident like this, in which a student claims to have been verbally and physically attacked.
Students who are the victims of homophobic verbal jabs as such rarely report the incidents to the school or to police, said fifth-year political science student Verton Banks, the director of finances for the Queer Alliance.
Banks, who works in the LGBT Resource Center, said he hears about incidents daily in which students or others use hateful or homophobic language toward students.
He said students come to him with these incidents but do not report them because they feel the incident is too small or nothing will be done. But these small micro-aggressions add up and cause long-term harm to the victims, Banks said.