From 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. today, a group of six students held firm ground in Red Square. “Georgetown is Institutionally Racist,” one of their signs read. Another sign listed the percentages of students on campus of different races, followed by the phrase “≠ Diversity.”

These students are part of a new independent group on campus, GLUE, or Georgetown Leaders for Unity and Equity. With six board members and about 15 to 20 students in attendance at weekly meetings, GLUE plans to hold discussions every Thursday on race, diversity, and gender at Georgetown. The group will congregate in Red Square tomorrow and Thursday between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. to inform people on this Thursday’s dialogue over the question: Is Georgetown institutionally racist?

A GLUE member in Red Square, Caroline Rosenfield (COL, ’14), said the group was founded last year by seniors. The group participated in a campaign in Red Square to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin and attended a rally in D.C. with GU Occupy and Georgetown’s chapter of the NAACP. “The discussion this week is whether or not [Georgetown] promotes segregation through the systems and institutions that it lays out for students coming to Georgetown,” Rosenfield said. ”Even within our group, there is back and forth about it.”

Rosenfield cited “Hoya Saxa Weekend” as a primary debate among members of GLUE. Hoya Saxa Weekend is an event hosted by the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access, run parallel to GAAP weekend and exclusively for students of color. “I’m not sure how many students they take each year but it’s not all students of color,” she said. “It’s not clear how they make these decisions but there are groups of students of color who are excluded from it…there are people who identify as black or are members of the black community who weren’t invited to the Hoya Saxa experience.”

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The rope found this week hanging in a Healy Hall sub-basement was not a noose, according to Associate Vice President for Communications Julie Green Bataille.

“[N]ew details have come to light that lead us to believe the rope in question has actually been in this area for some period of time coiled up and was likely used for climbing activity,” she wrote in an email. “We do not believe it was any kind of noose.”

The rope, which was described as “a loose hanging rope with a knotted loop at one end” in an email sent to the Georgetown community last night, sparked an investigation of the utility tunnels that run underneath Georgetown’s campus.

During the investigation, Department of Public Safety officers also discovered “racist graffiti” in the tunnels. This morning, however, a University official told local media outlets that the vandalism was not a recent act.

“We are still actively investigating the matter and will take seriously any new details that may emerge but are grateful to members of the campus community for providing additional information to aid our efforts so quickly,” Bataille wrote.

11:50 a.m. update: This morning, a University official told local television news outlets that the rope has been identified as a piece of climbing equipment, not a noose. The official also confirmed that the graffiti was not a recent act.

After discovering “a loose hanging rope with a knotted loop at one end” in a utility room in the sub-basement of Healy Hall this week, University employees filed a report with the Department of Public Safety, according to an email written by Vice President for University Safety Rocco DelMonaco and Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson.

The room, which is locked and off-limits, can also be accessed through utility tunnels that run underneath campus. During the ensuing DPS investigation, officers also discovered “racist graffiti and vandalism” in the tunnels, which suggests “illegal trespassing that has occurred over an extended period of time.”

The University has contacted the Metropolitan Police Department to assist in the ongoing investigation. While no suspect has been identified, DelMonaco and Olson encouraged anyone with information about the incidents to alert the University through DPS or the Bias Reporting System.

“We must underscore that acts of vandalism, hate and intolerance have no place in our campus community,” they wrote. “Together all of these incidents are disturbing and not to be accessed except by trained and authorized personnel.”

Tonight at 9 p.m., representatives from Student Affairs, DPS, and Campus Ministry plan to hold a community meeting in the Village C Alumni Lounge to discuss the incidents.

After the jump, we’ve republished DelMonaco and Olson’s full email.

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Jeremy Lin during the Harvard vs. Boston College basketball game

For a team that the men’s basketball team doesn’t play all that often and isn’t a big rival, Georgetown was reportedly less-than-welcoming during the game against Harvard last month. TIME.com writes that Harvard guard Jeremy Lin recently endured a racial comment at a game he played against the Hoyas one of many racial slurs he has heard as an Asian basketball player. TIME.com reports:

Lin is reluctant to mention the specific nature of such insults, but according to Harvard teammate Oliver McNally, another Ivy League player called him a C word that rhymes with ink during a game last season. On Dec. 23, during Harvard’s 86-70 loss to Georgetown in Washington, McNally says, one spectator yelled “Sweet-and-sour pork!” from the stands.

Lin has reportedly been subject to many other taunts since he began to play college basketball because his ethnicity is such a rarity in the sport. TIME writes, “fewer than 0.5% of men’s Division 1 basketball players are Asian-American.” The most prevalent race is African-American, and the second is Caucasian.

Photo from TIME.com

Engrossed in the ongoing debate over alleged racism in the most recent issue of The Georgetown Heckler?

Check out former Heckler contributor and recent alum Zach Rabiroff’s (COL ’09) op-ed, “In defense of satire,” now up on the Voice‘s main website.