 "Photo: N/A")
 "Photo: courtesy of Daniel Hauff")
A Loyola student facing felony hate crime charges after allegedly attacking a gay man on the el is due in court later this month and could be expelled from school regardless of his case’s outcome.
Loyola student Sean Little, 21, of Evanston, and two other Evanston men are accused of beating a gay man from Rogers Park while using anti-gay slurs in a Jan. 10 incident on the CTA Red Line. Chicago police initially called it a case of simple battery, but a judge upheld prosecutors’ decision to upgrade the charges to felony hate crime and aggravated battery on Feb. 23.
Equality Illinois, the state’s largest gay-rights advocacy group, has contacted Loyola President, the Rev. Michael J. Garanzini, S.J., urging him to issue a public statement denouncing “this type of behavior,” according to Jeremy Gottschalk, president of the organization’s Board of Directors.
“Silence sometimes is tantamount to acceptance,” said Gottschalk, a 2004 Loyola Law graduate. “The longer it goes, the worse it looks, frankly.”
“We’re not looking for the school to in any way aggregate the student’s rights. We just want the university to be very clear that this is not tolerable behavior and that it’s going to pursue whatever action is appropriate for the student,” explained Gottschalk, who said he was “disgusted” upon first hearing about the incident.
Dean of Students Jane Neufeld said Loyola is already addressing Little’s hate crime allegations internally, but she didn’t know if the university is preparing a public statement on the matter.
“We take this kind of crime very serious whether it’s on campus or off campus. It’s a very unfortunate situation, but we’re on it,” Neufeld said. “Our official stance is that we do not support any kind of hate. We just don’t tolerate it. And we’ve followed our handbook.”
According to Loyola’s student handbook, the university reserves the right to discipline students who exhibit misconduct in the greater community even if an offense occurred off campus.
After the prosecutor upgraded the charges, Little’s lawyer Robert Gevirtz was quoted in a Feb. 24 Chicago Sun-Times report saying, “It has to be clear the motivation for the crime is sexual orientation,” — arguing that a gay slur being used during a fight doesn’t necessarily constitute a hate crime. Gevirtz declined to comment when contacted by the Phoenix. Attempts to contact Little were unsuccessful.
Cook County prosecutors decided to charge Little with committing a hate crime and aggravated battery after reviewing the incident and finding significant cause to press felony charges, said Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office spokesman Andy Conklin.
Garanzini declined to comment and has not issued a statement about the alleged hate crime. He said he could not comment because it is a criminal investigation.
Assistant Dean of Students Jeremy Inabinet, who heads the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution, declined to comment on Little’s case specifically but explained how Loyola responds when any student is charged with a serious crime.
“Any time we get wind of an incident that is serious in nature like this where a student is facing felony charges, we issue what is called an interim suspension,” Inabinet explained.
“Which means you can’t be on campus and you can’t go to classes, pending the outcome of a conduct hearing.”
Inabinet said his department can’t comment on specific conduct cases or disclose personal information about students in that process, and declined to comment on if the university had reached out to Little or say if his hearing process has started.
Inabinet did say that Loyola has known about Little’s situation since early last week and that the university typically begins the student conduct process immediately for serious incidents like this.
A conviction in Cook County Court wouldn’t automatically get Little expelled, but his chances of staying at Loyola would be slim at that point, Inabinet said.
“It would be extremely unlikely that you would still be a student at this university [if convicted of a felony hate crime],” Inabinet said. “You would probably be in jail, number one. So I don’t think being in school would be at the top of your list.”
Equality Illinois’ Gottschalk felt that if Little is found guilty, “he should be expelled. No question.”
Inabinet said that Little could still be expelled from the university even if he beats felony charges.
“You can be found not guilty in criminal court but be responsible for violating one of our policies and still be removed from the community based on our handbook,” he said.
The Loyola Student Handbook lists strong sanctions for incidents in which race, religion, gender or sexual orientation are concluded to have been motivating factors in a crime being committed. Inabinet said that expulsion is “on the table” in any such case.
Daniel Hauff, 33, claimed that Little and companions Kevin McAndrew and Benjamin Eder, who are facing the same charges — beat him after Hauff attempted to stop Little from bullying another male on a northbound CTA train, according to police reports.
Hauff, who is openly gay, said he boarded a northbound Red Line train at Belmont that night and saw Little “gay-bashing this 18 or 19-year-old boy who had been minding his own business and talking on his phone.”
Eder and McAndrew, two 23-year-old Evanston men not enrolled at Loyola, watched while Little called the passenger a “faggot” and shoved him, Hauff said.
“The fact that it was a young gay male that was being beaten [would have been] very personal to any lesbian or gay that you’re probably ever going to encounter,” Hauff said. “Because many of us have been assaulted and battered in the past — and no one stood up for us.”
Hauff said it wasn’t until after he told Little to stop that the Loyola student turned his attention to him — this time with Eder and McAndrew’s help.
According to a police report filed after the incident, the three men repeatedly called Hauff a “faggot” and began punching him in the face. At the Argyle stop, the altercation moved off the train and continued on the train platform, according to the report.
Hauff said he was bleeding profusely from his nose, and in a desperate attempt to stop the attack, he said he smeared his blood on the defendants and then lied and told them he was HIV- positive.
“At that point they didn’t touch me anymore,” Hauff said. “And I’m not HIV-positive, so I didn’t put them at any risk.”
Hauff was taken to an emergency room: he said he sustained a deviated septum, bruises and cuts to the face and double vision on the left side of his head. Little, Eder and McAndrew were all arrested and initially faced misdemeanor battery charges, but Hauff said he pushed the State’s Attorney’s office for more serious charges.
When Little, Eder and McAndrew appeared in court for the original misdemeanor charge on Jan. 24, the lesser charge was thrown out and the men were taken into custody for the more severe hate crime and aggravated battery charges they now face. The next day, Cook County Judge Ramon Ocasio issued a $10,000 personal recognizance bond for each of the men and the case will be continued March 17.
Daniel Coyne, McAndrew’s lawyer, said that documents presented in court by the prosecution are inaccurate because they don’t clearly state that the incident occurred because Hauff was a homosexual, despite allegations that anti-gay slurs were used. The complaint fails to explain how “someone did something because the person was a specific category of individual,” Coyne said.
“When it comes down in the body of the complaint to alleging with specificity why it was a hate crime, that document was defective,” Coyne said. Eder’s lawyer, Mark Ehrlich, did not return calls.
Inabinet acknowledged that some people might let the fact that a Loyola student is charged with a hate crime affect their perception of the greater Loyola student body. However, “most reasonable people know that’s unfair to do,” he said.
“I think the majority of people know you can’t [define] an entire group based on the actions of one person,” Inabinet said.
Neufeld said that though the alleged hate crime is “really hurtful and very painful,” it brings a very important issue — hate and intolerance of gays — to the forefront of public discourse.
“I wish it wasn’t a Loyola student, but these unfortunate situations have a way of drawing attention to something that’s really ugly,” Neufeld said.
5 comments
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