The University Bias Incident Team held a meeting on Oct. 21 at 1 p.m. in the University South Room at the Markee. The meeting covered the bias reports from 2021 to summer 2022. 

UBIT is made up of 12 UW-Platteville representatives from almost every field. This is the fifth year UBIT has existed and gathered data on hate-based incidents. 

There have been a total of 90 reports submitted to UW-Platteville, 89 occurring on the main campus and one at the Richland branch. This is a 136.8% increase from the 2020-2021 reports, which only reported 38 incidents. 

These reports include the types of hate and how the hate was committed. Most groups were targeted due to race, sexuality, gender and/or national origin. Many of these incidents took place verbally, with the other common forms being written and social media communications.

The increase in reports may not represent an increase of hate on campus, but rather an increase in the number of reports being filed due to widespread awareness. In the meeting, it was emphasized that UBIT has no way of truly knowing how many hate incidents occur on campus every year, but the more people report when incidents happen, the better UBIT can understand and respond to trends.

In response to the spike in reports, UBIT has been training and educating the student body through lectures about hate and bias reports with the help of other campus groups. They have also been able to combat the problems at the source, saying they always reach out to reporters, when they can, to see if they’d like to resolve the issue either with the individuals involved or indirectly by offering more information that can help in future incidents.

Students who feel that they have been involved in, witnessed or heard of any hate-based incident occurring can go to go.uwplatt.edu/ubit to fill out an incident report. Reports can be filed with complete details or anonymously.