ARC President Melanie Dixon receives racist threats from former student
The district has filed for a temporary restraining order and has increased on-campus security
American River College President Melanie Dixon received racist threats from a former Los Rios Community College District student, according to an email sent on March 10, 2022 by Brian King, the LRCCD chancellor. The district has filed a temporary restraining order and increased security at ARC and for Dixon. (Photo via Pixabay)
On March 10, Brian King, the chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District, revealed in an email that Melanie Dixon, the president of American River College, recently received racist threats from a former LRCCD student.
“The messages were aggressively vulgar and hateful,” King said in the email. “The messages were deeply, deeply upsetting, both personally and professionally.”
The district has filed for a temporary restraining order and has increased security, according to the email sent by King.
“We quickly filed for, obtained, and served the individual responsible with the [temporary restraining order], and already have a court date set for a hearing to make the action permanent,” King said. “The order includes protections not just for Melanie, but for the entire ARC and Los Rios community. We have also increased security at ARC and for Melanie personally.”
King says that this attack affects the whole LRCCD community.
“I can’t, and won’t, begin to suggest to know how Melanie feels in the face of what she is going through,” King said. “I do, however, understand that an attack on Melanie is an attack on our entire community.”
King says that Dixon will share her perspective when the time is right.
“In the weeks ahead, at her own pace, she will share her perspective as she sees fit. Her strength has been an inspiration to me, and her commitment to—and faith in—ARC, its students and employees, has never wavered.”
King says that there have been recent incidents of racist graffiti in Sacramento schools and that this is a reminder that racism still exists in the community.
“There is an extraordinary amount of work to do in our efforts to make Los Rios an anti-racist organization. That work must and will continue to force us to look in the mirror in deeply introspective ways about the role that we all must play in finding a way forward to make everyone in our community feel safe and heard,” King said.
According to King, the LRCCD fully supports Dixon and the African American community.
“Today, I hope you will all join me in sending love and compassion to Melanie, and our entire African American community, and offering support in every way possible.”
This is a developing story that will be updated as more information becomes available.
Riz Koross • Mar 15, 2022 at 10:37 pm
Apparently, the person who made the racist threats to Melanie Dixon was apprehended tonight by Los Rios police on the campus of Sac City College for having violated a restraining order that was supposed to have kept her from any Los Rios College. Anyone who would flout a penalty she received just days before is, in all likelihood, suffering from some sort of mental illness. (That she did what she did in the first place is a sign of mental illness as well.) The inference by the larger community has been that her outburst is yet another sign that Sacramento, and this country, is still in the throes of massive and systemic racism. I differ. I do not doubt that we do have racial inequalities that need to be cleaned up, but we are considerably less racist than when I was a child in the 1960’s. In fact, there is no comparison. Segments of our society would have us believe the opposite and point to incidents like this one as proof. In reality, it is an isolated incident perpetrated by a person who is mentally ill. (Sick. Infirmed. Not well.) Although her actions speak for no one but herself, certain factions readily utilize incidents like this one in hopes of dividing us even more than we already are. Sadly, most people take their bait every single time, not knowing that is what they are doing. Isn’t it time we wake up and learn to think critically and not emotionally?
Stevie Mercer • Mar 17, 2022 at 9:03 pm
Clearly you’d like to think so. You make statements as though they were absolute truth when in fact it’s all conjecture based on nothing but your opinion. Glad to hear that you think things are better than they were in the 60’s. Hope that’s true but it doesn’t make what’s going on now in away way acceptable. This is in fact NOT an isolated incident, it is one in an ongoing stream of racist incidents directed at the Los Rios community. If you followed the news coverage you would know that. And by the way, there’s a difference between being mentally ill and racist alas you can be both at the same time. Learn to think critically and not emotionally? How about we grow up and take accountability for what’s going on in our communities and DO something about it instead of finding ways to dodge the issue.