Source: Muncie Star-Press, Herald Bulletin
MUNCIE -- A gay Ball State University student said he and his friends were attacked in The Village early Friday morning because of their sexuality.

"I consider it a hate crime," the student, Kyle Flood, told the Muncie Star-Press.

Flood, 21, Indianapolis, suffered a swollen eye, cuts and bruises and a scratched cornea that required treatment at Ball Memorial Hospital.

No arrests had been made as of Monday.

Ball State University Police Chief Gene Burton said attacks on gay students were rare.

"Let me put it this way, I've seen it before," Burton told the Star-Press. "But I could not tell you the last time."

News of the attack had started to spread among students as of Monday, according to Travis Schilla, president of Spectrum, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

"Ball State is a really a safe campus and the administration has taken this seriously," Schilla said. "Everyone is taking this seriously. It's been really good to see that people care."

Crimes based on sexual orientation represented 15.3 percent of all hate crimes reported in FBI hate crime statistics in 2006, according to Mark Potok, director of The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, a hate crime monitoring group.

And 12.2 percent of all hate crimes reported in the FBI's 2006 statistics happened on college campuses, Potok said.

Potok described hate based on sexual orientation as "the last bastion of acceptable discrimination and bigotry."

Indiana is one of the few states that does not have a "bias crimes" law that would add a sentencing enhancement for assaults and other crimes motivated by the offender's bias against the victim's membership in one of the classes defined by the law.

Bills have been introduced to add a bias-crimes enhancement to Indiana's laws, but have not passed.

State Rep. Greg Porter told the Herald-Bulletin that the state's resistance to a bias crimes law puts Indiana behind the times.

"It’s a travesty for a state like this to have no bias crime legislation on the books," he said. "It’s a travesty for this state to fail to protect people."

According to Porter, a Democrat who represents sections of central Indianapolis, some hate crime legislation was in front of the General Assembly this year, but it was killed shortly after it came out of committee.

Porter also said that this is the third year that he’s presented hate crime legislation to the General Assembly, and that he won’t be stopped from presenting it in the future.

"We will continue to fight for bias crime legislation, because it shows we accept all individuals to our state," Porter said. "It protects people from all walks of life."

Flood said the incident happened around 3 am as he and four friends were leaving Moe's bar, where they had been singing karaoke.

Two college-age men on foot approached the group and started calling Flood and his friends "[expletive] faggots," Flood said.

When a woman in Flood's party asked one of the men to "move on," the man put the woman in a choke hold and threw her to the ground, Flood said.

As Flood attempted to intervene, he was knocked to the ground and punched in the face.

Flood reported that another man in his group was also attacked.

The attackers fled with a third person, who was not involved in the attack, Flood said.

Ball State police arrived quickly and attempted to track the men down but were unsuccessful, Flood said.

The attack, and the fact that the men remained at-large, has affected Flood's sense of safety.

"I don't think I'll be going to the bars in Muncie in a long time," Flood said.

Full article: Ball State student says attack was hate crime | Muncie Star-Press
INTOLERANCE: Hate crime laws date to 1969 | Herald Bulletin