Flyers Promoting Gay-Bashing Event Called Hate Crime : Cal State Northridge: Some say the ads, offering free baseball bats to participants, are the latest display of growing intolerance at the campus.

Distribution of flyers offering free baseball bats for a “gay bashing and clubbing night” at Cal State Northridge is being investigated as a hate crime, Los Angeles police said Monday.

Campus police officers recovered one of the flyers attached to a pole near Darby Avenue and Prairie Street, on the west side of the campus, Saturday, campus police Lt. Mark Hissong said. Students reported seeing flyers elsewhere, but Hissong said campus police had found no others.

The flyer depicted a stick figure knocking off another stick figure’s head and promised “free Louisville sluggers” to those who responded by gathering in a nearby parking lot on Saturday evening.

“Come join us for the first annual gay bashing and clubbing night,” the flyer invited in bold-faced letters. “Smear the queer. Why waste your money at the batting cages when you can practice your home runs for free?”

“Squish the SQUISH,” the flyer urged, referring to a campus group, Strong Queers United in Stopping Heterosexism, which held a “kiss-in” on campus Friday.

“It is being considered a hate crime,” Los Angeles Police Sgt. Steven Vinson said. “The distribution of the flyer itself is a hate crime.” State law defines hate crimes as those that target members of minority groups for violence.

Hissong said the flyer invited readers to gather at the “Northridge Park parking lot,” which could refer to either a student residence or a nearby city park, and campus officers were watching both locations.

University officials said they did not know who was behind the flyers, but if students are found to be responsible, punishment could range from a formal reprimand to expulsion.

Two students said Monday that they had seen the handouts posted in classrooms and on campus bulletin boards. About 10 others said they were unaware of them. By early afternoon, the campus appeared to be free of the flyers, which SQUISH member Mat Rodieck, 25, said he had seen torn down by outraged students.

CSUN President James W. Cleary said he had not seen the flyers but condemned their contents.

“The university will not condone any activities which promote hatred and violent behavior,” Cleary said in a statement. “If there is any single place in our society where opposing and diverse views have a right to be aired without threat of intimidation or prejudice, that place is a university campus.”

University spokeswoman Kaine Thompson said administrators had received at least three calls from students who felt threatened by the flyers.

“It’s not fair,” Rodieck said. “It promotes attacks on me. Our community literally is under attack these days.”

SQUISH held a strategy session Monday evening, and about 30 members and supporters then staged a candlelight march on campus.

Members said they would demand that the student government and Cleary condemn violence against homosexuals. They also planned to stage a “die-in” Wednesday, drawing chalk outlines of bodies on campus, and hold a seminar Friday on anti-homosexual attitudes and hate crimes.

“I was very angry,” said SQUISH member Stephanie Harris, 23, a senior in deaf studies. “It made me realize what I’m doing is important,” she said of the organization, which was founded about two months ago and has about 60 members.

Three students interviewed said they believed that the flyers were a reaction to the tactics used by the gay-rights group.

“They’re making such an effort to publicize themselves and say this is who they are that they kind of have to expect opposition,” said Michele Dempsey, 21, a senior in speech.

Two other students said the flyer exemplified an increasingly intolerant campus.

Last month, signs decorating a ceremonial hut used for a Jewish holiday were defaced with anti-Semitic writing and swastikas. The vandals have not been found.

“I think there’s a level of non-tolerance,” sophomore Monica Lousberg, 19, said as she walked to class. “There’s this ideal person and, if you’re not in that group, you’re not worthy.”