CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. ? Suddenly, Greg Thrasher wasn’t so sure he wanted his two children to even visit the University of Virginia, let alone enroll there.

They had already been accepted to the commonwealth’s flagship school. But when the news broke last month that police had been collecting random DNA samples from black men in their search for a serial rapist, Thrasher was offended.

“I was troubled because I didn’t want to become an arbitrary victim, nor did I want my son to become one,” Thrasher said in a telephone interview from Detroit, where he directs a think tank.

For a school struggling for years to recruit minority students and faculty, the controversy could not have come at a worse time. Many on campus had thought the school was finally recovering from a recent spate of racial incidents that had polarized students and led to the creation of two special commissions on diversity.

Now faculty and administrators find themselves again defending the school’s record on race. Some wonder whether enough is being done to combat the school’s unwelcome reputation of being racially intolerant.

“When things like this happen, unfortunately, I’m usually the only person who speaks up,” said M. Rick Turner, dean of Office of African-American Affairs. “I’ve asked my colleagues, and they’ve said that folks don’t really want to be confronted with these issues. They hope and pray the next day will come and it’s forgotten. But racial issues are not forgotten so easily.”

The university has made increasing black enrollment a priority, but the number of black undergraduate students has fallen from 12 percent in 1993 to 9 percent a decade later.

Administrators say increased competition for minority students and a hiring freeze are partly to blame. But some students say elements of institutional racism remain, made apparent by a series of incidents in the last two years.

Daisy Lundy, far right with leg brace, listens to students and faculty speak Feb. 26, 2003, at Newcomb Hall on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Lundy, a candidate for student council president at U.Va., told police she was assaulted by a man who made a racial slur after he slammed her head against her steering wheel. The case remains unsolved.

One that garnered national media attention was a Halloween fraternity party where at least three guests wore blackface. One man was dressed as Uncle Sam and two others were dressed as tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams. The two fraternities involved were suspended by their national organizations.

There were also two assaults on students, one a candidate for student body president. Both attackers allegedly used offensive language. One case remains unsolved; the other victim is suing his assailant and the man’s fraternity.

After news of the DNA testing broke in April, the university’s silence was telling to some. Turner said the only discussion of the matter took place at a student forum he helped organize with police Chief Timothy Longo. He said no white administrators attended or spoke with him about it.

“It expresses a lack of concern for the greater community and people who are marginalized generally,” said fourth-year student Kasie Scopetti, who is white. “There is no racial dialogue. There is racial tension. … People don’t want to talk.”

Police have asked 197 black men for cheek-swab tissue samples since the dragnet began in November 2002; of those, 187 have complied and all were cleared. The program was stepped up last year after a victim gave a detailed description of the rapist, who is being sought for six attacks between 1997 and 2003.