Post by Vince524 on Jun 7, 2017 12:10:13 GMT -5
Various anonymous messages that have popped up after a stabbing spree on campus that left one student dead indicate some members of the University of Texas Greek Life community may feel unsafe and targeted at the school.
The murder, in which a knife-wielding black student, 21-year-old Kendrix White, stabbed several white peers before being arrested by police, came on the heels of repeated vandalism targeting Greek Life houses near the Austin campus, such as graffiti stating “racist rapists.”
“Vandals of UT,” the anonymous student group claiming responsibility, say their actions are a response to white supremacy and elitism and hope the graffiti serves as a warning to the university that underprivileged students are unafraid to fight back.
“We were responding to the everyday crisis that is rape culture, white supremacy, and elitism,” the group said in an April 21 statement posted at itsgoingdown.org.
“It is no accident that so many fraternities take the style of plantation homes—the institutions of Greek life are themselves colonial, bourgeois, patriarchal structures, founded to preserve the reproduction of elite classes. Our attacks come in response to the everyday fear and feeling of danger that these institutions and their members produce for students of color, women, queer and trans students, and other marginalized folks. Catcalls, racial slurs, rape jokes, and more are the daily realities which go unspoken and uninvestigated by either the police or the University,” the statement continued.
It started during her first days on campus, when Kaufman faced the wrath of her classmates simply because of her political views. In high school, she wrote for The Odyssey Online and the conservative opinions she proffered therein made her disliked immediately at Emerson, she said.
“I walked into this school not being liked by a lot of people, getting nasty stares, getting weird comments on my whiteboard on my door …” she said.
She lost friends over the presidential election and was scared to leave her room in the days following, she added.
However, that wasn’t even breaking point. That came in March, after a chance meeting with conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at Orlando CityWalk.
“The legend himself…,” Kaufman posted on her Facebook page along with a photo of her and Yiannopoulos (pictured).
It seemed pretty harmless. It apparently wasn’t. The photo found its way to a group called “All the brown pplz,” a Facebook page comprised of Emerson students. There, a student referred to Kaufman as a white supremacist, according to screenshots of the thread obtained by The College Fix.
“She’s my suitemate,” commented another student, with her words followed by an emoji and a gun pointing at it.
One student mentioned Kaufman’s future role as a campus orientation leader and the comments devolved into whether Kaufman should lose that post because of the photo. Some felt that was taking it too far, but others pressed for action.
This fall a new conservative thought class debuts, one which will host guest speakers at talks open to the campus community. And a student-led effort is underway to bring even more conservative speakers to campus.
This comes after students addressed leaders at the downtown Boston college about what they described in recent interviews with The College Fix as a vicious and even “hateful” form of progressivism on campus.
“[Emerson] has been very not open to the idea of people who have different opinions and it’s really come to a boiling point over the past few months,” said sophomore Erik Picone, who identifies as a libertarian.