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EAST LANSING, Mich. - The campus of
Michigan State University has been rocked by recent acts of racial
intimidation directed toward black students. The student body at the
state's largest university made their voices very loudly heard on
Tuesday night that these acts will not be tolerated.
"The incident that really jump-started this movement was an incident
at Akers Hall where someone wrote 'No Ni**ers, please' on a door of a
young lady's room," said Mario Lemons, the president of the
MSU
Black Student Alliance (BSA). "The residence life staff told us not to
talk about. Of course, someone took a picture of it and sent it to one
of us."
The picture set off a firestorm on campus and online, even starting
the hashtag #MSUBlackUnity on Twitter. An estimated crowd of 1,000
MSU students of all races filed into Conrad Hall for a town hall meeting on the issue of racial intimidation on Tuesday night.
"We put it on Facebook and Twitter and started a dialog about it,"
said Lemons. "From that came more stories of other people going through
things on campus."
These incidents included other racist messages being scrawled on
doors; outright physical acts of racial intimidation; and the initial
incident of a black doll being hung from a beaded noose in a chemistry
lab shortly after the school year began in early September.
"There are people overtly saying the n-word," said Lemons, a senior
from Detroit, majoring in education. "People telling other students that
they don't belong here, saying that they only got here because of
Affirmative Action. Very unwelcoming things done to black people on
campus."
The Akers Hall incident was directed toward Tinisha Sharp. Sharp was
leaving her dorm room to go to chemistry class last week when she saw
the slur written on the dry-erase board. Since she was the only black
student living in the room with three other students, it was very clear
the message was directed at her.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," said Sharp, a sophomore from Detroit.
"It was very surprising to see a message like that. I really thought
this type of discrimination had been ceased by this time. But I guess
not."
Sharp moved that same day from Akers Hall to another dorm across campus. According to the
MSU registrar, of the over 47,000 students that were enrolled at
MSU in 2010, 3,175 -- or 6.7 percent -- were black.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon issued a statement, via e-mail, to the
MSU students
and faculty on Tuesday afternoon. It said that the university was
investigating the matters and that she is concerned by these actions.
"The University supports free speech including the use of words that
are offensive to most in our community," Simon said. "However, given the
nature of these incidents, the
MSU police
were immediately contacted and the matter has been turned over to them
to investigate, not only as a form of vandalism, but also as potential
ethnic intimidation. I am personally awaiting the outcome of the police
investigation."
"In my many years at
MSU, this rash of
incidents at various parts of the campus in such a short timeframe is
unmatched, is extraordinarily troubling and creates a legitimate concern
that all of us must address."
BSA feels that the University administration stood idly by and let these incidents happen.
MSU has no explicit policy on racial intimidation, and generally handles any incidents internally.
"A lot of people in the black community (at
MSU) found some of the comments she made in her e-mail problematic," said Silver Moore, an
MSU junior and
BSA vice
president. "It didn't address the severity of the situation. We felt
that the letter should've said 'No, this should not be tolerated." That
kind of passion wasn't in the letter at all.
"If you are apart of the black community, reading that, you don't
feel like your issues matter because it was kind of passive. We would've
liked to have heard that a week ago."
These frustrations were on full display on Tuesday. Many students voiced their concerns about discrimination on campus.
"The n-word is being written on our doors and confederate flags are
being hung," MSU student Jasmine Fountain said. "Meanwhile, the
university stands by and does nothing."
Brittany Harvey, a junior, said somebody drew a swastika on her dorm
room door last week and wrote offensive words two days later. "This year
my picture was torn down in the hallway," Harvey said. When Lemons
asked how many students had experienced some form of racism on campus,
hands went up all over the room.
"We had an open floor for people to talk about if they had
experienced something," Moore said. "It was really a time for us to let
our voices be heard. It was supposed to be a safe place, a place to
receive comfort and see that we are not alone."
It wasn't just black students that were there. Allies were there,
from any minority group, whether it be cultural minorities, the
LGBT community, everyone came to support each other and bring solidarity and awareness that these things can't happen any more."
"We're taking a stand to say that this is not tolerable, and that
change is upon them," said junior Dedric Cotton. "It's human nature to
fear change. This needs to occur, this needs to happen. As an
African-American student here, I want my family to be able to come here
and feel comfortable and feel like this school will make them into a
better person."
News of the incidents quickly spread throughout the state. News media
from Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Lansing ran the picture of the slur
scrawled on the door on the front of its websites and led television
broadcasts. From afar, it outraged
MSU's black alumni from as well.
"In my five years at
MSU, not once did I experience racism," said Ashleigh Hunter, a 2004
MSU graduate. "Racism is on the rise in this country. It's become more blatant within the last year."
There have been numerous incidents of racial intimidation in high
schools around Michigan in the last few months. On Sept. 26, a
17-year-old boy from Ida, Mich. -- 12 miles north of Toledo -- was
stabbed multiple times after allegedly hurling a racial slur at a
16-year-old black student.
An even stranger incident occurred on April 20 in Birmingham -- 15
minutes outside of Detroit - where a disgruntled student wrote on a
bathroom wall that five black students at Seaholm High School should be
lynched. The student who wrote it, 19-year-old Courtney Thomas, is
black.
He did it out of anger after being bullied. He was barred from
commencement, sentenced to a year's probation and 100 hours of community
service yesterday.
While incidents such as these have been rare at Michigan State, they
have left lasting impressions on those that have dealt with them in the
past.
"I remember my freshman year in 1999, someone had written 'KKK' in an
East Holden Hall elevator and we held a meeting hosted by Holden's
Black Caucus," said
MSU alumna Latrice
Jackson-Walker. "It's sad that more than 10 years later that students
are still faced with racism. Some things changed but some things never
change unfortunately."
The message sent buy members of
MSU's
student body at the town hall was that enough is enough. Lemons admitted
that he did not expect the meeting to draw as many people as it did.
"We felt that the 1,000 people that were there last night were our
supporters," Lemons said of the standing room only crowd. "Now the
dialogue is open for the whole campus. I've heard people say they're
outraged and they didn't know these things were going on.
"Even though we had 1,000 people at our town hall, there's still an entire campus of people who had no idea."
The investigation into the culprits is ongoing and the university
insists that they will find the people responsible for the racial
intimidation.
Black student groups from across the state of Michigan, including
Western Michigan University's National Pan-Hellenic Council, have vowed
to help
BSA with some of their upcoming
protests they plan to hold on campus. They plan on continuing to hold
the university accountable and assist students who feel they are being
singled out because of their race.
"I think our faces are kind of getting out there more now," Moore
said. "We want students to be able to voice their concerns. People were
saying after the picture went up on Facebook that 'we went through
something like that too' and we want to hear about it. At the end of the
day, we're here for advocacy, we're here for the students."
"This was my number one pick as a school," Cotton said. "I love this
school with all my heart, so the fact that this is happening, I won't
allow it and my family here at Black Student Alliance won't allow it,
and my community won't allow it.
"There's no way we'll allow this negative stigma to be associated with Michigan State University."
