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PrintCOLUMBIA — Residential Life members worked Saturday afternoon to scrub racial slurs from the base of a sculpture outside Hatch Residence Hall. Although the words are gone, their impact has left a mark on the MU community.
This was the third racial hate incident at MU in the past three years. In May 2009, MU senior Terence Williams found a racial slur written on the door of his dorm room. The next year, in February 2010, two MU students scattered cotton balls in front of MU's Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center.
The incident has left some students wondering whether MU should do more to embrace diversity on campus.
"I think we need to talk to the incoming freshmen about racial issues," Bryan Like, president of the MU's NAACP collegiate chapter, said in a previous Missourian report. "You shouldn't have to pay per credit hour for a class to receive the education that brings about change."
MU Chancellor Brady Deaton released a statement Saturday afternoon that said, "I speak for our entire university community when I say we are dismayed and deeply offended and have zero tolerance for this hurtful and destructive behavior."
Should MU implement more diversity training?
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Comments
While Terence Williams was the victim of absolutely unacceptable conduct, I don't think it's appropriate to put his case - an incident directed against a single person and written on a cork board - in the same class as vandalism that sent intentional and public messages to the university's black community during a time when celebration, unity, and our collective recognition of progress should all be at their highest point.