Kansas State opened a multicultural center. Someone then wrote racist messages inside
Just weeks after Kansas State University opened its new Multicultural Student Center this semester, someone scribbled hateful messages about Black History Month on a discussion board inside.
Now students say the college continuously fails to protect students.
“There should be no tolerance for attacks on students at Kansas State,” student Mia Schindler wrote in a letter to university President Richard Myers and other school leaders.
Hate messages, including “Why do you celebrate Black History Month?” “What history?” and “Because it’s a joke,” were written across a whiteboard Feb. 26 inside the the Morris Family Multicultural Student Center.
In response, K-State leaders scheduled a diversity dialogue for Monday evening.
Students called for the university to dedicate a full academic week, annually, to diversity training for everyone on campus, starting by May. They said if that doesn’t happen, they will call for the resignation of university leadership.
“You should be willing to stand with us, for us,” student Nikela Reed, a sophomore, said during Monday night’s meeting. “This should keep you up at night. You should be working until the sun comes up. You should be willing to put everything on the line for us. You should be willing to go to war for us. It is your responsibility to protect your family and stand with your Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ students as we face hatred and bigotry on the grounds of Kansas State University.”
She warned that Friday’s incident could result in students withdrawing from the university “because people don’t feel safe here.” And she said, “This will lead to something worse … including violence.”
The university did not immediately respond to a request from The Star for comment on Monday. But on Saturday, K-State officials placed a “University response to white nationalist posting” on the school’s website, addressing the “hurtful writings” on the discussion board.
“The intention of these open forums is to positively engage in dialogue and support Black History Month. These actions are not in keeping with our values and do not support our goals of creating and sustaining a climate of respect for all students.
“The university condemns white nationalism as being in opposition to our values.”
Schindler said students she has spoken with are upset because the board is in “plain view,” in a hallway of the center.
“It was absolutely disgusting what I saw and I was in shock that this could happen at the K-State multicultural center,” said Vedant Kulkarni, a senior running for student body president. “Students are frustrated and just done with these kinds of incidents.”
The center was built to be “a safe place for all Kansas State students,” especially those in marginalized groups, Schindler said. It’s now “a place that no longer feels safe.”
The incident, Schindler said, “does not affirm the inherent dignity and value of every person, and it does not maintain an atmosphere of justice based on our respect for each other,” claims she said the university has touted recently after several other racist incidents on campus.
“It is great to see Kansas State celebrate Black History Month, support Black Lives Matter at football games, and build the Multicultural Student Center as a place for all students,” Schindler said. “My concern is the perception your minority and non-minority students have when Kansas State shows support in those ways, but then stays silent on issues of this magnitude.”
She added, “A lot of the frustration among students comes from the fact that there have been incidents on campus before and relatively no action has been taken.”
Last summer, then-K-State student Jaden McNeil, who was the head of K-State’s controversial America First Students chapter, posted offensive tweets about the death of George Floyd, the 46-year-old Black man killed under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Students expressed fear about returning to campus in the fall, citing a climate of intolerance.
President Myers, denounced the tweets but said despite student calls for McNeil to be kicked off campus, the university could not expel him because McNeil was exercising his First Amendment rights.
Myers then released a list of actions the university would take instead, including improving the process for receiving complaints of discrimination, developing a social media policy for students, training for staff, scholarships for minority students, and recruiting and retaining more students and faculty of color. The multicultural building was already under construction.
Myers said at the time that the university would use the summer incident “as a catalyst to more crisply define the way we will work to stop hate at K-State and combat racism on our campuses.”
“But very little progress has been made on that,” said Schindler. “What, was that just for show.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2021 at 3:30 PM.
