Tulane University fraternity divides campus by building a ‘Trump wall’

A Tulane University fraternity caused an uproar at the school by building a “Trump” wall in front of its off-campus house.

Frat members painted Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” on the wall made of stacked sandbags. The word “Trump” was also painted on.

Kappa Alpha Order builds a wall around its private property every spring before its annual “Old South” formal ball, according to The Times-Picayune.

Tulane University spokesman Mike Strecker told the newspaper that frat members added Trump’s name and motto as satire.

But when pictures of the wall began circulating online a backlash came quickly.

GENTE, a Latino student group on campus, launched a social media campaign to protest the wall, which called it “a source of aggression towards students of color on this campus.”

“We decided we would speak up about it because, just as they were given the liberty to display something like that, we were equally going to use our freedom of speech to speak against how this made us feel,” GENTE president Ana De Santiago told the school’s student newspaper, the Tulane Hullabaloo.

In a Facebook post, De Santiago wrote that “by writing Trump in large, red letters across the ‘wall,’ KA changed what was a tradition of building a wall into a tradition of constructing a border, symbolizing separation and xenophobia.

“This issue not only affects Latinos but all other marginalized immigrant groups in this country.”

As news of the protests spread, the fraternity’s chapter president, Joe Bonner, sent an email to GENTE president-elect Dillon Perez, who had also taken to social media to protest, the student newspaper reported.

“I am very sorry students found this offensive," Bonner wrote. “As soon as I was notified that students complained, the wall was dismantled. ... I would really appreciate it if you would take your social media posts down, and encourage others to do the same. I find them uninformed and disrespectful.

“We took the time to meet with a panel of students and explain many things about our formal, including the wall. We told you then it was a joke.”

GENTE member Katalina Euraque, a Tulane junior, said the fraternity’s argument that the wall was merely satire showed an unwillingness to understand the concerns of students of color.

“I feel like it's typical white privilege to say, 'oh it's a joke, it's funny,’” Euraque told the Hullabaloo. “It's just a joke for you because you're not impacted by it.”

A YouTube video posted on Tuesday shows a group of unidentified people tearing down part of the wall. Facebook posts identified them as Tulane football players.

In a statement issued to The Times-Picayune this week, fraternity national executive Jesse Lyons said the Trump slogan, “written on a makeshift wall on our private property, normally used for a game of capture the flag,” was meant “to mock the ideologies of a political candidate. This had a unintended negative effect ...”

Tulane issued its own statement on Wednesday saying that the fraternity’s actions “sparked a visceral reaction in the context of a very heated and divisive political season” and that the school is working with the fraternity, both locally and nationally, as well as multicultural groups on campus and concerned students, to address what happened.

In the meantime, the school’s Division of Student Affairs posted a security guard at the frat house.

“I think that it is really absurd how (Kappa Alpha Order) is getting some form of physical protection because they feel threatened by the fact that a few students decided to dismantle that wall,” said De Santiago.

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 10:11 AM with the headline "Tulane University fraternity divides campus by building a ‘Trump wall’."