Black Students at St. Louis Univ. Respond to On-Campus Hate Speech

By Carla Murphy May 09, 2014

Following a recent fatal shooting at two Jewish community centers allegedly by a former KKK leader, hate messages have been appearing on the campus of Saint Louis University (SLU), a Catholic university in Missouri. The St. Louis American reports that:

On Saturday night, someone accessed the computer connected to a projector in the Busch Student Center at SLU and changed the text on the large screen to read, "Nazis rule f*** niggers and fags." The week before, students discovered a swastika arranged out of tealight candles outside the Marguerite Hall dorm.

About 100 students attended a Tuesday night press conference called by SLU’s Black Student Alliance.

"These actions … gives light to the reality that many students of African descent face while at Saint Louis University," said Christopher S. Walker Jr., president of the alliance. "Students of African descent at Saint Louis University have been repeatedly subject to acts of racism, and in turn, receive idle resolutions, lack of transparency and stagnation from the administration."

Immediately following the Busch projector incident, interim university president William Kauffman launched an investigation to identify those responsible. The Black Student Alliance is making a number of demands including increasing the number of black faculty and students.

"What really hurts us is that you can have a scholarship in Martin Luther King Jr.’s  name but only have 6 percent of the recipients be black students," said Jonathan Pulphus, academic chair for the alliance and an upcoming sophomore. "What hurts us is when the strongest contingent of blacks on campus happen to be the people serving food and cleaning the campus."

(h/t St. Louis American)