Colorado State University President Joyce McConnell released another statement to the CSU community in response to a bias incident last week and a protest today on The Plaza and outside of the Administration Building.
The email referred to a statement from the CSU department of ethnic studies in response to the bias incident, where posters containing racist messages about diversity appeared on campus.
Ad
“These posters are a form of violence against historically racialized and marginalized people as well as a direct affront to the clearly stated and repeated campus goals of diversity, inclusion and an equitable community,” the department’s statement said.
The statement also said the posters challenge and misrepresent the diversity work on campus, and the department of ethnic studies calls for recognition of the harm and threat to community members of color.
In the email, McConnell said that hateful messages, like those experienced recently on The Plaza, too often target marginalized communities and added that speakers who “deliberately reject” the Principles of Community do so to elicit a response such as violence.
“Let’s not rise to the bait of hatemongers,” the email said. “Instead, let’s raise our own voices together to counter hateful speech.”
McConnell also said the recently published Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging module was launched to provide students an opportunity to explore their identities and to learn about allyship and bystander intervention and key concepts related to inclusion and belonging.
McConnell’s email said that she applauds the students exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech in a planned protest on Friday, Sept. 17. The protest was organized by @calloutcsu on Instagram, which was created in response to campus preachers who were demonstrating harmful speech on campus last week.
Noah Pasley can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @PasleyNoah.
