Racist Incidents at Syracuse University Putting Students, Faculty On Edge
On Monday evening, students cramming at Bird Library at Syracuse University, a private university in upstate New York, received a strange and terrifying file via Airdrop. The file, which was also posted on a forum for Greek life on campus, contained the violently anti-Islamic manifesto of the Christchurch shooter, who massacred more than 50 worshippers at a mosque in New Zealand earlier this year. “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” the message attached to the manifesto said.
The posting of the white supremacist manifesto came at the tail end of a number of what students and faculty have described as a tense and frightening time, following a slew of racist and anti-Semitic incidents on campus, including a swastika being drawn in the snow, racist graffiti drawn on campus buildings, and members of a campus fraternity yelling racial slurs at a female student of color. Though federal and state law enforcement officials have been called in to investigate, classes have not been suspended, and officials have released little information about any potential suspects.
“Perhaps the biggest reason this string of incidents is so scary is because there’s so many unknowns,” says Sam Gelfand, a 22-year-old SU sophomore. “[We] don’t know if it’s one person, several people, if it’s a group, if it’s white supremacists, if it’s a horrible attempt at a joke, if it’s someone trying to get finals cancelled…I could go on and on. We don’t know who, or what, we’re up against.”
For the past few days, campus activists have sharply criticized what they claim is the administration’s ineffectual response to the harassment on campus; they have also prompted a student-led sit-in movement, which has been occupying the campus’s Barnes Center, the university’s new student-wellness center, for almost a week. Many students have said they are too afraid to leave their homes, prompting many faculty members to cancel classes in solidarity. “Tensions are really high,” says one 21-year-old student of color, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of reprisal from the administration or harassment from white supremacists nationwide. “They want us to go to class and perform at our highest, but I couldn’t imagine sitting inside a lecture hall knowing I could be harmed at any moment. People are scared.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/syracuse-university-sit-ins-activism-white-supremacists-914771/
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