This week, unidentified vandals left white supremacist messages scrawled across campus. White chalk lettering and posters bearing the words “it’s ok to be white” appeared in residential colleges and academic buildings.
“White nationalist messages left recently on our campus try to break the foundation of the social justice we strive for at UC Santa Cruz,” said a Nov. 5 UCSC press release. “We will not let cracks form.”
The university hasn’t released information about specific steps it will take to prevent further white supremacist action on campus, but the Nov. 5 press release urged students to photograph graffiti and send documentation to reporthate.ucsc.edu. It also assured that all unauthorized postings will be removed by residential life staff.
Last year, similar fliers were posted around campus. On Oct. 18, 2018, then SUA External Vice President Davon Thomas, and current SUA President, posted a picture on the Official Group of UCSC Students Facebook page of one such flier. He encouraged students to take them down. In May 2017, Campus Diversity Officer Teresa Maria Linda Scholz and Acting Vice Provost for Academic Affairs & Diversity Martin A. Berger released a statement about white supremacist posters.
“[The posters] are produced by an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a white nationalist hate group,” Scholz and Berger said in the statement.
While there’s no connection between these incidents other than the content of the messages, the pattern persists.
