Campus Racial Incidents

A mural depicting several notable African Americans on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis was vandalized and defaced with racist graffiti. The faces of some of the African Americans were painted over and the name of a White supremacist group was painted on the mural.

People dressed up in Ku Klux Klan outfits were seen in a residential hall at the University of Utah trying to recruit students for a White supremacist group. In another incident, human excrement was found smeared on the dormitory room door of a Black student.

According to published reports, the president of Alpha Phi sorority wrote to group chat members, “I’m gonna yack, it smells so bad in here,” referring to the atmosphere in a local bar. Another member agreed, before another member wrote, “cigs, weed, and black girl.”

A university contractor was making a delivery to the loading dock at a residence hall on the campus of the University of Utah. Two students in a room above the loading dock shouted the N-word and threw sunflower seeds and coffee pods out the window at the individual below.

A racial slur directed against African Americans was found on a window of a common area in a  residence hall at Worcester State University in Massachusetts.

Posters and stickers referencing the Patriotfront, a known white supremacist group, were found attached to doors, signs, and posts at various locations on the campus of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Racist emails and online messages have recently been directed at Black students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Also, it was reported that a motorist yelled a racist slur at a group of Black students on campus.

After a banana was taped to the door of two Black male students’ dorm room at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, students at the college complained that the administration's response to the incident was slow and not sufficient.

In 2014, Dr. Nicholas Alozie claims he was passed over for promotion as dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at Arizona State University due to the fact that he criticized the university's hiring process and record on faculty diversity during his initial interview. A jury has awarded him $375,000, agreeing that Dr. Alozie was a victim of illegal retaliation. The university has vowed to fight the verdict.

The suit claims that "Dr. Brian Mitchell has experienced a nearly continuous pattern of discriminatory interference with achieving access to fair terms, conditions, and opportunities for advancement."

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has removed a 70-ton boulder from the heart of campus. In 1925, the rock was removed from a campus construction site and placed near Washburn Observatory. The boulder became know as "niggerhead rock."

In 2018, of the more than 34,000 criminal incidents that occurred on the campuses of postsecondary institutions and were reported to police or security agencies, 814 incidents were classified as hate crimes. Race was the motivating bias in 43 percent of reported hate crimes.

A mural on a rock at Northern Kentucky University that contained support for Black student organizations was vandalized with the logo of the Patriot Front, a White supremacist group, and the N-word was founded scrawled on a plague at Kent State University in Ohio.

The message displayed on a white board at the Multicultural Student Center asked “Why do you celebrate Black History Month?” The answers to this question found on February 26 during Black History Month said “What history?” and “Because it’s a joke.”

Several virtual Zoom events hosted by CUNY campuses were the targets of hateful attacks by individuals who infiltrated the online forums and posted racist, White supremacist messages and images. The events included campus celebrations of Black History Month.

Reuben Brigerty stated that "they have trashed our lawn with beer cans and liquor bottles. They have left threatening messages on pilfered signs near our back door and they have taken measures to ensure that my family and I saw the indecent insults that they left behind."

The authors of the study, published by the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis, found that an increase in reports of state-level hate crimes predicted a 20 percent increase in Black first-time student enrollment at HBCUs.

Administrators at Historically Black Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville received at least two racially offensive voice mails following the presidential election.

More than 100 students participated in a sit-in at the administration building after a pro-Black Lives Matter T-shirt with the phrase “Yes they do” on the front was defaced with a racist slur and placed on a table in the laundry room in a campus dormitory.

The university’s Black African Coalition noted that due to current racial tensions in the country “it is very likely that incidents like this will continue to happen around our campuses and the surrounding area.”