<p>College students, if you simply cannot help but espouse your racist (or sexist, or homophobic, etc) observations on social media, at least make it private, folks! Once it's on the internet, it doesn't every really go away. Of course, I would personally add to not espouse those sorts of comments, period, but people obviously will continue to.</p>
<p>I didn't go to a big Midwestern university when I was in undergrad. Is this sort of thinking very common (severe derision and xenophobia towards East Asians in particular, I mean)?</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, two girls from my former college posted really nasty, racist remarks about an African-American girl from their building on Facebook. The comments were posted as private, but that didn’t matter. It was discovered, became a huge ordeal, and the two students responsible were expelled. The girl whom the comments were about ended up transferring schools as soon as she could. Awful situation. </p>
<p>By now, absolutely everyone should know how to be responsible and careful with social media (even “private” social media). And there’s never an excuse for racism. </p>
<p>As far as how common a situation like this is, it doesn’t seem to occur often, but it isn’t unheard of. I don’t know why you’re singling out the Midwest, either. This kind of thing could happen at colleges in any part of the country.</p>
<p>This is awful and unbelievable. Naturally, whoever made the latest post regretted writing such comments only after being caught. No kidding!</p>
<p>I attended a big midwestern school, U of Michigan, 30 years ago and I can honestly say I never heard one racist comment in the four years I was there.</p>
<p>“former hater” is a tag. Give me a break. You’re not going to not become racist just because your university scares the **** out of you. </p>
<p>She needs to be removed. The university should have zero tolerance about this.</p>
<p>Ohio, I can tell you I’ve heard racist remarks at both U of M and MSU, the two large schools I’ve visited/attended.</p>
<p>I was in a fairly progressive dorm, East Quad. Intolerance was very much frowned upon. There was an atmosphere of acceptance. Cannot speak for other dorms.</p>
<p>what a whole bunch of idiots.</p>
<p>What embarrassing bigotry. Were they really dumb enough to post those thoughts on the internet? How could anyone think it’s acceptable to say something like that, especially in a forum for the entire world to see??</p>
<p>smh</p>
<p>This may be a dumb question, but I don’t see why some idiot posting crap was threatened with expulsion?</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s disgusting, but how does that constitute grounds for requiring mandatory counseling/etc? </p>
<p>(TBH, I got so disgusted by the 4th or 5th post that I stopped reading - was there a threat in there?)</p>
<p>I went to a university in Ohio, supposedly the top ranked public, for a semester and transferred out. Initially, I had family and friends telling me to be careful going to a predominantly white school where non-white students made up about 15% of the student body. I shrugged it off because, you know, it is 2012, not 1960.
They weren’t completely wrong, though. The school had a “large” population of wealthier Chinese international students and I heard disgusting things people would say about them. It was terrible. And, being the only black girl out of my group of friends I heard some really disgusting remarks about me and black people too. “Why are black people so violent?” or “I thought I saw you today, but it was another black girl. Black people look alike.” The icing on the racist cake was on Halloween, my suitemate’s boyfriend decided to go as an ape to a party. One of his drunken friends referred to it as being “N-worded” up to my suitemate. My jaw hit the floor. In an attempt to apologize to me, he wanted to give me a banana but my suitemate talked him out of it. There are a slew of others. I could write a book. </p>
<p>This stuff wasn’t 100% why I transferred but it was a big part of it. It’s hard in situations like that especially if you are “alone” (save for a few friends here and there) in this country. I don’t think I could take it. Schools need to make more of an effort to prevent this kind of stuff. It’s not easy to report when it is verbal but stuff on the internet? Find some loophole…maybe they used university WiFi and nip it in the bud. 0 tolerance.</p>
<p>Because you can’t espouse hate speech on campus. Freedom of speech only protects you against legal ramifications. Any person, corporation, or other entity is absolutely free to deny you service (in this case, education).</p>
<p>ladeeda6, I’m so sorry to hear that you experienced that treatment, I can’t imagine! I’m glad you were able to transfer out, hopefully to a school where you were treated much much better. </p>
<p>I’ve seen a lot of comments- not here- of people crying “freedom of speech” and that these students may say whatever they choose to say. Of course they can, and obviously have. What these commenters don’t know or understand is that freedom of speech is not also freedom from consequences. You may speak as you please. But you are not also immune to people’s reactions to that speech.</p>
<p>When a student lists their full name, picture, location and university in their Twitter and proceeds to publicly tweet racial slurs or racist “jokes” or “observations,” they are in their full right to do so. What they have no immunity against is negative reaction to their comments. I would never personally advocate vigilante-style harassment, physical or otherwise, of people caught making these sorts of comments. At the same time, it was the student’s CHOICE to make his or her repulsive comments public in the first place. Ohio State’s administration seems to have reacted swiftly, appropriately and thoroughly to handling these students.</p>
<p>Colleges should do mandatory freshman orientation classes about the importance of social media privacy and how the internet works in disseminating and memorializing information. On top of, of course, some freshman diversity education emphasizing that the world is a big place full of very different people and college can be where you learn to actually tolerate, if not embrace, that fact instead of deride and mock it.</p>