Campus Leftists Still Whining Over Removal of Terrorist Cop Killer Mural

From the Marquette Wire, an account of a meeting between some leftist students and the new Provost, Dan Myers. A key topic was the decision of the University to paint over a mural, in the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center, honoring black militant terrorist and cop killer Assata Shakur.

Some students expressed frustration over a university decision in May to remove a mural in the GSRC that featured FBI Fugitive Assata Shakur. Formerly known as Joanne Chesimard, Shakur is on a FBI most wanted list for escaping prison and fleeing to Cuba after she was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.

“It would have been nice to have some time to go and take a picture and have some dialogue before they just took it down,” said Nailah Johnson, a senior in the College of Health Sciences.

Some attendees said the decision was one of institutionalized racism. They expressed being hurt when little information or explanation was provided before and after the decision was made.

Johnson strongly and tearfully advocated for an apology from administration responsible for the decision, in addition to a space on campus to recreate what the mural symbolized. It was painted with help from Marquette’s Mu Beta chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and included quotes from “Assata: An Autobiography.”

In response to Johnson’s testimony, Myers said “I want to change things. I came here to change things. I am really committed to this.”

And further:

Bartlow’s former supervisor and William Welburn, associate provost for diversity and inclusion, was involved in the decision to remove her from the university.

“I believe very strongly that we are not going to have processes like this again, especially when it comes to issues of how this campus handles diversity and inclusion,” Welburn said. “Whatever we do moving forward, we have to think about women, women of color, African-American women specifically because of this incident. We have to think about the damage.”

These are bizarre responses. So not being willing to honor a terrorist cop killer is “institutionalized racism?” In what sort of alternative universe do these people live?

And how do we interpret Myers comment that “I want to change things”? Does Myers think Marquette is not politically correct enough? Or is he pandering to the campus grievance mongers?

Worse is Welburn’s comment. Does he believe that Marquette should always give “women of color” anything they want, no matter how absurd, or downright immoral?

Were the women of Alpha Kappa Alpha hurt? If we take the official statement from the national sorority seriously, they should have been embarrassed. According to a spokeswoman:

“The chapter worked with the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center to determine a theme and imagery for the mural,” the statement said. “The chapter, along with other university staff and students, painted a mural that featured an image and quote by Assata Shakur to promote student thinking about their educations and history. Unfortunately Ms. Shakur’s entire history and background was not fully researched. If that process had occurred, she would not have been featured in the mural.”

But the campus leftists don’t buy this. They keep insisting that the women of Alpha Kappa Alpha intended to honor a cop killer, and thus were “damaged” when their attempt fell through.

If this is true, they should be shamed for condoning (and celebrating) the actions of a murderer and terrorist.

But moral clarity is not something about which politically correct campus bureaucrats have any clue. Their impulse is to pander to any politically correct victim group.

But members of those groups are ill served by the pandering. When they leave the hot-house atmosphere of a college campus they (with the exception of a handful who find employment as life-long race hustlers) will find themselves in a world where leftist activism is controversial, and where being able to produce for an employer (or perhaps be an employer) pays off, and their experience whining to pandering campus officials has very limited value.

Update

A photo of the meeting from the Marquette Tribune website shows only very sparse attendance at the meeting described in this article. There is nothing wrong, of course, with Marquette officials listening to a small group of students, or even an individual student. But the “student voice” clearly has not endorsed the mural, nor objected to it being taken down.