Racist Messages at Marquette?

A message from the Marquette administration:

A message from university leaders
APRIL 24, 2018

Dear members of the Marquette community,

Earlier this week, one of our students received a series of electronic images from an unknown sender. These images carried disturbing racial overtones. We are thankful that the student came forward and reported this incident to the Marquette University Police Department, and shared the images. MUPD immediately made our administration aware of the situation, and currently is devoting significant resources to its investigation. Anyone with information related to this incident should contact MUPD at (414) 288-6800.

While we continue working to uncover the source of these troubling images, we must make it clear: Incidents such as this are completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated on our campus. This is not who we aim to be.

As a Catholic, Jesuit institution, we must make every effort to ensure that every member of our community feels welcome. This lies at the heart of our mission, and informs everything we do.

As educators, we have an obligation to our students and our community to denounce racism and bigotry, and seek justice. Incidents such as this are a reminder that we must remain vigilant in these efforts.

If you, a friend or a classmate experience an incident like this, we want to know about it right away. Speak out. Here are several ways that you can make us aware, or seek other forms of support:

• Call MUPD at (414) 288-6800 or stop by their headquarters at 749 N. 16th St.
• File a bias incident report
• Contact or visit the following campus resources:
  • Office for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion
  • Office of Student Development
  • Office of Residence Life
  • Counseling Center
  • Center for Intercultural Engagement
  • Campus Ministry

As always, we remain committed to dialogue around one of the most important issues we face today.

Sincerely,

Michael R. Lovell
President

Daniel J. Myers
Provost

Xavier A. Cole
Vice President for Student Affairs

William C. Welburn
Executive Director, Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion

At the moment, this is all we know. Of course, there is a long of history of “messages” like this sent by social justice warriors to gin up a frenzy of self-righteous virtue signalling on campus.

And administrators rather like incidents like this, since it gives them an excuse to virtue signal, or (worse) implement a bunch of new “diversity” initiatives.

It’s a simple fact: any e-mail communication (or tweet or text, etc.) can be traced back to its source.

If Marquette is less than forthcoming about just who sent the messages with the “disturbing racial overtones” (were they really racist, or just politically incorrect?), that will be highly suspicious.

Update

We just received an update from Marquette. The key part:

Thanks in large part to members of our campus community who came forward with information, MUPD quickly identified a subject and conducted an interview. Our administration also has launched a conduct review process. The details of that process must remain confidential because of student privacy laws, but please know that we take this issue very seriously.