Zach Petrizzo/Vicki McKenna on Student Expelled from Marquette

The student was expelled in due to a supposed “racist” photo that circulated among black students on campus. This in spite of the fact that the image that caused all the uproar was not racist, and fell into the hands of a black student due to the expelled student’s careless use of AirDrop on his smart phone, with no intention to do any harm to anybody.

Zach Petrizzo has been on top of the story for Campus Reform, and he discusses it with Vicki McKenna.

Scapegoated for “Racist” Picture that Wasn’t Racist: Update

From Zachary Petrizzo of Campus Reform, who has been following the case closely, and investigating in-depth: an update on the student who was expelled from Marquette in a racial hysteria. All due to a supposed “racist” photo that was not at all racist. Some cogent points:

• A Marquette University student was recently expelled after coming forward to explain the context of a photo that had sparked fears of racism on campus.
• Alex Ruiz said he took responsibility for accidentally sharing the photo with a classmate in hopes of mollifying the outrage on campus by explaining that there was no racist intent.
• Instead, Marquette subjected him to a disciplinary hearing that led to his expulsion for “discriminatory harassment,” a verdict that was upheld on appeal.

More details:

One night, according to a campus police “Incident Report” obtained by Campus Reform, Alex and friends were playing a “game” in which they would randomly scroll through their phones while the “Apple Airdrop” function was on, which allows photos to be sent to all nearby devices without specifying a recipient, resulting in the photo being unintentionally shared with a classmate.

According to the university, “sending [photos] to another person is harassment.” Ruiz and his father both told Campus Reform that they are deeply “apologetic” about what occurred, but feel that the university was not fair in its handling of the matter.

Sending photos to random people who happen to be connected to the same Wi-Fi hotspot is pretty dumb. But undergraduates do dumb things. Intentions matter. There was no intention to send the photo to a black female student, and the photo was not racist — unless you really, badly want it to be racist.

Ruiz’s father asserted that he had made “multiple attempts” to contact university officials, even calling President Michael Lovell, but said Lovell ignored “multiple requests” to speak to the family even after they flew from Colorado to Marquette to meet with school administrators.

Ruiz’s family originally immigrated to the United States three years ago from Mexico, and continues to struggle with English fluency. The father claims that the university summarily “dismissed” his outreach, and was looking to “out a student” to calm the outrage on campus.

Note that Ruiz would be a “person of color” and entitled to special treatment in other circumstances. But when it’s convenient for Marquette officials, he’s just another privileged white male.

Another Photo

In addition to the widely circulated photo of four guys pretending to be gangsta rappers, there was another photo of “an edited image of a black male’s face on a gorilla.” That certainly sounds racist. But in fact, it’s probably largely irrelevant.

In the first place, nobody seems to have the image. While the gangsta rapper image is all over Twitter, and posted with news articles on the incident, we have been unable to find the other one. It appears that all the fuss has been over the benign image, and not this second one.

Secondly, Ruiz explained this image to the campus cops:

RUIZ stated that the photos were not racially motivated other than some friends taking random pictures for fun. RUIZ stated the second photo of a gorilla with a M/B, face attached to the body of the gorilla, is a cropped photo of his high school. RUIZ identified the M/B as HS Friend. RUIZ stated the circumstances surrounding this photo was just more friends having fun and sending out funny pictures among each other via group massaging.

Given that Ruiz was a teenager, and migrated to the U.S. from Mexico only three years ago, it’s unlikely he would know how toxic the meme of associating black people with simians has been.

The campus cops, who had both photos and had talked to Ruiz, explained:

I contacted Milwaukee County District Attorney Kelly HEDGE and informed her of the incident and due to the lack of intent by RUIZ no criminal charges for harassment would be issued.

I then spoke with [the complainant] at MUPD and informed her that the investigation was wrapping up and informed that the individual that sent the photos had no intent to harass her and was not targeting her.

What Did He do Wrong?

Marquette outlined his supposed crime in a letter expelling him. It says the images he sent were “discriminatory and racist,” but doesn’t explain how.

Why not? Because any such explanation (especially when addressed to the image everybody saw) would be unconvincing, and the university is committed to the view that anything that anybody calls “racist” must actually be. Doing otherwise would be to admit that some students have a racial chip on their shoulder, and may claim racism falsely.

The letter then goes on to outline the uproar on campus that resulted when black students widely distributed the rapper image.

The clear implication is that Ruiz was punished for the reaction of black students, rather than for what he actually did.

This constitutes a kind of “heckler’s veto” where people can shut up expression merely by taking offense. Admittedly, this expression was pretty trivial, but campus leftists have used the heckler’s veto to shut up important discussions of real issues.

Perhaps some punishment was merited, simply because of the sheer recklessness of sending random photos to random people. But again, intention matters, and Ruiz had no evil intention.

Marquette Stonewalls

Lovell’s bull-headed refusal to talk to the Ruiz family was of a piece with his disastrous attempt to fire this blogger, which was slapped down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last Friday.

We have always wondered about Lovell. Is he simply a bureaucrat pandering to the forces of political correctness on campus, such as the leftist faculty who wanted us fired? Or is he a rigid fanatic, who fully believes in his own righteousness?

This case has us leaning toward “fanatic.”

[Update]

Updated 7/13 to discuss the “second photo.”

Scapegoat: Marquette Student Expelled Over Gag Photo in Racial Hysteria

Given recent headlines, one would think that the Ku Klux Klan was running wild at Marquette. The Channel 12 website said:

MILWAUKEE — A disturbing and racially charged photo posted on Snapchat has some students on Marquette University’s campus upset.

“As a black student on this campus, I’m ashamed of what happened. It’s not right,” said Richard Nwabuzor, the vice president of the campus chapter of the NAACP.

[Deija] Richards said a lot of students in the black campus community don’t feel safe.

“I felt personally attacked, and I know a lot of people around me did,” she added.

So what does this scary image look like? Guys in KKK hoods? Rednecks with guns and a Confederate battle flag? Not at all. This is the image.

Click on Image to Enlarge

It’s quite obviously four white guys pretending to be gangsta rappers, with toy guns, hoodies, and gang signs (see the fellow on the right). The black doll isn’t any sort of demeaning image of a black man, but a hip looking fellow in a pinstripe vest who might be (say) a record company executive.

The word “chuuch” is, according to the Urban Dictionary, “an old pimp way of saying ‘Amen.’”

White guys staging a tableau of this sort may be a bit silly, but it’s not the least bit racist.

The fellow in the hoodie in the back (see the arrow) is a Marquette student. A Latino, we will call him “Enrique.” The photo was shot almost two years ago, with Enrique and some of his high school buddies and members of his soccer team.  The black doll was owned by one of Enrique’s buddies; he carried it around a lot.

Enrique’s dad, in an e-mail to the Warrior Blog, confirmed that his son’s intention was “merely a game” and not any sort of racist display.

Things Get Wild

Enrique, this past April, used AirDrop on his iPhone to send the photo to several people at random. Most thought it was humorous, but one black female student got the image, was offended, and complained loudly to other black students. An uproar ensued with over-the-top rhetoric and irate tweets, like this one:

I have the right to be at this university just like every other white student. I worked my ass off for my spot, twice as hard. And for the Lovell to laugh in the face of my struggle and oppression. Go fuck yourself. I am Marquette too.

— Saint Samantha 👑 (@SaintSamantha1) April 26, 2018

Of course, the College Democrats chimed in:

Hate crimes have no place on our campus. We expect Marquette University to hold these students accountable for their appalling behavior. This is a Jesuit University and we stand against... https://t.co/nyg4FWWyLt

— Marquette Democrats (@marquettedems) April 26, 2018

Panderfest

Naturally, in the wake of any claimed racist incident, campus bureaucrats will pander shamelessly, and that was certainly the case here. As Zachary Petrizzo reported in Campus Reform, the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of Mission and Ministry held a forum so that “we as members of the white community must take an increased responsibility to learn about our role in contributing to racism on campus and in our communities.” Never mind that it was only one Latino in the community who did something that was not racist — although perhaps ill-advised, given the number of people on campus looking for a racial grievance.

And of course Vice President of Student Affairs Xavier Cole chimed in saying:

Our job at Marquette, which we will do much more of, is to help provide safe spaces, provide support for our students of color but also for our majority students to provide tools that we need so we will be able to engage in meaningful conversations, solutions, and dialogues that not only make Marquette better, but our city, and then our state. . . . 

Campus bureaucrats love “racist incidents,” since they give them an excuse to expand their staffs and budgets with new “initiatives.”

More Pandering

Perhaps the creepiest pandering came from President Michael Lovell, who tweeted the following:

It bears repeating: We shouldn’t expect only students of color to respond to racism. I’m asking all of @MarquetteU to join me and share why you #StandAgainstRacism pic.twitter.com/ZzS4nlSxqU

— Michael Lovell (@PresLovell) April 30, 2018

Enrique Comes Forward

Noticing the uproar, and naïvely thinking he just needed to explain things, Enrique came forward to the campus cops. After an investigation, they talked to the woman who had complained and (according to the police report):

. . . informed her that the investigation was wrapping up and informed [her] that the individual that sent the photos had no intent to harass her and was not targeting her.

The campus cops forwarded their report to Campus Conduct officials. Unfortunately, those folks were out for blood.

Enrique was first given a hearing in front of two Marquette counsels, and then an appeal before a panel of Marquette faculty, after which he was expelled.

Even before the expulsion, his father explains that:

My son was removed immediately from the dorms and had to find where to stay for the rest of the year and had numerous . . . sleepless nights because of the whole situation.

Summarizing the whole incident, the father said:

Somewhere in April the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other communities gather together and talked about this and we never had the chance to voice our side of the story.

I do not see why [they would] punish a very good person and judging him just by one mistake he made to send a picture anonymously to another person that opted to received it instead of hearing the whole story and judging him by the whole person he is.

How Does Marquette Respond to Leftist Vandalism?

It might be useful to compare this case to one where leftist students in the feminist group Empowerment vandalized an anti-abortion display in October, 2016.


They covered over the display board with their own pro-abortion signs and tore up the blue and pink flags planted in the ground (representing boy and girl babies who had been aborted).

How were they punished? Each of the vandals was required to write a three page paper explaining how they acted irresponsibly. Two students refused to do this (claiming it was finals week), and they were given a semester probation.

Translation: slap on the wrist.

So a blatant, head-on attack on free expression got off with a trivial punishment, and a gag photo was punished with expulsion.

Conclusion

Marquette bureaucrats, quite simply, compulsively pander to the forces of political correctness. A lot of black students were up in arms about the gag photo, so the fellow in the photo had to be expelled. But several faculty intervened in the case of the abortion display vandalism, demanding leniency for the culprits. Marquette gave them a slap on the wrist for an offense far worse than the gag photo.

This is racialized “justice.” This is where Marquette is.

[Update: story updated 5:33 p.m. to correct ownership of the doll.]

[Update: story updated 7/16, photo not sent to people he knew, but rather random people.

Vicki McKenna Calls BS on Supposed Marquette Hate incident

From McKenna’s Facebook Page:

Vicki McKenna First, the story is that these guys are pointing guns AT the doll. They are not. They are holding airsoft guns WITH the doll. Airsofts are TOYS, NOT guns and the doll is a TOY, NOT a person. I have no idea what is going on in the pic, except it looks like 4 guys goofing on a doll that one of them bought, received or somehow chanced upon. Or maybe they’re playing “gangsta.” It doesn’t immediately look threatening, or racist. Just juvenile. No one knows the story behind the picture, though I am sure there IS a story behind the picture.

And it’s a PICTURE. There are whole videos of gang bangers from Milwaukee driving around in stolen cars flashing loaded REAL guns, and filming themselves beating the sh*t out of people. But that’s NOT ever a story for the local press.

Now, maybe these boys are just a bunch of future-white supremacists — but that is NOT evident from this dumb picture.

Lastly, I ask the two obviously rhetorical questions: 1. Why is this a story? 2. Why did Marquette apologize as an institution for a picture the institution did not issue or sanction?

A report on Channel 12 indicates that Marquette is not talking, due to an “ongoing investigation.”

McKenna does some more investigation, and notes:

Vicki McKenna So the picture says “Chuuch.” I google “Chuuch.” What pops up in a “song” (if that’s what you can call it) from a rapper named “Slim Thug” called “Chuuch.” Listen if you want. It’s 5:38 seconds of your life you won’t get back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-dM6ZpOvEE.

Then, because I am a glutton for punishment and time wasting, I googled “Slim Thug” generally, and listened to a few of his “songs,” one of them called “Boss.” Seems to me that that these white boys could very well be playing “gangsta,” and that little doll could be Slim Thug, perhaps even as “Boss.” Never mind, I’m sure it’s just racist.

What Was the Point?

It’s difficult to interpret the intention of the picture (see it in the Channel 12 story linked above). It is the case that the video McKenna linked to features an inspirational rap, apparently done in conjunction with megachurch pastor Joel Osteen.

It’s easy enough to Google the lyrics, and here is the first verse:

[Verse 1: Slim Thug]
Gotta get these blessings
So tired of stressing
Learning new lessons
Planning questions
It’s time for testing
Never ever resting
I’mma stay grinding
So I stay shining like a diamond
I’mma stay climbing to the next level
And do time and
Trying to line up with them bosses
Trying to soar high with them eagles
Can’t chill with none of you chickens
I’m tray get rich with my people
Too high to see you haters
Too blessed to play y’all mind
I ain’t got nothing to be mad at
I’m drop head top down
Thank you, God, all the time for helping me live my dreams
And for exposing all of those who wasn’t right for my team
I’mma keep receiving this games
If it’s for the better, I’ll change
Only live once, better do it right
I’m trying to leave a legacy, man

Slim Thug is apparently a rather mainstream figure in Houston.

Did the clowns who made the photo simply think that since the fellow’s name is “Slim Thug” that his persona is really “thug?” If so, they might be playing “gangsta.”  Other songs of his have much more aggressive and questionable lyrics.  But they named “Chuuch.”

Questions

What was the intention of this photo (and apparently others like it)? Were they implying they might shoot a black person? Or was it silly clowning?

Was the photo sent to a black person (it which case it might be interpreted as harassment), or was it floating around, and finally came to the attention of somebody at Marquette?

Just who were these guys? Marquette students? Or not?

Conclusion

A lot of people on college campuses just love “racist” incidents. For the bureaucrats, it allows them a huge opportunity to virtue signal with fervent and unctuous rhetoric, and implement programs that expand the bureaucracy.

For the Social Justice Warriors, it reinforces the illusion that they are the noble few defending “marginalized groups” against the sea of bigotry and intolerance that is American society.

But before we draw any conclusions about this incident, we need answers.

Another Bogus College “Hate Crime”

Not news, but we wanted to record it here: from the Chicago Tribune:

Marcus Owens is an African-American student at the University of Iowa, and he told police he was set upon by three white men when he left a bar to go into an alley to use his cellphone. The men beat him severely as they hurled racial epithets, he said. And with his front teeth broken, his lip cut so badly it required stitches and his face swollen, he certainly looked the part of the victim.

The attack was given considerable coverage in Iowa City and Chicago-area media, and the Iowa City police “treated the investigation as a major case with the dedication of all available resources,” according to a department news release.

Race-based attacks — hate crimes — are particularly sickening, particularly threatening, as they simultaneously intimidate and indict whole communities of people.

By examining multiple surveillance videos, what police said they found was that Owens, apparently quite drunk, was an instigator, not a victim, in three fistfights inside a bar and on a downtown street.

“The original altercations stemmed from a disagreement between two students who are members of fraternities,” said the police news release. “According to witnesses, the ‘n-word’ was used by one individual at the time of the second altercation … (but) the FBI determined that the facts of this investigation did not meet the criteria necessary to be labeled as a hate crime.”

The police news release also said, “According to multiple witness accounts, Owens was reported to have made statements being concerned about his injuries sustained during the altercations and how he was going to inform his family.”

Of course, the Social Justice Warriors got engaged:

Student and faculty supporters staged a protest on his behalf charging the university with insufficient urgency in response to a racially inspired attack (which did not take place on campus). They created a Twitter hashtag #explainiowa to whip up concern and anger.

“It is being applied to communicate moral indignation of Marcus Owens’ attack,” Cassie Barnhardt, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership studies, told the Iowa City Press-Citizen. The hashtag was intended “to provoke a response from university administrators, and it is serving as an invitation of sorts to prompt others in the community to think about and pay attention to acts of racial aggression and bias.”

There have been many such bogus racial incidents in the last few years. They are fueled by the fact that campus leftists immediately accept the narrative of black racial victimization, and don’t feel the need to wait until the facts are in. After all, instances of anti-black racism make them feel self-righteous. Blacks exploiting race undercuts a narrative in which they have a huge emotional investment. The campus leftists are, in effect, both encouraging bogus claims of racial victimization, and being exploited by people like Marcus Owens.

Bogus Racial Incidents on College Campuses

There have been a lot of bogus “racist” incidents on college campuses, incidents staged by leftists and members of minority groups, aimed at promoting a “diversity” agenda by making people believe that the modern college campus is just crawling with racists. And thus there needs to be a full court press to indoctrinate the entire student body into the shibboleths of political correctness.

A few examples can be found in Ann Coulter’s book Mugged.

White Gangs at Columbia University — 1987

In March 1987, eight months before Tawana Brawley became a household name, black students at Columbia University made the rather incredible charge that mobs of white students were beating up black students on campus. About a dozen blacks claimed to have seen or been victims of these racist attacks.

In the 1980s, American colleges were sturdy sentinels against the merest hint of a racist thought. There were seminars on racism, posters against racism, bake sales against racism, racism “awareness” days, articles denouncing racism, consciousness-raising sessions about racism. More resources were devoted to studying racism than studying history, chemistry or math. It would be hard to find a single person on an American college campus, at least post-1980, who would have one good thing to say about racism.

Moreover, the alleged perpetrators of these racist beatings at Columbia weren’t teenaged toughs with criminal records in a working-class neighborhood: They were college students at an Ivy League school.

But blacks claimed that whites were so terrorizing them that they were afraid to walk alone on campus. According to their spokeswoman, Barnard student Cheryl Derricotte, it was “open season on black people.”

The usual nonsense ensued. There were sit-ins, administration building take-overs, and noisy rallies outside the fraternity house said to harbor the white racist thugs. Fifty people were arrested as a result of the anti-racism protests. Most of them were white. Twenty-three Columbia students staged a sit-in at 1 Police Plaza in lower Manhattan to demand the arrest of the white students they claimed were beating up blacks on campus.

Black students formed a group to protect themselves from the marauding white mobs and — in what was always a good sign — hired C. Vernon Mason as their lawyer. “The message has gotten out,” Mason said, —“that black students are not safe on the Columbia campus and someone is going to have to answer for this.”

Newsweek quoted Frank L. Matthews, publisher of Black Issues in Higher Education, saying that he blamed the surge of college racism on white students’ “reading the messages” from the Reagan administration. Of course, another theory is that it was black students “reading the messages” from a media that gave full-court press to even simulated racist incidents and refused to hold black people accountable for false reports.

If you are not a journalist, it will come as no surprise that, after painstaking investigations by both the police and the very politically correct university, the whole thing turned out to be a hoax. According to dozens of eyewitnesses, it was black students who had started a fight with white students late one night after a dance, and then made up the cock-and-bull story about roving white gangs targeting blacks.

None of the newspapers and magazines that had reported the original story about white racists stampeding through an Ivy League campus ever got around to mentioning that it was a lie—not the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek or Time magazine. Careful readers had to wait for this admission in the Christian Science Monitor about a year later:

[T]he the university report on the incident, which relied on the signed statements of 22 eyewitnesses ...differed substantially from the account given by the blacks and used by the news media in reporting the story. [I]n the Columbia account, the actual brawl was provoked by a group of five to seven blacks outside the hangout. [T]heir story of “a white lynch mob” has since been discredited.

No charges were brought by the university or the police against the students for filing a false police complaint.

The national news coverage of a story about Ivy Leaguers as latter-day Bull Connors triggered dozens more of these incidents at campuses around the country. These were all hoaxes, too. But no matter how absurd the idea of marauding white students attacking blacks on college campuses, the false charges kept coming and liberals kept believing them.

Sabrina Collins, Emory University

A few years later, in 1990, Sabrina Collins, a black premed student at Emory College, claimed to have been the victim of a campaign of racial ha­rassment — “die, [N-word], die” had been painted on her floor, bleach poured on her clothes and typed death threats slipped under her door. Even her stuffed animals had been mutilated. As a result of these incidents, Collins fell mute and had to be hospitalized.

Hundreds of students held a rally to protest racism as a result of what had happened to Collins. One student, Leonard Scriven, denounced what he called the “pervasive system of racism” at Emory. At a meeting of students and faculty about the incident, a newly formed black student group, Students Against Racial Inequality, submitted a list of demands, including more black students and faculty members, two new centers for the study of African American culture . . .and the firing of the director of public safety, Edward A. Medlin.

The public safety office had already responded to Collins’s allegations by equipping her dorm room with additional locks, a portable motion detector and an alarm system. Safety officers patrolled her hallway as well as the area outside her dormitory building. The office of public safety had called in local, state and federal investigators. But the students against racial inequality wanted this poor guy’s head.

After a thorough inquiry, the Georgia. Bureau of Investigation concluded that Collins had perpetrated the racist acts on herself. Her fingerprints were the only ones on the letters and were arranged on the page in a pattern indicating that she had put the letter in a typewriter; the letters had been composed on a typewriter in the library she frequented; and, finally, the letters also spelled “you’re” as “your” — as was Sabrina’s habit. The incidents had begun just as Collins was being investigated for an honor code violation for cheating in a chemistry class.

No charges were pressed against Collins. The story vanished. Let’s just hope the head of public safety was allowed to keep his job.

Gilbert Moore, Jr., Williams College — 1993

Fake racist incidents on college campuses became as common as Madonna’s music. Against a background of daily lectures against racism, some racist letter or graffiti would materialize, there would be a generalized gnashing of teeth about the pervasiveness of racism and then the perpetrator would always turn out to be a black student.

At Williams College in 1993, hideous racist messages were found on the door of the Black Student Union. An uproar ensued. Two days later, Dean Joan Edwards announced to general relief that the culprit had admitted responsibility and was being punished — but neglected to mention that the student was black until two weeks later, as the rumor mill went wild.

Junior Gilbert Moore Jr. said he had put up the racist notes as a response to actual racism at Williams — of which there was no evidence or he wouldn’t have needed to fake it — and to encourage more dialogue about racism, because twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week was not enough. The college rose to the challenge — by suspending him for one semester. Enraged that a black student would be held responsible for anything he did, some black students denounced the harsh penalty, threatening to leave Williams. Moore concluded: “The system . . . has failed me.”

Alicia Hardin, Trinity International University — 2005

Federal investigators must have been getting bored with the hoax hate crimes on college campuses they kept being asked to investigate. After OJ, even the media’s hysteria was muted. Nonetheless, when three students at Trinity International University, a small Christian college near Chicago, received threatening racist letters in 2005, scores of newspapers across the country ran with the news.

A New York Times article on the alleged hate crime was bristling with references to the Christian nature of the school: “Christian College Secludes Students after Hate Letters ...a small Evangelical Christian college ...a conservative Bible-based school .. more than 20 students held hands in a circle to pray . . . Affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America, the university mission statement says that its education is based on ‘the authority of God’s inerrant word, Holy Scripture,’ and that it seeks an international identity with ‘people drawn from every tribe and tongue.’”

As is required by law, Jesse Jackson met with the victims of the letters, reporting that they “feel like a target is on their back because they are black.” Charlie Dates, a black student getting his masters in divinity, did not sound especially worried. He told the Times, “Crazy people do crazy things. It’s nothing to be terrified over.”

There was big coverage for the initial allegation. You would not read in the New York Times, however, that the perpetrator turned out to be a black student, Alicia Hardin. She had staged the racist incident because she “wanted to switch schools.” But as soon as she confessed, the Times lost interest in the story.

So did most of the newspapers from around the country that had given banner coverage to the original story. Only a handful bothered informing their readers about the investigation’s results. When the hoax part of the story was reported at all, it usually showed up in demure, hundred-word items buried deep inside the newspaper. 

Instead of bemoaning the runaway popularity of Fox News, the liberal media might consider cutting into Fox’s popularity by not aggressively hiding the news.

None of the racist incidents sweeping college campuses ever turned out to be true. They were either the normal bumps and jostles that come with being a human being — or, more often, they were complete frauds perpetrated by wannabe victims.

Here at Marquette

Which brings up a supposed evidence for racism at Marquette. From a statement signed by a few dozen leftist faculty:

The evidence for Marquette’s racist climate is manifold: explicitly racist comments such as “black lives don’t matter” on the social media site YikYak; racist graffiti in the campus library; daily microaggressions and more.

Somebody needs to produce the offensive Tweets from Yik Yak; at the moment we don’t see anything objectionable. Of course, the comment could have been removed. If there was such a comment, it could have been a hoax, or indeed could have been a lament about the low value put on black lives.

Likewise, we would like to see the “racist graffiti.” In this era when everybody has a smart phone, there must be an image, right? And is it a hoax too? Even if some racist did it, he’s not likely to repent and see the error of his ways due to some Stalinist reeducation.

As for “microaggressions,” the concept is defined absurdly broadly to include things at which only somebody with a chip on their shoulder would take umbrage. Indeed, some perfectly reasonable expressions of opinion are defined, by campus leftists, as “microaggressions.”

The simple fact, of which anybody who knows Marquette students is fully aware, is that they are not racist. Do they sometimes hold opinions that campus leftists don’t like? Opposing affirmative action, for example? Or believing that the biggest problem blacks have is not white racism but the small number of black children who have a dad? Most certainly. And they have every right to believe those things.

But that’s something leftist faculty don’t accept.