WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University students, faculty and staff upset by the recent discovery of the words “white supremacy” written on a mirror inside the campus’ Black Cultural Center turned their grievances into a protest march that ended outside the school’s main administration building.
A mix of more than 200 Black, White, Asian and Hispanic men and women marched Monday afternoon past the West Lafayette campus Memorial Hall to the steps of Hovde Hall, which houses the offices of Purdue’s top administrators.
The Journal & Courier reported ( http://on.jconline.com/13TQiUf) that the protest started quietly before the group erupted with energetic chants, shouting “This is what diversity looks like!” “The people are the power!” and other slogans.
The protesters are upset by an incident last Friday in which the words “white supremacy” were found written on a mirror inside the Black Cultural Center.
Purdue’s University News Service said in a statement released Monday, however, that Friday’s incident was not an act of vandalism but was an unintentional transfer of words from a sticky note during an educational seminar.
Nonetheless, organizers of Monday’s protest said the incident, whether intentional or not, follows after a series of race-related incidents on campus.
FBI statistics rank Purdue second in the nation among public and private universities for the number of reported hate crimes. Those rankings are not objective, however, because reporting of hate crimes by universities is inconsistent.
