GRANVILLE, Ohio
Nooses on a poster advertising a Halloween singing concert set off two weeks of debate and protest at Denison University, a largely White liberal arts campus.
The college choir, which had invited students to “come hang with us,” removed the posters, canceled the concert and turned the event into a forum on discrimination.
But some students say the ad was the last straw and exposed an ugly side to this expensive university situated in a quaint central Ohio town.
“It was like enough is enough,” said Romero Huffstead, a senior and chief minister of the Black Student Union.
Black students complained about ongoing cases of racial slurs and graffiti and racially tinged harassment. Gay and lesbian students complained of slurs and anti-gay graffiti.
The controversy followed the discovery of nooses elsewhere around the country, including the University of Maryland and Teachers College at Columbia University in New York.
