The Facebook conversation that roiled the University of Minnesota Duluth in mid-April continued to reverberate last week culminating in an emotional forum on campus.
“What we see here is an escalation of vitriolic bigotry and racism,” said Helen Mongan-Rallis, who facilitated the Wednesday afternoon gathering of about 100 students, faculty and administrators in the Rafters, a meeting place on the top floor of the Kirby Student Center.
“The outrage [is] that White people would act so surprised that this happened,” said Mongan-Rallis, who is White and a native of South Africa. “For people of color this is not new.”
What happened was a conversation on the social-networking site Facebook on April 14 between two White female students after a Black female student entered the room, describing the Black student and referring to her race in derogatory terms. The conversation was posted on the students’ “walls,” making it available to all of their Facebook friends, and it quickly spread from there. One of the students has 786 friends on Facebook, Mongan-Rallis said.
What disciplinary action the two students will face, if any, remains to be determined. Deborah Petersen-Perlman, the school’s equal opportunity director, first met with them on Monday, she told the forum. They have 14 days to file a response before any action will be taken.
Mongan-Rallis read the transcript of the conversation at the beginning of the forum. The audience — the majority of whom were White — listened in uncomfortable silence.
But speaker after speaker said the problem goes much deeper than one incident.
