Wake Forest University in North Carolina has a strict policy to protect students from racial discrimination and harassment. They even have a bias response team. Yet after a conservative student was harassed by others, and mocked for being white, the school did nothing.
Anthony Palumbo reports at the Wake Forest Review:
Wake Forest Declines to Enforce Harassment Policies for Conservative StudentWake Forest University claims to not allow verbal abuse that is “obscene, profane, or derogatory” and the commission of any offense that is “motivated by the race or any other defining characteristic of an individual.” But when one writer for the Wake Forest Review faced persistent harassment at the intersection of race and politics, the Dean of Students Adam Goldstein and the Bias Response team chose not to enforce these rules against leftist students.After two Wake Forest students handed senior Ryan Wolfe a box of saltine crackers and photoshopped his face onto a cracker, Wolfe requested to open a judicial case under the verbal abuse and racial harassment policies.“I support the free speech rights of students,” Wolfe said. “But in this case, I wanted to see if the school would enforce their rules surrounding verbal and abuse equally regardless of who was involved in the case. I knew that similar rhetoric about the identity of other groups would not be tolerated.”A few weeks after these requests, Goldstein told Wolfe that the committee would not take action and that he should not want them to do so because it would only “make things worse” for him.According to Wolfe, Goldstein went on to justify the students’ actions by saying that they did this because “Trump won” the election. However, the Future of the GOP event happened over a week before election day.Instead of a judicial case, or no contact order, or mediation, Goldstein told Wolfe that the students involved would take part in a meeting at the LGBTQ Center where they would be asked: “Is this the community you want to live in?”
Hat tip to Rob Shimshock of the Daily Caller.
Most conservatives don’t want bias response teams or speech restricting policies on campus but if we must have them, they have to apply to everyone equally.
In January, Wake Forest Students made the administration aware of a video making the rounds on social media which reportedly contained a racial slur about an adviser. The university president released an official statement on the school’s website:
WFU statement about troubling video on social mediaWake Forest University President Nathan O. Hatch sent the following message to students, faculty and staff tonight.Dear Wake Forest Students, Faculty and Staff,Over the weekend, students made Wake Forest University leaders aware of a deeply troubling video on social media of a student admitting to using a racial slur when referring to a resident adviser.In a message to the campus community Saturday morning, Vice President for Campus Life Penny Rue stated, and I affirm, racist and discriminatory acts are not tolerated at Wake Forest. We are committed to building a welcoming community in which all members are supported, and in which dialogue and understanding prevail.University leaders took this matter very seriously. Staff in the Division of Campus Life immediately began an investigation and offered additional support services to students.
Do these same concerns not apply to Ryan Wolfe?
Featured image via Wake Forest Review.
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