And the University of IL acted swiftly to have the “Illini White Student Union” page removed.
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“The third, and most alarming, post stated, ‘Feel free to send in pictures you take of any black protestors on the quad so we know who antiwhites are.’ In addition to sharing a couple of sources “devoted to fighting antiwhite racism”, the Illini White Student Union went so far as to post a screenshot of a Black woman UIUC student’s facebook page, including her full name and profile picture, along with her Facebook post that speaks out against the Illini White Student Union’s page”.
The page’s anonymous admin said he would not reveal his identity because he said he feared for himself, his academic career and his family, but told Local via Facebook message that he was an NYU student from New Jersey. It has since been revived.
In an anonymous message to the News-Gazette, the page’s administrator discussed Black Lives Matter.
“We wanted to give white students in our school an opportunity to have their first organization on campus”. “… We are in the United States and not Africa and we don’t desire to have an African flag on campus”.
Facebook A screengrab shows the so-called “Illini White Student Union”, which surfaced after an earlier version of the Facebook page was taken down Wednesday.
A recent post was a clip from the 1998 film “American History X”, in which Edward Norton plays a white supremacist.
The page also posted a link to a 2014 NYPD crime report, writing that white people were being demonized even though black people commit most crimes. The page now describes itself as a ‘White Student Union for the University of Western Ontario and affiliate colleges, representing all Western students of European ancestry who study at UWO’.
Student or not, university administrators strongly denounced the effort.
The NYU White Student Union page’s description says that the group was inspired by the recently created White Student Union at UC Berkley. The original page said the union was created “to be able to form a community and discuss our own issues as well as be able to organize against the terrorism we have been facing from Black Lives Matter activists on campus”. MSNBC reached out to the group for comments but did not receive a message.
“The page lets us know that there’s work that needs to be done at NYU in terms of understanding of diversity and inclusion”, Johnson said. “We recognize that passions run deep on all sides of many issues, but actions like this are senseless and hurtful and do nothing to foster meaningful dialogue”. A few social media users pointed to a 4Chan post from Sunday as proof the page might be a sick joke.
“It is so sad to see that such ignorance still exists in 2015”, one commenter wrote.
The creator of the page, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to safety concerns, said it’s hard to differentiate between the serious threats and those who are simply trolling.
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Renee Romano, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, alleged that the institution has reported the page to Facebook and asked for its removal. The group was troubled with how the White Student Union appeared to be targeting specific black students. Alan Scroggins, a 37-year-old stay-at-home dad from Rantoul, Ill., wrote.
