HATE SPEECH MARS WAGNER COLLEGE FESTIVAL
Police Looking Into Vandalism Claim At School’s Songfest
By JOHN METAXAS, WCBS 2 HD News
Monday, March 30, 2009
STATEN ISLAND (CBS) Hate on campus.
A longtime tradition at Wagner College turned into a racially charged vandalism spree.
Now police are investigating.
Hate can be found almost anywhere, but it was still unexpected on the picturesque Staten Island campus. On Monday night students were still outraged that racial slurs and vandalism marred the school’s Songfest celebrations held over the weekend.
“It was pretty upsetting, shocking this goes on in 2009 … definitely,” student Michelle Rossman said.
“Especially because we’re a small school … it’s sad this happened,” added student Ashlee Hillier.
The vandalism was targeted at a minority group, the Nubian Student Union. Their posters for the event were torn down and defaced with the n-word and more disturbingly the group’s candidate for Songfest queen found one of her flyers on the door of her dorm room with a noose drawn around her neck.
That candidate, Ashlee Redmond, proudly wore the crown she won Saturday on her head Monday but refused to speak publicly about the episode.
The school was quick to react, telling students it will not accept this kind of behavior and called in the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force.
“We want them to find out who did it and hold them accountable,” Wagner College vice president Joseph Romano said.
If there’s a redeeming aspect to any of this it’s that the student body voted Redmond in as Songfest queen a vote of support people here said means hate is not the winner.
Wagner College is asking any students with information about who might have committed these acts to report them to the school.
WCBS News story, March 30, 2009
January 19, 2011
Text Size
