According to multiple Facebook statuses and several posts on Twitter, posters like the one above appeared around campus likely sometime overnight. The posters read: “Illegal immigrants in your town? Do your part!” and figure a white woman stylized as a cartoon and present a phone number for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I’ve blocked out the number above so as to not reproduce this dangerous piece of information. According to accounts that have been circulating on social media, there are other posters around campus referencing “white genocide.”
Several people on Facebook have been calling for these posters to be removed, sharpied-out, and/or posted over by anyone who sees them. I want to reiterate these calls and say that whoever is responsible for these posters is absolute filth. In addition to bystander actions, Public Safety should be actively removing these posters around campus, as they are a threat to students and full time Middletown residents.
It is hard to say whether or not these were posted by a Wesleyan student, especially given the scope of national press coverage of Wesleyan’s sanctuary campus declarations last fall.
If the person/people responsible do attend Wesleyan, they should not be a member of this community. Our campus is not safe and most certainly isn’t a “sanctuary” if people who would do something like this are allowed to attend. Wesleyan certainly has the resources and tools to investigate who is responsible and I implore them to do so.
If you have any information about these posters, please email staff[at]wesleying[dot]org, submit an anonymous tip, and also reach out to public safety. We will update this post with more information as it comes in.
[Updated, 4/24/17 @ 12:23PM]
According to sources, there was a band of white “protesters” near the 100 block of Washington Street around mid afternoon. According to the source, “they were old white people that had signs that said stuff like ‘white America is real America.'”
Immediately after posting this article, someone sent an anonymous tip to our TipBox accounting for an anti-black racist poster near Fisk that they recently removed:
Just saw your post about the white supremacist posters. Wanted you guys to know there was one on a lightpost next to Fisk that was an anti-black lives matter poster basically saying that black people were murderers and that it wasn’t “racism, it’s reality”. I’d send a picture, but I tore it down. Just letting you know, since i noticed that brand of racist filth hadn’t yet been featured in the blogpost.
Also, immediately after posting this, an ’07 alumni commented on the post (see below) with another photo of the posters and have assured students that they have their back:
[Updated, 4/24/17 @1PM]
Another poster containing Judeophobic messaging was also spotted on the corner of Church and High St.
[Updated, 4/24/17 @ 5:20PM]
Here is an image of the poster referencing “white genocide” that was mentioned in the introduction to this post. Similar posters were also seen near Long Lane Farm and subsequently covered up by students (second image).
“white peoples’ Native homelands”? I can’t even.
On the other hand, the money almost all of you are spending or borrowing to attend this exorbitantly expensive university is or will have to be earned and thus subject to the income tax which funds ICE, the military, and the institutionalized system of white supremacy. the taxes on the petty shit you buy like your bedpost stands and yerba mate and yoga mats fund the Connecticut police agencies. don’t think that just by making some graffiti or a blog post encouraging people to snitch on the snitchers you’re off the hook or something (protip: the university isn’t going to do shit, also you’re dangerous for encouraging the mentality that the police and administration should solve our problems for us). marginalized people are not your prop to make you feel better about yourself. resist the totality of oppression that your privilege and habitus confer on others. aesthetics are not a substitute for politics.
Lord knows encouraging people to enforce the law and letting white people know that their number are declining and being replaced is racist hate speech that needs to be silenced.
What a joke no wonder there’s a rise in right wing populism.
Very honestly, if you don’t think that these posters are racist then you’re just stupid, ignorant and uneducated.
Go fuck yourself bruh xD
None of those posters highlighted what you claim they highlighted.
Are you kidding me? Obviously, whoever posted the posters is trash, but posting the phone number for a DHS Department is not a violation of any sane code of conduct and is not a threat to the safety of anyone. Freedom of speech exists, and Wesleyan would and should be sued instantly if they punished someone for posting these.
Articles like this are exactly what fuels the right’s momentum. You’ve got to actually use critical thinking and be a little reasonable. Call out white supremacy, but sound a little level-headed while you do it.
Take a lesson from Bernie, for starters: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-ann-coulter-berkeley_us_58fb7006e4b00fa7de14bc3d
how about *you* use some critical thinking, bud? take several steps back?
have some compassion & care for people-as-people, realize that we’re living under a fascist regime, & that you, your complacence, & non-ideology are more-than-complicit — like….wow, your active ignorance is astonishing but also not; it’s a huge part of why we’re where we are.
This administration isn’t fascist (yet). Use the word correctly, if you’re going to use it seriously. Otherwise, I didn’t see the other posters when I originally commented, but the point still stands: going berserk and demanding a shutdown of all speech you disagree with is never going to obtain the result you want. To half of America, it just comes off as “crying liberal snowflakes.” You’re just giving the other side ammo, and it’s annoying. Object, protest, and call out this disgusting act, but don’t shoot our side in the foot while doing it. Calling for expulsions and acting like their is some imminent danger on campus because some old white people hung ICE’s phone number is just over the top.
there
The choice by Wesleying not to include the ICE number is also an exercise of free speech. People should absolutely be punished for these posters, even if that punishment does not rest on the display of the ICE number. Per usual, free speech is being used as a distraction from the real issue at hand. These posters (and ICE/posting the ICE number regardless of whether it’s protected speech) do real harm to people.
Yes, every form of speech probably harms someone. But at some point, there has to be a line, and posting a Federal agency’s phone number doesn’t cross it. You can’t just ban everything because someone, somewhere, feels threatened by it.
The other posters, however, probably do.
Nobody suggested banning the number? they just chose not to repost it? bc they don’t believe in it? literally the definition of free speech?
Let’s apply a little bit of common sense here
1) The poster seeks to advertise ICE’s phone number
2) Wesleying does not wish to further the goals of the person who posted this nativist filth
3) Reproducing the phone number would further that person’s goals
4) Therefore, Wesleying won’t reproduce the phone number
Why do you think this has anything to do with free speech?
I am an alum (’07) who has permission to share the attached photo, taken by a current undergrad who ripped it off a traffic lamp post on Vine this morning. I have called University Relations to express my concern and to ask the university to take action and encouraged the alumni network to do the same. There must be consequences for racist behavior. Undergrads: please know the alumni population has your back. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e3df878bb6533b00a3f043d7e7eb5272b9639f063272a8322f051c751e31e77a.jpg