CMU fostering a climate of hate

This piece was written by Jacob Richards and is reprinted here with permission from The Revolutionist.  The Revolutionist accepts no advertising and is 100% volunteer-run and subscriber-funded community media. You can subscribe to it at this link.

A new campus club, the “Western Culture Club,” appeared on campus in early March promoting a talk by Jared Taylor to be held at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) later in March. Taylor is an avowed white supremacist and author, and this is just the latest escalation by bigots on campus, seemingly with the blessing of the CMU administration.

When students started a new semester at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction on January 20th, the same day Trump took office, the campus seemed different.

Emboldened by the inauguration of an openly racist and openly fascistic president, racist students on the campus have begun a now months-long sticker campaign. The stickers call on students to fulfill “civic duty” to “report any and all illegal aliens” to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The design of the sticker dates back to a sticker and poster campaign in 2018 by Vanguard America (VA), which first appeared in Queens, New York. VA has since rebranded as Patriot Front, after a VA member drove their car into a crowd of counter-protestors at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others. This will tie in later; just remember the stickers on campus are tied to a group that has carried out terrorist attacks and is now known as Patriot Front.

The first stickers went up on CMU campus just days after the inauguration, and then “they became very widespread in the beginning weeks of February,” said a CMU student we are going to call Ezekiel. Sightings of stickers increased in frequency in the first days in February and coincided with the student group Turning Point USA hosting an ongoing series of controversial ‘gotcha’ polls. Polls like “Can a man become a woman?,” “Do you support Mass Deportation?,” and “Should Free-Speech protect Hate-Speech?”

Turning Point USA is a national conservative non-profit that promotes far-right political ideologies in high schools and colleges around the nation. Founded by Charlie Kirk in 2012, both Kirk and the organization have since regularly sparked controversy with their close ties to the alt-right and their own racist rhetoric.

“Some chuds love them [the polls], engaging in the echo chamber. Others avoid them like the plague,” said Ezekiel. “The reality of the matter is their mere presence on campus inspires fascists. It creates an environment in which racism and threats are normalized.”

“I did engage with them once,” said a student we will call Ramona. “They claim it’s free-speech, but the way they talk to people is not okay.”

Numerous students and community members have reached out to the administration with concerns about the hate speech being tolerated on campus.

“This particular group follows Charlie Kirk… [he] is an activist that asks tough questions,” wrote Jody Diers, Vice President of Student Services in an email response to a student’s concerns.

“What Jody says is extremely dismissive, honestly it’s siding with [TPUSA-CMU],” said a student we are going to call Sarah.  “It’s her enabling it, it’s her agreeing with it, it’s her allowing it to happen… it’s grossly dismissive.”

Another student wrote to Diers: “I am fully aware that [TPUSA-CMU] being there is free speech and was approved through proper channels, but let’s not act like them spewing hate speech and actively verbally and physically harassing students is okay. Is CMU aligned with their actions by allowing this to continue on campus property?”

The concerned student continued, “Hate-speech is not protected in free speech when it’s used to confront specific people in a face-to-face matter… It is clearly understood that hate speech is defined by hateful, harmful, and discriminatory language directed towards a marginalized group of people–which is exactly what’s happening here.”

Additionally, free-speech doesn’t protect “fighting words,” according to the Supreme Court in their 1942 decision, Chaplinsky vs New Hampshire. Fighting words are words said in public that are likely to incite violence, and they are their own crime: disorderly conduct. Denying whole groups the right to exist sure seems like fighting words to us at The Rev.

Students have yet to get a response from CMU President John Marshall.

Then on February 22, after weeks of students voicing concerns about  TPUSA-CMU’s behavior on campus, @tpusacmu posted on Instagram a photo of Rowdy, CMU’s mascot, holding a TPUSA sign with a group of TPUSA students.

This signaled to those students that have been raising concerns that the administration is not as neutral as they claimed, but rather they are actively supporting TPUSA-CMU.

Rowdy seemingly endorsing TPUSA-CMU prompted even more emails and questions from students and the community of the CMU Administration. So much so that an official response from CMU was issued.

“This was an error in judgment, and a mistake,” wrote David Ludlam, Vice-President for Communications in response to a concerned student.

Students remain concerned about the racist stickers that keep showing up and the administration’s unwillingness to catch the perpetrators.

“The majority of my stickers were covering theirs,” said a student that we are calling Sasha. Sasha was trying to drown out their message with anti-racist messages and “reassure vulnerable groups that there’s someone resisting,” they said.

Sasha was quickly pulled aside by Student Services and Maintenance and given a warning. “Were it not from my cooperation in taking my own stickers down, they would have given me a student conduct violation.”

We spoke with another student off the record that was also caught over-stickering the racist stickers. It begs the question: If they were able to catch the folks putting up anti-racist stickers so quickly, why can’t they catch the people putting up racist stickers?

Many believe that TPUSA-CMU is behind the racist stickers.

Earlier this year, at the same time that TPUSA-CMU was actively supporting a pro-life student organization, pro-life stickers appeared all over campus. Then TPUSA-CMU started holding “gotcha polls” on mass deportation, and anti-immigrant stickers started to appear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patriot Front and its predecessor organizations have long been active in the Grand Valley and the college’s campus.

Patriot Front used to be Vanguard America, the source of the sticker now showing up on campus. Vanguard America used to be National Vanguard, and National Vanguard used to be National Alliance. National Alliance was founded and run by William Luther Price until his death in 2002. Price was famously the author of The Turner Diaries, a race-war dystopia novel widely considered the inspiration for Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing, and an inspiration for many in the militia and neo-nazi movements today.

Propaganda linked to Prices’ National Alliance was tied to bricks and thrown in hundreds of people’s yards across the Grand Valley in October of 2003. By 2005 the NA had rebranded as National Vanguard, and their propaganda was regularly found on Mesa State College campus. In 2006, National Vanguard literature was again plastered on the campus and downtown Grand Junction as well, according to a March 2006 issue of the now defunct publication, “The Red Pill.”

“The administration either agrees with TPUSA, Charlie Kirk, and the resegregation of America, or they are asleep at the wheel,” said Ezekiel. “It’s about time the CMU administration takes a side. Are they going to protect their students or are they going to roll over?”

The Rev has reached out to both the CMU Administration and Jason Bias for comment, and have not heard back from them by the time we went to print.

Angry? Mad?–Good!

Please take a minute and help CMU’s administration find the spoons to care about their marginalized students. Hate has no place in education! Free speech does not include harassment, fighting words, or hate-speech!

John Marshall, CMU president: marshall@coloradomesa.edu, 970.248.1498

Email the whole board of trustees: cmutrustees@coloradomesa.edu

Jody Diers, Vice-President of Student Services: jmdiers@coloradomesa.edu, 970.248.1366

Pua Utu, Campus Safety and Student Conduct: putu@coloradomesa.edu, 970.248.1336