UI students wavered about going public with hate fliers

IOWA CITY - University of Iowa Student Government President Rachel Zuckerman found a few anti-Semitic fliers in Iowa City a few months ago. They were on a side street. Not on the University of Iowa campus.

Then, on Oct. 10, similarly-offensive fliers with white supremacist messages were discovered on and around the UI's Latino Native American, LGTBQ Resource, and Afro-American Cultural centers. Zuckerman said student leaders had to decide between publicly condemning the messages or keeping them out of the spotlight.

'We did not want to bring attention to the issue and give them more of a platform than they deserve,” Zuckerman said. 'We don't want to inspire others to do the same.”

But some in the targeted communities also didn't want the issue ignored, Zuckerman said.

'They wanted people to realize this still happens,” she said. 'Because if it doesn't happen to you, it's easy to forget.”

Over the weekend, Zuckerman said, she received a call from a student who found a LGTBQ bulletin board in a residence hall that had been torn up and replaced with white supremacist fliers.

'He was very shaken - for evident reasons,” she said. 'It's hard when I'm hearing from some students that they don't feel safe to go to class or go to the cultural centers.”

That most-recent incident prompted UISG on Monday to go public with a message on Facebook condemning 'acts of this kind, intended to stir up hate and intolerance.” The university administration followed with an afternoon statement also denouncing the hateful messages and laying out steps taken to remove them and investigate.

Zuckerman said students have expressed appreciation for the public denunciations.

'Students are finding communion in the fact that we are all in this together,” she said.

And, Zuckerman stressed, she believes the majority of campus is aligned on the issue.

'I am very confident that this is not representative of the beliefs of the vast majority of our campus,” she said.

Publicity on issues of this nature provides an important reminder to those who haven't faced discrimination, although Zuckerman said, 'It's a very fine balance.”

'The students who feel unsafe with these incidences have unfortunately lived in this almost perpetual state of being at least somewhat concerned about their safety,” Zuckerman said. 'It's just a reminder to the rest of us that there are reasons they feel this way.”

UI students and administrators aren't the only ones grappling with how to address hateful rhetoric, which has become an issue of late in the midst of heated political season.

Zuckerman said the fliers weren't explicitly political in nature.

'Though one might assume that this might be related to the rhetoric that's floating round in our country right now,” she said, offering this as an opportunity to 'be aware of the rhetoric and behavior we allow to fester.”

Tuesday night, the Latino Native American Cultural Center and University Counseling Services co-hosted a discussion titled, 'Surviving at a Predominantly White Institution.”

Issues of race have come up on the UI campus in recent months after a UI student in the spring alleged being the victim of a hate-fueled assault - a claim he later recanted. And last year a visiting UI professor erected a statue likening a Ku Klux Klansman in the center of campus, terrorizing some students and prompting a widespread debate about diversity and bias at the university.