The independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis since 1878 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2024
VOLUME 146, NO. 13
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ABS, WashU respond to racist text messages after election, discuss combating hate ISAAC SEILER ELIZABETH STUMP STAFF WRITER NEWS EDITOR
The day after the 2024 presidential election, several WashU students, all of whom are Black, received explicitly racist text messages asking them to report to the “nearest plantation” from an unknown source. The texts sent to members of the WashU community mirror those received by other St. Louisans and Black Americans across the nation. The FBI immediately opened an ongoing investigation into the texts. For junior Da’juantay Wynter, president of WashU’s Association of Black Students (ABS), these texts, and the racism behind them, has sparked the organization to take further action. “[ABS is] definitely thinking of ways to combat this hate, strategically and intentionally,” Wynter said. “Because I hate to say, this won’t be the last time.” A member of the ABS executive board received one of these text messages, which said that a van would arrive the following day to bring them to the nearest plantation. The member who received the text declined to be interviewed by Student Life. “Good afternoon, you have been selected to be a slave at your nearest plantation. Please be ready by 12 p.m. with all your necessary belongings,” the text read. “You will be picked up in a white van with a Trump representative from your area. You
are gonna be searched thoroughly once you have reached your destination.” A spokesperson from the Trump campaign told CNN that they had “absolutely nothing to do with these text messages.” Other university students across the country, including those at Missouri State University and University of Missouri–Columbia, reported receiving similar racist messages. According to an FBI statement, LGBTQ+ students may have also received texts about “re-education” camps. National reports indicate this was a widespread phenomenon impacting Black people in over 30 states. The texts seem to primarily target a younger demographic including students as young as middle school. Some adults also reported receiving the messages as well. “I’m not sure how many students at WashU directly got it,” Wynter said. “I only heard of a couple students, but just the fact that it’s happening nationwide is so shameful.” It remains unclear who distributed these messages or how they obtained the contact and demographic information of those targeted. Initial news reports suggest the culprit used a popular mass texting platform called TextSpot and that they reside in the Philadelphia area. Federal law enforcement authorities have not confirmed that TextSpot was the platform used to send the messages. Geoff Ward, Director of the
WashU & Slavery Project and professor of African and African American Studies (AFAS), wrote in an email that there is a precedent for hate speech to take place via text. “Racist hate speech in text messaging is hardly new,” Ward wrote. “Various investigations have exposed the exchanges of similar content, often in the form of racist jokes, among police, court officers, students, and others in recent years.” Ward wrote that consolidated efforts to distribute racist messaging on a large scale is also nothing new. A three-year WashU research study published in 2023 that Ward co-authored with David Cunningham, a WashU professor of sociology, found that newspapers were historically used as a means to circulate racist sentiment and messaging. “The N-word was printed in American newspapers nationwide millions of times between the 1830s and 1960s,” Ward wrote. He drew a connection between historic and current racist messages sent via text and newspapers, saying that they appear to be of a similar spirit, although the texts are still being investigated. Julie Flory, Vice Chancellor for Marketing and Communications, condemned all racism on WashU’s campus and promised to maintain anti-racist efforts in a written statement to Student Life. “We were deeply troubled and saddened to learn about the hateful, anonymous text messages,” Flory wrote. “We’ve offered support to the students who reported
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ASSOCIATION OF BLACK STUDENTS The FBI is investigating racist text messages that have been sent to a number of Black Americans after the 2024 election — including some WashU students. to us that they had received these messages and want to assure our entire community that there is no place at WashU for this type of harassment or intimidation.” Senior Paul Scott, ABS Political Chair, said that although ABS has been in contact with Student Union and upper-level administrators, conversations with administrators have not led to any specific actions taken to support students affected by this issue. “Ideally, the administration would have made a more direct statement preemptively,” said Scott. “I think it’s powerful when the University shows up and lets students know they are
supported in times like these … and obviously there has yet to be a statement or any actionable steps on this particular issue that we know of.” Wynter affirmed that ABS plans to continue its mission of ensuring that Black students feel safe and included on campus, specifically by increasing collaboration with WashU administration during the following semester. “ABS is always against hate [towards] anyone, but especially [hate] against our own Black students, and we will continue to work very hard to ensure that we are protected, heard, and felt on this campus,” he said.
Rural students achieve better representation, Native American Heritage Month build community on campus event discusses
ELIZABETH STUMP ZACH TRABITZ
NEWS EDITOR INVESTIGATIVE NEWS EDITOR
After a 2013 New York Times article identified WashU as having one of the least socioeconomically diverse student bodies among elite colleges, the University has launched several initiatives aimed at diversifying its overall student population. One such focus has been on rural student recruitment, which fully launched in 2023, and has led to a 34% increase in rural first-year enrollment between fall 2023 and fall 2024. WashU’s rural students and dedicated outreach staff have worked to increase attempts to recruit heavily from rural locations, a demographic that is often overlooked when admissions officers look to diversify student populations. Just 19 percent of rural Americans hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with an average of 33 percent nationwide. These efforts to recruit students from all walks of life are especially pertinent to admissions officers in the wake of the abolishment of Affirmative Action, which led to a six percentage point drop in WashU’s enrollment of students of color this academic year. In 2023, WashU and 31 other universities formed the Small Town and Rural Students (STARS) College Network to offer specialized support to rural students applying to college. STARS defines rural communities as those that have less than 50,000 people and are more than 25 miles from an urban center. Senior Sierra Milligan said that the programs WashU has developed helped her give back to her rural community. “My rural experience has given me the ability to help other people,”
Milligan said. “That’s just never something that occurred to me before this program. In my hometown, I think over half of the people didn’t attend college when I graduated, and I was the only one to go to a school like WashU. Kids from my hometown [could go to places like] WashU.” WashU’s newly formed Heartland Initiative supports rural students by providing resources and equipping them with the skills they need to navigate a challenging college environment. The initiative was formed out of a donation made by alum and Emerita Trustee Joyce Buchheit in 2022, and the program began in 2023. Associate Director for Rural Recruitment, Dacoda Scarlett, explained that the initiative was necessary because many rural students may feel unprepared when applying to more elite colleges such as WashU because their schools do not offer as much college preparatory curriculum. “Due to staffing shortages and budget cuts in different states, a lot of rural high schools can’t offer AP or IB classes, and so a lot of rural students might have less access to the most rigorous courses,” Scarlett said. “Because of geographic isolation, a lot of rural students can’t do dual enrollment either, because there’s not a college near them they can go to.” Junior Hailey Montgomery said rural students such as herself often meet roadblocks and face high pressure when completing college entrance exams such as the ACT or SAT. “WashU was my dream school, I’ve wanted to come here for as long as I can remember, and I was always really intimidated coming here,” Montgomery said. “I only had one opportunity to take the SAT. I only had two AP classes, and
Thanksgiving colonialism NATALIA JAMULA STAFF WRITER
college-level course, which is taught over the week by design faculty at WashU. High school students from across the country can apply to the program, which is free of charge. The program is competitive, and Scarlett said that they generally offer 40 spots for around 200 applicants. Scarlett clarified that the program is to help students become acclimated to college and is not a program that boosts or guarantees admission to WashU specifically. Throughout the week, students learn how to physically navigate a college campus, how to craft a compelling application to elite universities, and more practical skills. Current WashU students who come from rural backgrounds serve as Rural Peer Ambassadors (RPA) and support the students enrolled in the program.
At an event called Decolonizing Thanksgiving, students learned about the different Native American perspectives and prominent myths surrounding the holiday, Nov. 22. Thirty-five people attended the event, which was held by the Office for International Student Engagement (OISE) along with the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS), the Association of Black Students (ABS), and the American Indian Student Association (AISA). The event started with a land acknowledgment — Director of the OISE, Evelyn Real, said that WashU is on the land of Osage, Missouria, Illinois Confederacy, and many other tribes. Each group that helped put on the event had speakers, starting with Victoria Meza, a member of AISA and a graduate student in the Brown School, who spoke about the importance of understanding Thanksgiving’s deeply colonial history. “When the pilgrims arrived to what we now refer to as Massachusetts in 1620, they formed a mutually beneficial alliance with the Wampanoag,” she said. “Initially, this worked out, but as is the case with settler colonialism, it wasn’t long before the pilgrims contributed to the genocide of indigenous peoples on North American continents.” Paul Scott, a senior and member of ABS, spoke about the Black perspective on Thanksgiving and reminded the audience of the holiday’s ties to slavery.
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ANNA DORSEY | STAFF ILLUSTRATOR if I didn’t do perfectly in school, I felt like there was no way I was able to get in.” Scarlett explained that recruitment in rural communities is often more difficult than in urban settings, owing to the fact that it is difficult to visit many rural high schools in a day. “If you go to Chicago, you can visit multiple high schools in one day,” Scarlett said. “But if you’re doing rural recruitment [in rural] Illinois, the next town nearby might be 45 minutes away, and so it takes a lot longer to visit more high schools.” The Heartland Initiative also founded a summer program that began in the summer of 2023. The program, WashU Rural Scholars Academy, brings rising high school juniors from rural backgrounds to campus for a week. The Academy focuses on acquainting students with the feel of a college campus and the process of taking a
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