EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Where is the police report? Social media posts? Audio? Video?
A little over a week ago, the University of Idaho student government passed a resolution “acknowledging” the racist “harassment” of several black Washington State University students at a local mall.
According to UI student paper the Argonaut, the Sept. 23 resolution was related to the alleged “racial slurs and derogatory statements towards the students” by three white men, one of whom “was identified” as a University of Idaho student.
Washington State University is less than 10 miles from the University of Idaho’s hometown of Moscow.
University of Idaho Black Student Union President Envee Carter, one of the authors of the UI student government resolution, said “I’m angry, I’m angry because it is not just a word. It is a racial slur that has been use to degrade, dehumanize, intimidate, and discriminate against black people,” as quoted by the student newspaper.
“When someone uses that word against a black student today, we cannot pretend it doesn’t exist in a historical vacuum. You can not tell black people that it is just a word, when that word has meanings from generations before to tell us that we are less than,” she said.
Carter added she was “sad to hear that [the WSU students] feel as if they cannot return to Moscow,” adding: “When I host events, I want to keep that the same and not let any racist white men remove that from us, because that isn’t going to happen on my watch.”
Currently, the only mention of this alleged incident comes from the Argonaut and a Sept. 18 article in the Moscow Report, which notes three of the alleged victims talked about what happened at a meeting of the Moscow Human Rights Commission.
The report states the victims “had identification information for two of the men” involved, and that they spoke with Moscow Police Chief Anthony Dahlinger “about filing a report.”
If this incident did occur, it’s an atrocious act on the part of the alleged perpetrators. Whether uttering something offensive — even a racial slur — is a crime is another matter.
The College Fix reached out to Chief Dahlinger via the contact page at his PD’s website and his email asking for specifics about the incident. He did not respond.
And since there is no mention of the incident on the Washington State U. Black Student Union’s social media (nor that of UI’s Carter), The Fix also emailed the group’s president, Chance Shungu. He did not reply.
There’s ample reason to be skeptical.
For one thing, many similar situations have shown that those involved often embellish what actually transpired or completely make things up. Here’s but one recent example from a high school in Georgia.
The big head-scratcher is the social media silence. Are we to believe the WSU students did not have smartphones with them when the incident occurred? Even if they didn’t have time to record the (alleged) racial slurs, there’s no video of the perpetrators? No audio or video of the post-slur exchange? No security camera footage?
In today’s day and age, that’s eyebrow-raising.
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