The University of Wisconsin Homecoming Committee did something they thought was positive: It created and posted a promotional video to get students pumped for the annual homecoming celebration.
However, as the cliché goes, no good deed goes unpunished.
According to The Badger Herald, the UW community “quickly responded with criticisms” to the finished product. Why? No faces from “underrepresented populations” were seen in the video.
As a result, the committee took down the video and responded with a groveling Facebook post apologizing for its alleged misdeed.
“We regret omitting those images and we recognized that, by doing so, we unintentionally caused hurt to members of our campus community,” the statement read. “We are sorry that our video failed to show the full breadth of the university experience and made members of our community feel excluded.”
The committee also apologized for basic editing (“those students who participated in the video but were not included in the final product”) and to anyone else who was offended.
In a lengthy Facebook rant, student Janiece Piolet complained about everything from “never enjoying her time” at UW to the university being built on Native American land.
“I can count the number of students of color in this video on my hands,” she wrote. “I can count the perceived number of students of color on the Homecoming Committee on one hand. As opposed, it would take quite some time to count the number of white identified individuals in this video.”
Another student chimed in alleging the video “showed that black students do not belong at UW.”
“As if being on a campus where you are unwanted and have to fight every day just to survive and make it isn’t bad enough,” Payton Wade wrote on Twitter. She posted the full homecoming promo vid to her account even though it “officially” was removed by the committee:
Here is the video the @UWMadison homecoming committee posted pic.twitter.com/5rSbf4wgE9
— 👑 Payton 👑 (@payton_renee_) September 30, 2019
Wade’s tweets included screenshots of a Facebook post she made noting the committee had asked her sorority to participate in the making of the video … yet the segment wasn’t featured in the final product.
“As you can see we were not featured in the video as we were told, but not only were we not featured no Black students were featured,” she wrote. “Instead they choose to show videos of people’s butts as they jumped into the lake.”
MORE: Minority students complain Apple’s diverse emojis aren’t good enough
MORE: Race and gender bean-counting studies will ruin your entertainment
IMAGE: Artit Fongfung / Shutterstock.com
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.