By Brandi Watters, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer
ANDERSON — Anderson University is reacting to racial slurs scribbled on bathroom walls and discovered this month.
Chris Williams, spokesman for AU, said the university is investigating the vandalism.
Williams said he could not disclose details about the vandalism or the students involved in the case, but AU School of Nursing student Anitra Cooley said she has a pretty good idea how the vandalism got started.
Cooley, a black student, said she’s been dealing with racial slurs for almost the entire year.
“It started back in the late fall, right before the election. It started out with a girl talking about (presidential candidate Barack Obama) dying,” Cooley said last week.
Cooley did not want to disclose the student’s identity, but said the girl made offensive comments in class. “She said if they elect Barack Obama, they’ll just kill him anyway and our problem will be over.”
Cooley said she took offense to the statement and asked the girl not to speak of Obama in such a way again. Cooley said she then reported the incident to a professor.
Soon after, Cooley said, she found a message in a bathroom at Hartung Hall. The message read: “Barack Obama, Ordinary Black African Man Assassinated.” The vandal also used the letters in the president’s name to form an offensive acronym, Cooley said.
After winter break, Cooley said, another message on the bathroom wall was discovered. This time, it was directed at Cooley and used a racial epithet to describe the nursing student.
AU officials spoke to students in the School of Nursing about the incidents soon after, Cooley said, but it did little to stop the vandals.
A petition was eventually posted on the bathroom wall calling Cooley offensive names and urging those who agreed with the description to sign the form so that Cooley would be kicked out of the nursing program, Cooley said.
On April 6, she said, Anderson police were contacted after a note on the wall insulted the president and suggested that black people should be enslaved again.
Mitch Carroll of the Anderson Police Department said city police were contacted but are not handling the investigation of the vandalism. They did take a note laced with racial slurs and processed it into evidence, Carroll said.
AU is handling the investigation, he said.
“A vigorous investigation is being pursued, and we are following all known leads,” AU’s Williams said. “Racial slurs have no place and will not be tolerated on the campus of Anderson University.”
Cooley hopes the situation will be resolved quickly, but said racial tensions at AU are nothing new, and worries that the school will be unable to address the issue.
“This is not the first time they’ve had problems,” Cooley said. “For some reason, I’ve been targeted. If you let something fester for a long time, all you need is the right climate and the right circumstances for the cancer to metastasize.”
Contact Brandi Watters: 640-4847, brandi.watters@heraldbulletin.com
