Test 2

It seems as though it has been a pretty tumultuous week with regard to issues of race and inclusion in higher education.

The University of Iowa is struggling to help it's students from underrepresented backgrounds feel welcome:

credit: @temyia

The #DoesUIowaLoveMe movement, which began on Instagram and Twitter, urged UI students to share their stories at 8 p.m. Monday. Within two hours of the movement’s inception, dozens of tweets and photos highlighted concerns of discrimination and inequities on campus.

The movement comes after the UI began its #iloveUIOWA social-media campaign in celebration of the institution’s 172nd birthday.

In a statement released Tuesday from the DoesUIowaLoveMe Twitter account, the movement’s organizers said “a small group of students, faculty, and staff came together at the Latino Native American Cultural Center” on Feb. 21 after feeling unsupported at the UI.

“Our intention was to build a coalition with the mission of cultivating and promoting a platform that allows underrepresented students to speak their truth and share their experiences,” the statement said.

Yearbook photos surfaced of Wake Forest's dean of admissions standing in front of a Confederate flag:

credit: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center click to embiggen

Martha Blevins Allman, dean of admissions at Wake Forest University, sent a statement Thursday acknowledging she posed in the picture that was published 37 years ago in the school yearbook.

The photo shows her and members of the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity standing on a staircase that has a Confederate flag hanging on it, The Howler yearbook shows.

“That flag was a symbol of pain and racism then just as it is now, and I understand that much differently in 2019 than I did in 1982,” Allman said in her statement.

Students during a forum Thursday “raised concerns” about the yearbook photo, university spokeswoman Katie Neal said in an email.

And UNC Chapel Hill appears to have censored a student's free speech with regard to a parody website that she had created:

A student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alleges that the institution took down her parody website that lampooned officials' handling of race relations and only restored it after a lawyer and civil rights group intervened.

screenshot via InsideHigherEd.com

The website, called UNC Anti-Racist Jeopardy, modeled off the game show, asked questions about the university’s history and ties to racism and police and administrators' interactions with activists. For instance, in the category "violence against students," the game asks what was deployed against students at a dance party in August. Answer: pepper spray.

The accusations of censorship come at a particularly strained time for the University of North Carolina System’s flagship. UNC has been embroiled in a debate on the Silent Sam Confederate monument. And the website -- which officials considered “personal work” and not appropriate for the university’s service -- was shut down despite many other instances where students’ blogs were allowed to remain up. The student, Annie Simpson, said administrators likely flagged her creation because of her campus activism, partially around the Silent Sam statue.

What to do about the monument, which protesters tore down in August, seemingly spurred the exit of Carol L. Folt, former UNC chancellor. Folt announced her resignation simultaneously with the decision to remove the remnants of Silent Sam from the center of campus, a controversial move that many students celebrated but that did not erase the lingering tensions between them and politicians who liked the idea of a Confederate statue on campus.

I don't purport to have the answers. But I will say that, while I'm sure these are painful situations at each institution, the mere idea that people are (hopefully) engaged in (meaningful conversations about race, inclusion, and sensitivity to these issues should be one positive outcome.