A white student at the University of Missouri who made a racist joke about killing African-Americans will not be reprimanded or punished by the university's president.
In early December, Megan Miller, former president of Turning Point USA at the University of Missouri, posted on Snapchat, “If They Would Have Killed 4 More N*ggers We Would Have Had the Whole Week Off.”
The Kansas City Defender reports that she wrote the post in response to several schools suspending classes in the wake of the November deaths of three African-American football players from the University of Virginia (Devin Chandler, Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry).
According to the head of the school, the comment was protected under her First Amendment rights since it was made in private without any intention of sharing it publicly.
The University of Missouri President Mun Choi stated in a campus-wide email Monday, Jan. 9, that the young woman's remarks do not warrant punishment.
Dr. Choi wrote, “Upon review, the student’s racial slur was expressed in a direct message to her friend and was not communicated in a way that harassed any individual. In that context, the speech is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
The school said that it believed that it was “equally important … to emphasize that the First Amendment has limits” and stated it would be taking action in cases where students are directly harassed or discriminated against and cited an incident in 2022 when a student was expelled after directing “a racial slur at a fellow student.”
The school’s Legion of Black Collegians responded to the decision with a letter that states, “We, The Legion of Black Collegians, have been in continuous conversations with administration regarding this incident since it first occurred, so we are disheartened, yet entirely unsurprised that our ‘valued’ input has been entirely disregarded.”
The University of Missouri's disregard for the safety and well-being of its Black students demonstrates that even places in higher education and academia do not value Black lives by enabling white supremacy.
Source: The Atlanta Black Star