Campus DEI vice president discusses hate speech

Recently, it became known that hate speech came back to campus. It has been three weeks since the University officials have known about it. 

 “In my world, hate speech is one of the things that we are trying to combat, and so we wanna make sure that our students feel welcome, that they feel like they belong, that they feel protected, said Julia Bernard, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  

 “We try to do everything we can, so cyberbullying is one of those things that is harder for us,” Julia. “Because we have to have screenshots of things, we have to make sure that we can identify who the person that posted it is.” 

 Sometimes we can’t tell if it is one person or multiple people doing it, and we don’t want to give that person more power by giving them attention, so it is a hard line to walk for a lot of administration,” told Julia. “Because again, we wanna make sure that we are doing the right things, but we also make sure that we aren’t empowering those doing the hate speech either.  

 As we can see, the University Officials are still finding a solution to this problem.  

 The Guidon interviewed four international students who claim not to receive any help from the University Authorities. 

 “I do feel supported by the university, not in the direct sense because they do not do any kind of action, but some of my professors know about this situation, and they do support us,” said Jenis Shrestha, 20, a freshman civilian cybersecurity major from Nepal. “The main support I got from my professors, but I didn’t get any help from other authorities. It is still a sharp issue; I feel like I don’t have freedom and would like to receive more help from everyone.” 

 Several international students told “The Guidon” that they still feel uncomfortable about the hate speech and expect to receive help and support from the University Officials. 

The whole situation looks like the university officials still didn’t take serious action to end the hate speech.  

“I feel like the university authorities should talk about this issue more,” said Nigam Phuyal, 20, a freshman civilian computer science major from Nepal. “If they want, they can find those people who wrote the hate speech and punish them because it is racism.”