USC President Harris Pastides addressed the student body Tuesday afternoon to speak out against racially charged actions on campus. His message was one of unified defiance against those that would come here "in the middle of the night, cowardly sneaking onto our campus to insult us and to provoke us."
Pastides was joined on stage by graduate student Malcolm Bevel, Student Body President Ross Lordo and political science associate professor Todd Shaw. Each speaker stressed the importance of unity and argued that the best way to combat hate is not to punish it, but to show that it does not belong.
“I say that racism will not be tolerated at the University of South Carolina,” Pastides said to a hundred-strong crowd. “When university policies are violated, you will be held accountable by our equal opportunity program and student conduct office.”
The rally comes just four days after the most recent racial incident — a Twitter post by Palmer Artigues, a Carolina Gateway student. The day after the post, Pastides announced the rally on Greene Street with his own tweet.
"Racist, bigoted & hateful comments have no place anywhere @UofSC" Pastides wrote in a Twitter post Feb. 3, adding that "such behavior will be investigated & action will be taken to the fullest extent possible."
Concerning what that legal action will be, "It's probably student judicial," Pastides said. "We'll see what our EOP (Equal Opportunity Program) office comes up with."
This also followed an incident involving racist posters found in Gambrell Hall.
At the first Student Government cabinet meeting a week after racist posters were found on campus, Student Body President Ross Lordo made it clear that he wanted to focus on responses to these types of issues.
"I think that we need to be comfortable with knowing what the steps forward really should be," he said.
Today, Lordo expanded on those steps.
“I think that the work of the Equal Opportunity Program’s office is really the primary driver of how we face instances where students are discriminated against or harassed" Lordo said. "The outspoken nature, I think, of students, faculty and staff and administration to instances like [Palmer Artigues' tweet] goes a long way in starting to show people that if they want to do those actions that they’re not welcome on our campus."
Students were encouraged to sign the Carolina Creed as a means of protest against hate speech and support for the slogan #NotOnOurCampus.
“We will be back again,” Pastides said. “So I vow, if you will vow, to come here to Greene Street every time we need to. To show those people who would perpetrate their evil … that we won’t have it on our campus.”