On Friday, Twitter did what it does best: shooting small bits of incendiary information across the Internet at speeds that would stun your average roadrunner. This time, it was a picture of a USC student adding to a list on a study-room whiteboard which included a racial slur.
We agree with the university’s decision to suspend the student, and commend just how quickly they addressed the situation. Just hours after the post circulated online, Harris Pastides sent out an email confirming the student’s suspension and saying that “racist and uncivil rhetoric have no place at the University of South Carolina.”
We believe that the student’s suspension was justified for two reasons: one being that the student involved, like every other student, agrees to abide by the Carolinian Creed. The Creed itself says that those who agree to abide by it will “discourage bigotry, while striving to learn from differences in people, ideas and opinions.”
Also, the student wrote the slur on school property, putting the prerogative directly at USC’s doorstep.
To those who say that it isn’t worth ruining someone’s life over a dumb joke we say this: the racial slur she wrote is not a joke to everyone.
The word itself isn’t necessarily the problem; no one who goes to college doesn’t know and understand, to some extent, the history and meaning of that particular slur.
The problem is the mental makeup of someone who would use that slur in a public space and their continued presence at our university.
Racism is increasingly visible. Now that everyone has their very own personal electronic eye lurking in various pockets and purses (connected invisibly to millions of people), the racism that used to escape from sight is no longer so obscure. It’s not that racism is more prevalent, but there is certainly more of it seen. Despite speculation that racism is on the decline, the appearance of this image shows that perhaps it hasn’t lessened as much as one would hope it had.
And because so many people can see it, the public reactions to racism are going to range widely. The student in question has received the kind of threats, implied or otherwise, that disturbs us and shames whoever resorts to them, no matter how justified in anger they may feel.
If we are going to hold her to the Carolinian Creed, we must follow its tenets fully or risk hypocrisy.
The suspension was the right move, but such a quick response from USC is almost expected for such a high-profile case of racism. With the Oklahoma/SAE incident and the Clemson “Cripmas” party still rattling around the public consciousness, no U.S. university can afford to be seen as anything less than “zero tolerance” on racial incidents.
This leaves open an unsettling possibility: what if, next time something like this happens, it doesn’t get nearly as much traction online? Will the university still act in the same way? Like it or not, the kind of stuff some USC students put out on Twitter every time Hip-Hop Wednesday rolls around comes close to the rhetoric that the student in question used.
Whether you believe the suspension was justified or not, USC’s actions set a precedent which means that any USC student who uses that slur, online or otherwise, must face the same consequences.