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Thursday, April 29, 2021
Collegian.com
GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY MALIA BERRY THE COLLEGIAN
The impact of CSU’s online community By Katrina Leibee @katrinaleibee
Editor’s Note: ‘Campus in Contention’ is an editorial series by The Collegian staff that examines conflicts in our community surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion and proposes solutions for how we can move forward. A source in this article, Cat Blouch, is an opinion columnist at The Collegian. This article contains media depicting racist slurs and actions and may be triggering to some audiences. Anyone that was on campus in fall 2019 likely remembers the semester by one event. A student named Leana Kaplan and three other students were photographed on Snapchat wearing charcoal face masks with the caption “Wakanda Forever,” holding the according arm pose from the movie “Black Panther.” The photo was taken down quickly, but it sent shockwaves through the campus and still has an impact on the culture even today. This was also one of the first truly seen moments on campus where social media showed students its influence on the community. Although social media is a necessary tool for engaging with the community and spreading information, it has also done a lot of harm, especially on our campus. It raises the question, how does what we do online impact our in-person
campus community? Are they beginning to be one and the same? How has social media turned into an unofficial news outlet, and what are the consequences?
“Until the University takes the stance that our first priority is to protect students from harm, then we’ll still be in this situation.” CATHERINE KNIGHT STEELE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
One of the first places the news of the blackface incident broke was Colorado State University’s infamous Instagram meme page @ colostatememes. With over 17,500 followers, the platform carries undue weight among students and is often the place where students first hear about campus events. News traveled across platforms as the incident took place on Snapchat, was reposted on Instagram and sparked discussions on Twitter and
Facebook. Everything happened entirely online, but CSU’s physical campus would never be the same. Catherine Knight Steele, former assistant professor of journalism and media communications at CSU and now an assistant professor researching African American culture and new media at the University of Maryland, said what complicates situations like these is the lack of differentiation between online and offline personas. “We don’t have public and private lives, and we don’t have online and offline personas,” Steele said. “Everything is mixed and tangled in a way that makes these situations very complicated.” In the age of social media, students have no separation between who they are on their social media accounts and who they are in person and on campus. In 2021, they are even more active on social media than they are on campus. A look back through the online conversations will show that many students wanted the University to take disciplinary action against the students that posted the photo during that time period. Students took to an Associated Students of Colorado State University senate session to express their disappointment with the students’ actions and the University’s response. The students did not face disciplinary action from the University because their speech
was protected under the First Amendment, according to University officials. “The University is legally prohibited from taking disciplinary action for student behavior that is constitutionally protected, as was the case in the 2019 incident,” wrote Jody Donovan, assistant vice president for Student Affairs, in an email to The Collegian. “In these situations, the University may seek to engage the involved students in conflict resolution processes such as social justice mediation or restorative justice, as we did in the 2019 incident.” Many students were upset with the University’s lack of action toward the student, but as Donovan mentioned, posing in blackface is protected under the First Amendment. Donovan said student behavior only moves beyond constitutional protections when they are “direct threats of violence towards a specific person.” That doesn’t take away the impact though, and some argue that the University still could have enacted more discipline within their realm of the students violating the principles of community. “Until the University takes the stance that our first priority is to protect students from harm, then we’ll still be in this situation,” Steele said. Fast forward to 2020. An incoming white male student
posted racist, homophobic and threatening social media posts online that used a racial slur and promoted violence toward Black people. Again, one of the first places it was reported was on colostatememes, and the posts took the same journey the blackface post did, spreading in CSU’s social media community like wildfire. This time, however, the University’s response was different. They decided that the posts moved beyond the First Amendment. “When student behavior goes beyond constitutional protections, such as direct threats of violence towards a specific person, as was the case with the 2020 incident, the University will enact the student conduct process,” Donovan said. The Student Conduct Code, while not specifically mentioning social media, does say that verbal harassment is not tolerated no matter the student’s location. It then comes into question, however, if the school should create policies for specifically how student speech should be restricted online versus in person. If a student came to campus, stood on The Stump wearing blackface and said “Wakanda Forever,” we have to question if the University would make the same decision. Would it count as a real threat if the student was on campus? >> continued on page 5
