The Auburn Plainsman
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A SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAID • NEWS SINCE 1893
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2018
VOL. 125 • ISSUE 22 • FIRST COPY FREE THEN 50¢
GANNON PADGETT / VIDEO EDITOR
Scott Roney preaches to Auburn University students on the Thach Concourse on Monday, Feb. 26, 2018, in Auburn, Ala.
A street preacher’s echo and his fight against stereotypes By LILY JACKSON Managing Editor managing.editor@theplainsman.com
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man living in Guatemala wishing for his wife’s visa papers. A Nigerian professor from Tuskegee who just received the job offer of a lifetime. Their names along with others are etched in years of dust on a Fox Body Ford Mustang stranded in a white barn off a county road.
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Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water.”
Scott Roney, a 60-year-old self-proclaimed disciple, sits on the tattered, baby blue sheet that covers a lawn chair, lifting their names in prayer with the sun in the early morning. With eyes on the rusty Ford and hands on a claycolored, leather Bible, Roney prepares for a day of street preaching with his tabby cat in a dark, musky prayer room. His face is well known on Auburn’s campus, but his pastime is controversial. If students don’t recognize his voice from their walk to class, they may know him from his day job as a maintenance man. Some of the names on the aged Mustang belong to those who stopped to contest his faith-driven efforts.
Others stopped to ask for prayer, their requests are made physical in his dimly lit barn. Roney often takes his whispered prayers to Auburn University’s free-speech zone where he fittingly stands between two pillars marking an entrance to the campus. He works to be the man standing in the gap — standing firm where he felt others had not. Testimony and interpretations of biblical passages flow up from Roney’s gut and roll down the open concourse. Indifferent students scurry past him as he stands like Samson holding up the walls, wanting to keep his faith alive.
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I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one.”
His passion was born from what he said were days of sin and from his desire to be unlike other street preachers. In his younger years, he would walk past as their fire-and-brimstone messages attempted to penetrate his covered ears, rushing away from them and further from the God he said speaks through him now. “We are all white sheep that have gone astray,” Roney said as a woman walked past, her eyes glancing toward his booming presence and her head pointed down. He never had any motive of his own to be a fool for God, he explained to students. He worshiped un-
CAMPUS
White Student Union listed as hate group By CHIP BROWNLEE Editor-in-chief editor@theplainsman.com
The Auburn White Student Union — a white supremacist, anti-semitic group that has attempted to attach itself with Auburn University — has been listed as a hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map, an annual report of hate groups operating in the U.S. The Auburn WSU is the only white student union group attached to a university or using a university’s name listed on the Hate Map this year. Since its appearance on campus in spring 2017, just weeks before a visit by white nationalist speaker Richard Spencer, the group has been recruiting students through instances of leafleting and flyering. Those flyers often include racist and xenophobic themes. “The fact that they continue to have a presence, continue to recruit students and continue to have the attention of at
least some students is frightening,” said Lecia Brooks, an SPLC spokeswoman. The SPLC, a Montgomery-based civil rights group, has tracked a steady rise in hate groups since 2014. In 2017, 954 hate groups were listed on the Hate Map — an increase of 37 hate groups or 4 percent over 2016 when 917 groups were listed. “As we’ve seen over the last year, extremists on the far right and white nationalists, in particular, have become emboldened to say whatever racist or bigoted thing that can come from their mouth,” Brooks said. The SPLC began tracking hate groups and their locations in 1990. White supremacist, neo-Nazi and anti-Muslim groups saw the most intense growth this year. Neo-Nazi groups, in particular, rose by 22 percent. Brooks said the persistence of the Auburn White Student Union sets it apart from other white student groups across the country. In 2015, the Washington
Post reported that more than 30 purported white student unions popped up in the U.S. Surfacing at schools like the University of Missouri, Berkeley and New York University where students were faced with diversity issues and prominent national controversies, those groups were short-lived. Most only activated a Facebook page before shutting down months later. Students on those campuses reported most of the white student unions that popped up in 2015 were fake, according to The Post. Auburn’s, however, is not. “Typically, they don’t make it,” Brooks said. “They can’t get official sanction. They are marginalized in some way. It just turns out to be a couple of folks and they go away. But that’s not what happened here. And they’re bold too.” Auburn’s WSU launched in April 2017, creating a website under the name
» See WSU, 2
der stadium lights like everyone else. His only concern was sports — the fame and fortune that comes with it. Roney was indifferent toward his sin through high school and college. Rolling with a group that christened themselves “The Hellraisers” at Auburn High, he found satisfaction in his secular lifestyle. “I was drinkin’ and druggin’ and partyin’ and chasing women,” Roney said. He wasn’t always a hellraiser, though. As a younger boy, he was fascinated by the Gospel and those who sowed its wisdom in other’s lives. Roney sat in a stuffy church hall listening to his small group leader read through biblical passages. Talk of disciples — the followers of Jesus — excited young Roney. With a hand in the air and curiosity running through his impressionable mind, he asked the teacher what he had to give to be a disciple. “Disciples like those don’t exist anymore,” the teacher said. Roney slammed his Bible shut and swore he was done. He saw no point in faith without radical dedication. His hope for more than a life stuck between strangers on red velvet pews was crushed. Then he saw a man standing outside of the Haley Center — screaming about hell and drawing a crowd. He knew what the man was saying was wrong, but he said it struck a chord in him. As he ran away from the threatening voice, he thought about the preacher’s weekends.
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JESSICA SULLIVAN / PHOTOGRAPHER
Ilyasah Shabazz speaks for The Cross Culture Center for Excellence on Monday, Feb. 26, 2018, in Auburn, Ala.
Malcolm X’s daughter implores students to make change By LILY JACKSON Managing Editor managing.editor@theplainsman.com
Ilyasha Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and motivational speaker, came to Auburn to make one thing known: black history is American history. While telling her father’s story, her mother’s impact on Sha-
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