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<\/a>\u201cHow do we reinforce the idea to students who may have been adversely affected that we are, for the most part, a welcoming campus and do value diversity?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Mitchell Auger-Langejan says it\u2019s surprising people in Victoria have opinions like those on the poster. He calls the appearance of these posters disappointing, especially at a university.<\/p>\n
\u201cA university\u2019s supposed to be a place where forward thinking takes place, and it\u2019s good that we have free speech,\u201d says Auger-Langejan. \u201cI don\u2019t think that we should confuse these posters with free speech. Sometimes arguments for stuff like this is that people should have the right to think these things. Certainly they\u2019re permitted to think that. The problem lies in that it\u2019s a very harmful opinion, and it\u2019s documented that it\u2019s been harmful. We don\u2019t need to prove that it is. We already know that it\u2019s hurt people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auger-Langejan says the solution lies in opening up a dialogue with the people whose beliefs are represented on posters like these.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the people that post them, in a way, must know that they are hateful,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat we can do to deal with this kind of thing is talk about it. What are these people afraid of? Are they worried that they\u2019ll be replaced by people that are foreign to them? We could pose simple questions to them: has anyone who\u2019s Jewish ever harmed them? Do they know why they feel that way? What\u2019s bringing these thoughts on? Opening a dialogue, even with people who have shocking opinions like this, is, ultimately, the best thing we can hope to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auger-Langejan says it\u2019s not far-fetched to worry about this happening at Camosun. (He encourages any students to email him if they want to talk, regardless of their beliefs on the matter.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s at UVic it\u2019s probably in other places, too. It\u2019s definitely possible this was just one person. It might be that, but it might not,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it were to come to Camosun, the concern remains: does this person have really harmful opinions, and do they want to hurt other people? If that\u2019s the case, then we have to consider where their place is at the school. Can we study alongside people that have this, in my opinion, irrational hatred of other people? Is that something we\u2019ll accept as a college? And I think the answer is no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anti-Racist Action UVic organizer Tyson Strandlund says that he has spent an overwhelming amount of time deleting hate messages from the group\u2019s social media accounts since the posters were found.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were flooded right away,\u201d he says. \u201cHundreds of really horrifying, absolutely grotesque statements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strandlund says that he is not sure who these people posting the hateful comments are, or if they are even in Victoria (posters similar to the ones found at UVic have been found at other Canadian post-secondary institutions). The organization has \u201csince banned and deleted many of the comments because they were just so awful,\u201d says Strandlund.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it can be said that there\u2019s an upside to any of this, it\u2019s that there\u2019s been a much greater interest in actively fighting racism from the students at UVic,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d like to see, obviously, whatever it takes to be done to stop this from happening and to severely punish anybody who is found to be responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anti-Racist Action UVic is holding a meeting in room B025 of UVic\u2019s Student Union Building at 6 pm on Wednesday, November 15; anyone can attend, whether or not they are a UVic student.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Posters promoting alt-right websites and displaying a known anti-Semitic symbol were found on bulletin boards in the University of Victoria\u2019s Cornett building in late October. The posters featured an image of a white family with the words \u201cThose who hate us will not replace us,\u201d with the word \u201cthose\u201d in triple parentheses, an anti-Semitic symbol. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14963,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14961\/revisions\/14963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}