Friday, November 13, 2015

Wait–The Mizzou Fecal Swastika Could Be A Hoax? UPDATE: Police Report Released, Now With Photos

UPDATE: The Daily Caller obtained the reportfiled by the University of Missouri Police Department on the fecal swastika, though no photographs, suspects, or motive were listed. Sean Davis at the Federalist wrote that the incident was considered an act of vandalism, before being downgraded to tampering, and then upgraded to “hate crime,” according to emails he obtained about the incident. He added that the Title IX office was looped into the event, and the Hillel chapter on campus was also notified. Oh, and the photographs were released this time:

The e-mails also detail a disturbing and previously unpublicized racial incident that happened on the same floor of the same dormitory that occurred the previous week. According to a dorm hall coordinator, a white dorm resident was the subject of racial slurs.

“We did have another incident that was just reported last week where an intoxicated individual said ‘bitch ass nigga’ to a white resident, when having a heated interaction with multiple black residents in the third floor lounge, which is the same floor this bathroom incident happened on,” Gateway Hall hall coordinator Susan Cohn wrote to multiple university officials on the morning of October 24. “The individual that reported said he was offended by this but felt like it was not directed towards him or the other black residents in the lounge.”

[…]

Salama Gallimore, the lead investigator in the university’s Title IX office, responded to Cohn’s e-mail and suggested that the student involved in that particular incident may well have been responsible for the poop swastika in the bathroom.

[…]

Neither the race nor the ethnic background of the suspect in that incident are mentioned in the e-mails released by Mizzou. Additionally, no potential suspects for the poop swastika incident were specifically mentioned by name in any of the documents released this week by the university.

Regarding the picture of the fecal swastika, why couldn’t this still be an instance where someone who was insanely drunk decided to–as most drunks do–act stupid. Yes, it’s a very nasty incident (literally). Yes, it’s wholly inappropriate and insensitive to pretty much everyone, but I doubt (as of now) that this was an intentionally racist act from someone who is a die-hard Nazi and has Mein Kampf quotes plastered all over his or her dorm room. Also, there are still gaps to fill regarding this bizarre incident. And yes, this is act is just indiscriminately insane. 

That being said, the incident regarding Payton Head remains unverified–and he still lied about the KKK being on campus, so I’m still viewing these protests at Mizzou with healthy skepticism because it’s situations like these that the loony left needs to survive. Given the horrific trampling of First Amendment rights at the safe space, we might have long passed that point. Moreover, it still hasn’t answered Travis’ question: How is the administration held responsible, especially when one of the incidents allegedly occurred off campus? 

**Original Post**

The University of Missouri became ground zero for the latest debate about political correctness, racism, and free speech on college campuses. The latter showed the explicit and horrific trampling of First Amendment rights when students prevented the media from entering the tent encampment. The encampment was set upby the group Concerned Student 1950 out of support for graduate student Jonathan Butler, who went on a hunger strike to pressure Mizzou president Tim Wolfe to resign. He did. 

Yet, the incident showed media professor Melissa Quick and MU director of Greek Life, Janna Basler, confronting student journalists–and encouraging their prompt removal–forced both women to issue apologies. Quick resigned her courtesy appointment at the Missouri School of Journalism. Basler has since been placed on leave. What are we really fighting about here? The narrative is that the school’s administration had a torpid reaction to addressing three instances of racism on campus. Are they authentic?

There were two instances of racial slurs being hurled at minorities, both on and off campus, and the infamous fecal swastika that was reported at two in the morning on October 24. Sean Davis of the Federalist wrote that this whole poop swastika story could be, uh, one giant hoax:

According to Billy Donley, the president of Mizzou’s Residence Halls Association (RHA), the poop swastika was reported at approximately 2:00 a.m. on October 24, 2015.

[…]

Later in his letter, Donley noted that he only found out about the alleged vandalism incident “via a flyer posted on the walls” of the dorm.

Although Donley did not respond to repeated requests for comment prior to publication, The Federalistspoke with two RHA staffers while trying to get in touch with Donley. Neither had personally witnessed the poop swastika. When asked if there was any photographic evidence of the alleged incident, one staffer replied, “Not to my knowledge.”

Frankie Minor, the director of residential life at Mizzou, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether he personally saw the poop swastika or any photographic evidence of it.

The Federalist also attempted to contact Christian Basi, the associate director of the University of Missouri News Bureau, who previously told the Columbia Missourian on Oct. 30 that the incident had been immediately reported to Mizzou police. Basi did not respond to requests for comment prior to the publication of this article.

Calls to the University of Missouri Police Department, which responded to and investigated the alleged poop swastika incident, also failed to yield any evidence of the poopstika.

Multiple activists on Twitter pointed to this photo as proof that the incident occurred as reported, but a Google search for the same imageshows that it has been floating around the Internet for nearly a year. A reddit thread from November of 2014 appears to contain the earliest publication of the photo in question, meaning that it most certainly does not constitute proof of the incident alleged to have occurred at Mizzou on October 24, 2015.

Another allegation is that Payton Head, the student body president, was subjected to slurs from folks in a red truck, but Fox Sports’ Clay Travis noted that this incident has never been verified. And the perpetrators have never been found. Is it possible they never existed? Well, Travis noted that Head flat-out lied about the Ku Klux Klan being on campus, so his credibility sort of took a nosedive–or it should:

Assuming that this incident even happened, how is Mizzou responsible for what a non-student says off campus?

[…]

And, by the way, WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT OF MISSOURI SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT AN OFF CAMPUS RACIAL SLUR?

I mean, that sucks, I wish racism didn't exist, but how is this Mizzou's responsibility?

Travis did admit that some drunken student did hurl some epithets on campus, but added that this isn’t the fault of the school’s administration, nor was it former President Wolfe’s responsibility. He aptly noted that racism is not illegal. And while the media has praised this uprising of sorts, they’ve yet to ask whether the fecal swastika was an actual thing. It doesn’t appear to be the case:

My point here is pretty simple: When you add all this evidence up, there is actually no tangible evidence of anyone at Missouri doing anything wrong or ignoring anything improper. No crime has occurred on campus, no one has been physically harmed. At the absolute worst a small number of students have been subjected to mean words. That's it.

Make no mistake; racism is ugly. It’s poisonous. It’s an embarrassing chapter of our nation’s history. But when it’s used to further a political agenda through a torrent of lies, that’s equally disgusting. I’ve had racial slurs tossed my way, the first instance occurring when I was eight-years-old (some punk called me a “Chinese noodle” in Ocean City, NJ). Another instance occurred during middle school, where two white kids stretched their eyelids right in front of my face. Guess what? I got over it. I didn’t cry to my mom and dad. If there was a safe space for me, I would have lit it on fire, and I didn’t feel as if the world was ending. I thought these kids were idiots, bless their hearts, and moved on, since that’s what normal people do. 

Payton Head did retract the “Klan is here” announcement on social media, but Travis makes a note that Head is gay, who was elected president of the student body. Mizzou alum, Michael Sam, became the first openly gay player drafted into NFL. He also said he didn’t experience any racial problems when he was there. The point is that the school cannot be in a state of civil war and racial strife. 

We once again have a media that seems to be perpetuating a lie, or overblowing what’s going on at Mizzou. Either way, they look terrible. And once again, it’s become a national subject of conversation. It seems this saga is just another “hands up, don’t shoot” moment at the collegiate level. 

The premise was shoddy, no evidence to back up the most serious allegations. The star witness, Head, to one of the events was caught lying. Dorian Johnson, who said Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in the back (another lie), pled guilty to lying to the police in 2011 during a theft arrest. He gave them a false name. Oh, and the Washington Post gave the “hands up, don’t shoot” four pinocchios for the claim that Brown did have his hands up when Wilson justifiably killed him in self-defense. 

In September, another instance of false racism on campus occurred at the University of Delaware involved our own Katie Pavlich, who was speaking at an event hosted by Students for the Second Amendment. Pavlich had described the Black Lives Matter movement as one that promotes violence against law enforcement. Well, the gentle snowflakes of BLM decided to protest the event. Blessedly, no violence erupted.

Yet, paper lanterns from a previous event on campus that occurred before Pavlich’s speech were not properly disposed of and remained on some trees. Some took them as nooses, and this bath salts-induced insanity about racism at U-Del erupted. The media tried to link Pavlich’s speech to the discovery of these nooses, when no link ever existed. Still, the college hosted an event to discuss the nooses, even though U-Del campus police determined it wasn’t a hate crime–and that those were indeed paper lanterns.

This didn’t evolve into a national story skin to the fiasco engulfing Mizzou, but it shows that progressives always take the side of the narrative and not fact. One racially charged incident, which wasn’t really the school’s responsibility, and two crocks sent UM’s chancellor and president packing. The “damn the constitution if the people need coal” mantra has been replaced by “forget a law, how about humanity?” in the 21st century. American progressivism should scare the bejesus out of us all. 

Oh, and Jonathan Butler, the graduate student who went on the hunger strike, is the son of a multi-millionaire. Besides racism, Butler was also striking due to high health care costs, according to Travis. 

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