UC Davis, ASUCD officials encourage students, staff to uphold Principles of Community
A shipping container in Toomey Field, located at the edge of campus on Russell Boulevard and A Street, was grafitied with xenophobic rhetoric that read, “The Chinese Communist Party = a danger to society,” accompanied by a crudely drawn photo of a man wearing a surgical mask, on the morning of Tuesday, March 17. The graffiti has since been painted over.
On March 14, many current and former ASUCD officials released a statement encouraging students to “uphold the Principles of Community in this time, especially in regards to xenophobia and discrimination attached to the coronavirus.”
This graffiti is part of a rise in racist and xenophobic propaganda all over the world, taking place in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic thought to have originated in Wuhan, China. From the alleged assault of an Asian teenager on a Philadelphia subway to #ChineseDontComeToJapan trending on Japanese twitter ー these incidents seem to be increasing in frequency.
Chancellor Gary May has repeatedly condemned hate speech on campus, including last October, when racist graffiti was found on the Social Sciences building. He again condemned hate speech in the university’s campus directives for Spring Quarter, where he and co-signatories Provost Ralph Hexter, Academic Senate Chair Kristin Lagattuta and Vice Chancellor of Human Health Sciences David Lubarsky said, “Now more than ever, let us collectively confront and reject any and all manifestations of discrimination.”
Video Formerly Present (ALEX WEINSTEIN / AGGIE): https://theaggie.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Video.mov
Written by: Alex Weinstein — campus@theaggie.org
