College campuses: home to hate?

College campuses: the bastion of higher learning, compassionate curiosity, and intellectual exploration!

Or race-baiting hatred, whatever.

At Towson University, outside of Baltimore, senior Matthew Heimbach is bemoaning the death of “white culture.” His “White Student Union” has some 30 members, and although more than a thousand students are protesting his student group, and he doesn’t yet have a faculty advisor or official recognition within the university, that’s not stopping his activism. No ma’am, he’s busy protesting the building of a mosque near the university or inviting white supremacists to the campus to speak. But don’t worry – he’s not racist!

According to the story in Agence France-Presse, “Heimbach, who denie[s] being racist, does, however, rail against what he calls the dangers of Marxism and a multicultural society, and warns of a coming “genocide” when minority groups overtake whites in the US population.”

By the way, Towson’s student population is two-thirds white, so Heimbach may be freaking out a little prematurely about white genocide, but whatever.

Thousands of miles away, some other super thoughtful activists have been busy sharing their opinions on the University of California, Los Angeles, campus last week.

The flier above was attached to a banner promoting the Vietnamese Student Union that was hanging in Kerckhoff Hall, a former student union building that is now home to campus student groups. Similar language was found written on the door of a women’s bathroom in Powell Library. It’s charming. (h/t to Angry Asian Man for pointing us to this story. Follow AAM on Twitter @angryasianman.) 

If you want to dive down the rabbit hole, check out the comments on the Daily Bruin stories. The Vietnamese Student Union has taken the opportunity to celebrate Asian women and denounce hate crime on campus, both with a rally and a beautiful photo project.

But apparently Asian women have been under attack all semester. Earlier this fall, at the University of Pennsylvania, a group of three men and two women accosted a group of three female Asian students, saying they needed to “hook up with three Asian students.” The perpetrators, all white, claimed to be from the nearby Drexel University and said they were on a sorority scavenger hunt. They started taking pictures of the Asian students and one attempted to kiss Dephanie Jao, who wrote a column in The Daily Pennsylvanian about her experience:

Of all the possible things that could be said about what happened to us, one thing was certain: it should not have happened. Not just the fact that the group approached us, but the whole event itself. It was horribly dehumanizing. All of us felt like we had been treated like animals, like convenient pieces to be picked up as a part of a collection. Asians are not Pokémon to be collected.

Sing it, girl.

Readers, what are you seeing out there on your high school and college campuses? Are these stories anomalies (one can hope!), or the norm? How has your school responded? Let’s get your experiences out there.