Sister school faces discrimination on campus

Photo by: Will Gentry

 

The discovery of a fake parking ticket with racially offensive language at Abilene Christian University sparked a response from Oklahoma Christian University students.

On March 18, an Abilene Christian student found a note on his car saying, “Black people don’t drive nice cars,” among other hateful messages. According to authorities, there were several of these fake parking citations found throughout the night.

“All the movements that have gone on to take racism out of society is just being pushed back when people do things like this,” sophomore Tyrell Johnson said. “I don’t understand the motives behind it.”

Joseph Bellow, a senior at ACU, believes that this issue goes far beyond racial discrimination to the sexually discriminatory comments that have shown up as well.

“The craziest thing about the parking tickets is that a lot of people on campus believe that it is solely an act of racism,” Bellow said. “President Phil Schubert has made it clear that the entire situation, including the sexually explicit tickets, is unacceptable on this campus.”

Amy Castleberry, an ACU alumna, mentioned the heightened tensions around campus.

“Campus seems more tense than its usual, upbeat atmosphere,” Castleberry said. “The topic of racism as well as the sexual comments made on those tickets would definitely be a tough topic to talk about and the leaders seem more tense as well.”

Oklahoma Christian has procedures in place to respond if a similar situation were to occur on campus.

“Any time there’s a situation dealing with anything to do with someone’s race, I personally take that very serious,” Dean of Students Neil Arter said. “I personally believe that there’s no room for people to put someone else down, even if it is to make themselves feel better.”

Racial discrimination acts are classified as a Title VII offense in the education system.

“What I do is try to work with our legal counsel, Stephen Eck and Gary Jones, our Multicultural Director, and the three of us would work through those things,” Arter said. “First, we would try to make sure the people impacted by it are OK and what we need to do to support them or help them. Then, secondly, with all that we have, we would try to figure out who did it.”

Jones, as the multicultural and service learning coordinator, is responsible for all of the multicultural events and organizations on campus.

“My position wasn’t here when I was at school seven or eight years ago,” Jones said. “Most universities have very few, if any, minorities in places of administration. I think the foresight of the administration, and Neil in particular, to see that we have an area where we really want to make some strides and invest in and use our resources speaks volumes to a campus our size wanting to engage in something like this.”

Response to discrimination of any kind is key to the fallout of the situation.

“It’s easy to say that things don’t happen here that happen at state schools,” Jones said. “I think a more accurate statement is that things shouldn’t happen here that happen at state schools. The reality is that they do. The ‘Christian’ in ‘Oklahoma Christian University’ doesn’t always shine and show itself in the action, but I would hope that it shows itself in the reaction.”

As a sister school to Abilene Christian, Oklahoma Christian administration expressed concern for everyone involved in the situation.

“In our society today, we get pretty caught up on how people responded and the process and those type of things,” Arter said. “I think it’s really easy for us to jump on those things when maybe we ought to use our energy, instead of talking down about it, to pray about it.”

Furthermore, the question of when racial discrimination will cease to be an issue in our society is brought to attention.

“In what I’ve observed over the years, if you ever think that you’ve done anything to help with racial equality, you could find someone that doesn’t think it’s moved as far as it should,” Arter said. “Until it’s not a discussion point, we can probably never do enough. It’s not that we demand that everyone is absolutely perfect today, but it is that we ask everyone to move and to change and look at your heart.”

Prevention of discriminatory situations is an ideal for all universities.

“I think prevention is probably one of the more difficult things to address because I don’t know if you can prevent anything from happening,” Jones said. “I think the best thing we can do for prevention is to promote cultural sensitivity, awareness, unity and inclusion. I think, when we have a mutual respect for one another, we treat each other differently.”

The students responsible for the tickets have recently been discovered, according to Bellow.

“Yesterday they found out that it was five Hardin Simmons [University] students who wrote the tickets, not ACU students,” Bellow said.

Castleberry was clear that, in her opinion, it would take more than just one party to solve the issues of racial and sexual discrimination.

“I do not feel as if it is okay for someone of any race, who is upset about the matter of discrimination of their own, to racially profile anyone else,” Castleberry said. “It’s a cycle. If we don’t address the entire issue that actually happened, nothing gets fixed. Mindsets stay the same and the wheel turns back to where it originally started.”