Listen Here
By Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
On Jan. 21. at 7 p.m, a Bare resident saw a word written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of the trash cans between Bare and Morey Hall.
The word was a racial slur sloppily written about 3.5 feet wide and 1.5 feet tall. He wasn’t sure what to do, but knew it wasn’t right, so he called campus security.
The rest of campus found out about it when Brandi Laurita, vice president for student affairs and athletics sent a campus-wide email on Jan. 22.
“Our team responded promptly, and the graffiti has since been removed,” Laurita said. “I also want to reaffirm that hate speech of any kind has no place at the University of Findlay.”
The suspects have not yet been caught, and the Office of Student Affairs and campus police are still searching for information.
“Multiple offices are involved,” said Johnathan Ferraro, associate vice president for student life. “I also oversee Campus Safety and university police as part of my role here on campus, so I was working closely with them, and then through the student conduct lens as well.”
In addition to Student Life and university police, Ferraro contacted Abby Blinka, deputy civil rights and Title IX coordinator.
“Our first steps are obviously to make sure we work with Facility Services immediately to remove the issue,” Ferraro said. “We don’t want something like that persisting on campus.”
Campus police documented the chalk graffiti by taking a picture of it for future investigation before Facilities Services removed it the following morning.
“It was about 4:30, 5 a.m.,” Ferraro said. “Our facilities staff comes in early to help get campus ready for the day, so I was texting back and forth with the group. They just took a pressure washer out and got it cleaned away.”
Although Facilities Services quickly removed the graffiti, the students who wrote it will still be held accountable.
“At the bare minimum, you’re defacing university property with some level of graffiti by marking up the sidewalk,” Ferraro said, “and then you have anything else that might feed into that as far as the impact of what those actions may have had on the campus community.”
Article VII, Section 2 of the Student Rights and Responsibilities Statement lists “Attempting or committing an act of discrimination” and “Malicious destruction, damage, tampering or theft of personal or University property,” including vandalism, as grounds for disciplinary action ranging from reprimand and probation to temporary suspension or expulsion.
“It would really be case dependent on what we learn as we go through a process,” Ferraro said. “The motivation behind an incident, the reason why something may have happened and also if there’s anybody involved that has any prior history of university policy violations, all of that would factor into what any potential outcome would be.”
“I never really like to dive into the hypothetical, what if outcomes could be for things like this, because it’s so very dependent on each individual case,” Ferraro said.
Ferraro encourages students to report any signs of harassment or racial discrimination they see on campus.
“If you see something, say something,” Ferraro said. “It’s a lot easier for the university to figure out what steps need to be if we learn about something a couple hours after it happens, versus a couple days, and it limits the number of people that are seeing something like this.”
Students can report harassment to campus police at its non-emergency number, 419-434-4601, or file a Silent Witness report on the university’s website.
