In early May, students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ditched classes to attend protests. I took to the streets alongside hundreds of my classmates for two days in a row, calling for immediate change and the elimination of white supremacy.
The protests were responding to a video circulated on social media of UW student Audrey Godlewski making racist statements about Black people while her friends laughed in the background. The video depicts Godlewski using racial slurs and saying that she will “make them f––ing pick cotton in the fields all day long” until they “die of f––ing thirst” and “their bodies are gonna dry out.”
The morning of May 3, we gathered at the campus Black Cultural Center and marched up to Bascom Hall, the university’s hilltop administrative building. Led by members of the Blk Power Coalition, we proceeded to occupy the building in a silent sit-in demonstration. We maintained silence until the dean of students and other administrators—including the university’s chief diversity officer—arrived.
“You took time and care to record and share your expectations of me and of your university. Thank you. You belong here and I want you to know that we hear you,” Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin expressed in a letter sent to the Blk Power Coalition the next morning.
The university’s insistence on not reprimanding Godlweski, alongside its attempts to excuse her actions, highlights a pattern of inaction.
Black students conveyed their feelings of frustration regarding a separate response from the university that was sent out in a campus-wide email the night before, which declared that “Everyone should be afforded the opportunity to grow, regardless of missteps, mistakes, or any other actions contrary to our values.” The implication was that Black students should forgive Godlewski, rather than addressing the failure of the university to protect its students.
Alicia Obiakor, a sophomore at the university, tells The Progressive, “Initially, I was very shocked…you see stuff like that and it just knocks you down because you feel like no one’s gonna take you seriously.”
The university’s insistence on not reprimanding Godlweski, alongside its attempts to excuse her actions, highlights a pattern of inaction and sidelining surrounding instances of racism on campus.
“It doesn’t really feel like we have anyone on our side,” Obiakor says. “You see the pain, you see the emotions, you see the anger, you see the power in numbers, and you see our silence, and it moves you, but all [they] do is ignore and overlook all of our demands.”
These anti-racism protests at the University of Wisconsin coincide with a broader rightwing attack on diversity initiatives in the state. Recently Republican state assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “The university has gone from being an institute of higher education to an institute of indoctrination.” He urged the University of Wisconsin campuses to eliminate their diversity, equity, and inclusion offices—which he claimed had “burrowed in like a tick on every single college campus”—while threatening budget cuts of $14 million or more.
Students, meanwhile, want to see the university move in the opposite direction. The Blk Power Coalition, for example, presented a list of nine specific demands to the chancellor’s office. The demands include Godlewski’s immediate expulsion, a public apology from the university, and an expansion of existing mental health and academic resources for students of color.
While the administration has repeatedly claimed that they legally cannot expel a student for hate speech under First Amendment protections, members of the University of Wisconsin Law School Student Bar Association have questioned that line of argument. In an Instagram post, they cited Mahoney Area Sch. Dist. v. B. L., a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held that “a school has a regulatory interest in off-campus speech that is disruptive” or constitutes “serious or severe bullying or harassment targeting particular individuals and threats aimed at teachers or other students.”
A Change.org petition for Godlewski’s expulsion was has since garnered nearly 55,000 signatures. Several organizations on campus, however, have noted that Godlewski is only one of many students who have spread hate speech in recent years. The campus’s African Students Association stated in an Instagram post: “With less than 2 percent of Black students on campus, the university has failed numerous times to take action in creating a safe space for Black students and holding many individuals that have caused much harm responsible.”
Racist incidents at the University of Wisconsin are not uncommon. Roughly three weeks before Godlewski’s video was posted, a Reddit post by an Asian student described being attacked with eggs and facing hate speech in a neighborhood near campus. On June 14, 2022, a Chinese international student was physically attacked by a group of men, sustaining multiple injuries. That same night, another Chinese international student reported that the same group threw a banana at him and injured his back. In 2016, a drawing of a figure hanging from a noose with an anti-Black slur written next to it was found in the men’s bathroom at the university’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.
To begin to change such a culture, the university must use the full extent of its powers to penalize students who promote racism and support students of color and other marginalized groups. This means challenging the current bylaws of the University of Wisconsin System’s Non-Academic Disciplinary Procedures instead of accepting them. This means increasing funding for organizations and spaces on campus intended for students of color and actively advancing equity beyond performative DEI initiatives (see: paid diversity actors).
“We deserve a lot better,” Obiakor says. “We deserve a lot more and I think that the university needs to focus on loving us out loud––and that doesn’t [just] mean putting us on your posters and on your websites.”