Columbia University has denounced a racist incident involving a white student whose video went viral on social media. The school has promised a thorough investigation.
According to NBC, in the wee hours of Sunday, Julian von Abele, a sophomore, followed a group of black students who were going from Butler Library to an
Abele kept shouting “white people are the best thing that happened to the world” and “We built the modern world! Europeans! We invented science and industry. We saved billions of people
“We are alarmed at the rise of incidents of racism and hate speech in our world today. It is more importantthan ever that we continually demonstrate our core values and restate our commitment to a diverse, inclusive community on campus,” the university email reads.
“At Columbia, we stand firmly against white supremacist language and violence. As we said last week, our community will not waver in its support for those of any faith, race, gender, sexualorientation, background or identity.”
The incident received widespread condemnation by the campus community. The Columbia University Black Students’ Organization held open space hours and an open board meeting to discuss the latest racist incident.
“We want to make sure that we can come together with a common narrative/message and have a plan of what we want to come from this incident,” the group said in a statement on Facebook.
Lately, racist incidents on campuses across the country have seen a spike. Last month, various campuses across the nation reported receiving racist robocalls. Earlier this month, Baltimore County police arrested a college student for two incidents of racist graffiti targeting African-Americans and Latinos and drawing swastikas at Goucher College.