A University of Michigan student named Chris was kicked off the school’s Residence Staff, known as ResStaff, after asking what an acronym stood for, then laughing at a subsequent joke, according to documents obtained by the Review.
The incident took place over a GroupMe chat involving ResStaff members, when Chris noticed that a black female member of the ResStaff had changed her handle to “Markley’s BBW.” The student asked “What does BBW stand for?” a question that was later deemed “inappropriate” in a following disciplinary meeting.
Two weeks later, after another follow-up disciplinary meeting, the student’s ResStaff contract was terminated in a letter claiming ineligibility due to a class requirement technicality that, according to the student, had been resolved more than a month prior.
But even in the termination letter, the hall directors couldn’t help but reference the incident, telling the student to learn “how to better manage your involvements and to hold yourself accountable for your actions.”
A fellow member who jokingly replied to the student’s question about the acronym with “bad baby walrus” was also called in for a disciplinary meeting, but was not let go. The student himself was also reprimanded as being “racist” for laughing at the joke.
Noticeably absent from any sort of discipline? The woman herself, who vulgarly insulted the student as “f*cking stupid and disrespectful” and threateningly vowed “If we have a problem the next time I see you, DON’T be surprised.”
Following the abrupt termination of his contract with ResStaff, the student was left without housing and has had to move back home with his parents and complete the near half hour commute to and from class every day.
ResStaff is the residence education community in the dorms at the University of Michigan, consisting of Resident Advisors (RA’s) for dorms along with “community assistants,” and “diversity peer educators.” It’s mission statement vows to “foster the academic, cultural, intellectual, personal, and social development of students living in the residence halls” and create a “safe, inclusive, and multicultural residence hall community.” It also lists “Social Justice” first under it’s “Core Philosophies.”
To top it off, after kicking the student off of ResStaff, the program’s hall directors began telling members that he had simply ‘quit,’ to which the student fired back with a comprehensive e-mail detailing the specifics of the incident, along with an eloquent attack on the state of ResStaff, and the culture of hypersensitivity, as a whole. The must-read email chastises ResStaff for their insistence on sensitivity, social justice, and “privilege” before signing off with: “(ResStaff) isn’t an inclusive place or even a welcoming place. It’s a place where you must all adopt the ‘accepted”’ opinion to be included. I wouldn’t recommend joining ResStaff to anyone. Good luck to everyone. I’m sure there will be much discussion and many meetings about this email.”
Hunter Swogger
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