Wichita State investigating hate speech on sidewalk

Students and employees arrived at Wichita State University on Monday morning to discover hate speech written in chalk on a sidewalk, according to a news release from the university. The drawings used language that is racist and sexist, according to the release.

“We deplore all forms of hate speech, including these acts of vandalism,” WSU president John Bardo said in the release. “The vandalism is being investigated by the University Police Department and the drawings have been removed.”

After the student government was notified of the vandalism on Monday morning, students searched the campus and found four locations with similar images. At each location, there was a drawing of a black man, an American Indian and a gay white man, with a different epithet written on their foreheads. The students scrubbed the sidewalks clean with sponge and water at each location.

“We acknowledge that individuals have different ideologies and philosophies,” Joseph Shepard, the student body president, said in a news release. “Regardless of the rationale or intention behind the creation of the drawings, it is simply unacceptable to use such derogatory terms to label any group based on their identity.”

In November, a cheerleader was suspended at the University of Kansas for posting a photo on Snapchat that included the letters “KKK.”

This story was originally published December 5, 2016 at 11:44 AM with the headline "Wichita State investigating hate speech on sidewalk."