WSU senator who once threatened to shoot cops is under fire for ‘white lives matter’ mask
A Wichita man who once threatened to storm the Sedgwick County Courthouse and shoot police officers if they got in his way is now a student senator at Wichita State University. And he’s under fire for wearing a “white lives matter” face mask to his first student government event.
Sam McCrory, 27, was sworn into office while wearing the mask Thursday, the day after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd.
Floyd’s murder touched off months of Black Lives Matter protests around the world, including in Wichita, in response to a video of the white officer’s killing of Floyd, an unarmed Black man.
McCrory, an electrical engineering major, said he wore the mask to make a political point and to push back against “the modern left” which he said “hates white people.”
“I’m not going to be a second-class citizen in my own country,” he said. “People can wear Black Lives Matter masks and nobody cares. But if someone wears a white lives matter mask, all of a sudden there’s a huge firestorm.”
The mask apparently went unnoticed by the Student Government Association until WSU’s student newspaper, The Sunflower, posted photographs of the ceremony on social media. Now some are calling for the university to remove the senator and for WSU to make a statement condemning the newly elected senator.
Hannah Newby, a 23-year-old WSU elementary education major, called the mask “disgusting” and criticized university leadership for not taking a strong stance against police brutality and racism.
“Those pictures were posted the same week George Floyd’s murderer was (convicted) and after WSU released a statement talking about inclusiveness on campus and embracing diversity,” Newby said. “It was a horrible statement to begin with that just danced around police brutality and Black Lives Matter in general.”
The WSU statement addressed the verdict in the Chauvin trial, saying universities have an obligation to be “safe harbors for diversity of thought and life, but also to be catalysts of positive change in all respects – knowledge, research, economics and culture. One of our distinctive university values is to be an institution of inclusive excellence: to be a campus that reflects and promotes – in all community members – the evolving diversity of society.”
“The fact that I got on to social media yesterday and saw my university posting students sporting white nationalist propaganda was disappointing and embarrassing to say the least,” Newby said. “I think having differing opinions within the SGA is different than allowing outright racists to take a seat with SGA.”
Other students expressed displeasure with the university on their social media accounts.
“Wichita State showing, once again, that ‘free speech’ is just another way to validate white supremacy as the status quo,” WSU student Calvin Poweroy posted on Twitter.
The civic unrest following Floyd’s murder eventually led WSU to cancel a commencement speech by President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. She stood by her father’s side as he ordered law enforcement to forcefully remove protesters from a park near the White House last summer so he could stand in front of a church and be photographed holding a Bible.
Former WSU President Jay Golden, who took responsibility for canceling Ivanka Trump as the keynote speaker at the WSU Tech graduation, left the university after donors threatened to pull support for what they saw as an affront to free speech.
“No person with a ‘white lives matter’ mask should have a place in SGA,” WSU Intersectional Student Leftists Association, a WSU student group, posted on Twitter. “Absolutely unacceptable.”
Wichita State officials would not name the senator or return calls and emails seeking comment Friday. The Sunflower later identified the senator as McCrory, which he confirmed in a phone call with Eagle reporters.
A plan to storm the courthouse
McCrory is no stranger to trouble.
In 2015, he was arrested and pleaded guilty to felony criminal threat for posting on Facebook plans to gather a group with guns and storm the Sedgwick County Courthouse to disrupt a murder trial. He was also convicted of criminal possession of a firearm for showing up to protests with guns, despite his criminal record that forbade him from carrying a gun.
“If we get a decent number of people to charge through the front doors and security, the police there will attack us. Often times, the only way to defend yourself from a cop is to kill the cop which means using a rifle to penetrate their body armor,” he posted at the time.
He later confirmed his plan to Wichita Police detectives.
McCrory told police detectives that he intended to storm the courtroom where Kyler Carriker stood trial in the 2013 shooting death of Ronald Betts. Carriker, who had been shot by the same group that shot Betts during a drug deal, was eventually found not guilty by a jury.
“McCrory continued to tell detectives if the judge would try to confront him he would also be justified in shooting the judge,” court records show.
McCrory was sentenced to 34 months probation and an anger management course in 2015. Before completing his sentence, he was sent to prison for a probation violation for making threats of violence on Facebook and posting images to a Facebook site depicting firearms. He spent the next 15 months in prison, Kansas Department of Corrections records show.
Inspired by what he sees as suppression of viewpoints like his own by WSU student government, McCrory ran for the student senate this spring as a write-in candidate to represent the university’s large returning-adult population.
He would not comment on his future plans in the Student Senate.
McCrory said he doesn’t think the “white lives matter” mask is racist and repeated false claims that racism is a term invented as part of a Communist conspiracy to suppress speech.
“Do I think I’m racist? I think that the word has no meaning at this point. I reject the moral construct behind it.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2021 at 5:40 PM.