ORONO, Maine — Officials at the University of Maine are searching for whomever is responsible for putting up posters around campus this week seeking to recruit members to a white supremacist group.
The posters referring to the White Student Union since have been removed by students and staff who denounced the group as hate-based, according to Robert Dana, the university’s vice president for student affairs.
“On Wednesday night, some posters, small posters, 11 by 11 [inches], were put up around campus at different places, mostly buildings and utility poles,” Dana said. “The posters read, ‘A specter is haunting campus — the specter of a … White Student Union. You have a right to your heritage. Organize. Learn more. Join us.”
No names of organizers appeared on the posters, only an email address. An email sent by the Bangor Daily News to the address Friday seeking information about the group was not returned.
UMaine officials say those responsible are not connected to the university.
“We don’t know who put them up, even though we looked at the security cameras,” Dana said.
“Certainly this is not a students group. It’s not a UMaine [email] address. We know it’s certainly not a student organization and not something the university recognizes or supports.”
Staff and students called to alert campus leaders about the posters, Dana said.
“The ones on buildings, stuck on windows and stuck on utility poles were removed [by UMaine officials],” Dana said. “Because of freedom of speech, if they were found on public bulletin boards, we did not remove them.”
Dana said it’s his belief that none of the posters are still up at UMaine because “students removed them” from the bulletin boards.
“The White Student Union is a nationally recognized organization that does not comport with our beliefs in equality and diversity,” Dana said. “Every national report we’ve read is that this an an offensive, stereotyping group. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have it classified as a hate group, which is wholly, solely and completely against what we stand for and the nature of our community.”
The group has previously surfaced at campuses in Maryland and Georgia, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The University of Maine Student Government “takes a strong stance against behavior or speech that is discriminatory or racist, or could ever be interpreted as such,” Student President Harold “Trey” Stewart III said Friday in an email.
“We have several multicultural groups incorporated under our organization that engage and host activities and events aimed at defeating ignorant mentalities and behaviors such as those exemplified by the material in question,” Stewart said in a news release issued the day after the fliers were discovered. “We strongly condemn those actions and work hard every day to promote a multicultural, friendly, inclusive and hate-free campus.”
Messages seeking comment from the Multicultural Student Life & The Multicultural Center at UMaine and the Greater Bangor Area NAACP and the Portland NAACP office were not immediately returned Friday.
UMaine is not the only campus to find such posters. The University of Toronto, Ryerson University and York University, which are large public colleges in Canada, were plastered with White Student Union posters on Tuesday, which caused an uproar with campus leaders, according to The Daily Caller.
“We’re encouraging students to push back with their objections to this freedom of speech with more freedom of speech,” Dana said. “We’re making efforts to discover who put these posters up so we can have a discussion with them about what it means on a campus like this.”