A hate crime is a violent crime motivated by a dislike toward a person’s race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality or other grounds.

We have had a few instances of hate crimes on our campus over the last few years.

In November 2018, a derogatory slur was written across a poster for a multicultural studies class called ‘Africana Philosophy.’ Another example of a hate crime on campus was the “white supremacy rules” flyers that were stuck to student’s cars in the fall semester of 2015. These flyers contained things like “whites only at MWSU” and “white power.”

The Wichitan would like to reiterate that hate crimes are unacceptable on this campus.

With the campus being as diverse as it is, we rarely see cases of hate crimes. This is a good thing, but we still see it in the community around us and in the state.

In 2018 Texas saw 380 reported hate crimes, this is two times the amount reported in 2017 according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Hate crimes have steadily been increasing over the years and won’t stop until we actively speak out against them and start treating others the way we want to be treated.