It has emerged that students attending an off-campus Exeter University event on Tuesday, were witnessed sporting t-shirts with antisemitic and white supremacist slogans.
The event, hosted by the Snow Sports society at the Timepiece nightclub, saw students use magic markers to scribble slogans and drawings on each other’s t-shirts.
While the majority of scribbles were of the light-hearted variety, two slogans were particularly malicious: “Don’t speak to me if you’re not white”, and “the Holocaust was a good time.”
These racist slogans do not appear to be part of an organised campaign or linked to a far-right movement, rather the moronic actions of a few members of the sports society,
However, given the sharp increase in antisemitic incidents in the UK this year, this news comes as no surprise.
Student Rights has long argued antisemitism is a persistent problem at universities, and ignorant remarks about the Holocaust are a reminder of this.
Lauren Fry, the president of the Snow Sports society, claims she was unaware of the slogans during the event and wholeheartedly condemned these comments in a statement:
“Comments like these are not tolerated within our club”.
According to Fry, the nightclub staff asked people to leave or change if they were seen with abusive slogans on their shirts.
Additionally, a spokesperson from the University of Exeter said:
“The University does not tolerate racist or bigoted behaviour in any form. This is the first we knew of this and shall be launching a full investigation.”
Mark Kiner speaking on behalf of the Jewish Society and Friends of Israel, responded to the incident in Exeter’s student paper, Exepose:
“We condemn this and any other kind of anti-semitism and racism in the strongest terms. Some individuals might think that it’s merely a joke and doesn’t mean much but these were real events which happened to real people, and as such they should be respected. We urge the university to investigate and punish the students involved accordingly.”
While Student Rights hopes this is a one-off incidents it is nonetheless unacceptable and we hope similar occurrences will not occur at other universities during fresher’s week.