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‘White Only’ Signs in Art Project at SUNY Buffalo Draw Concern
Topic Started: Sep 19 2015, 06:14 PM (99 Views)
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What would have happened had a white student done this or put up 'Black only' signs?

‘White Only’ Signs in Art Project at SUNY Buffalo Draw Concern

A graduate student at the State University of New York at Buffalo hung “black only” and “white only” signs around campus this week as part of an art project, which she said was intended to provoke a searing conversation.

And indeed it did. The signs shocked students and jolted the university at a time when discussions about race and race relations have been prominent in the news.

The student, Ashley Powell, who is enrolled in the university’s Art Department, began posting the signs, made of cardboard and paper, shortly before noon on Wednesday, she said, hanging 17 of them in several buildings on campus, next to elevators, water fountains, benches and bathrooms.

Within about an hour, university police began receiving phone calls from alarmed students, according to a student newspaper, The Spectrum. Some students called the signs traumatic and said they made them feel unsafe.


At a meeting of the Black Student Union on Wednesday night where students talked about the signs, Ms. Powell, who is black, announced that she was responsible for them. She described her project, called “Our Compliance,” as an effort “to expose white privilege.”

“Our society still actively maintains racist structures that benefit one group of people, and oppress another,” Ms. Powell said in a statement. “Forty to fifty years ago, these structures were visibly apparent and physically graspable through the existence of signs that looked exactly like the signs I put up. Today these signs may no longer exist, but the system that they once reinforced still does.”

Her statement continued: “I apologize for the extreme trauma, fear and actual hurt and pain these signs brought about. I apologize if you were hurt, but I do not apologize for what I did.”

Ms. Powell, a 25-year-old from Chicago, is in her second year of a two-year art program at the university. As part of a class called “Installation: Urban Space,” students were asked to create an installation near the campus arts center about time.

For people who are not white, Ms. Powell said in an interview, time has, in many ways, stood still.

Since the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., both unarmed black men who died at the hands of police, “black lives matter” has become a rallying cry, and issues of race, especially in policing, have commanded significant attention.

On Friday, John DellaContrada, a spokesman for the university, released a statement in response to Ms. Powell’s project.

“On a daily basis our faculty and students explore sensitive and difficult topics in an environment that values freedom of expression, and this week’s student art project is generating considerable dialogue,” Mr. DellaContrada said. “The university is encouraging our community to discuss how we negotiate the boundaries of academic freedom in a safe and inclusive environment.”

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https://twitter.com/JVMES_BVTTLE/status/644210083296071680/photo/1

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/%E2%80%98white-only%E2%80%99-signs-in-art-project-at-suny-buffalo-draw-concern/ar-AAevMkv?li=AAa0dzB
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Oh dear Willard, students are just so edgy these days. My word, this is just so shocking..... I need to take to my sick bed...
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Sep 19 2015, 06:16 PM
Oh dear Willard, students are just so edgy these days. My word, this is just so shocking..... I need to take to my sick bed...
:rofl
The image linked did not work but a black student said this:

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@JVMES_BVTTLE
This was posted on a public bathroom at UB. Not only is this a hate crime, but it is also an act of terrorism.
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Tybee
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Sep 19 2015, 06:14 PM
Some students called the signs traumatic
Sounds like they need to stock up on anti depressants and panty liners on that campus. They seem like a tender lot. :confused
Edited by Tybee, Sep 19 2015, 06:38 PM.
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Tybee
Sep 19 2015, 06:38 PM
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Sep 19 2015, 06:14 PM
Some students called the signs traumatic
Sounds like they need to stock up on anti depressants and panty liners on that campus. They seem like a tender lot. :confused
:rofl Indeed. It's funny how a lot of college students these days want "trigger warnings" on classic poems and literature. :rofl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/14/columbia-students-claim-greek-mythology-needs-a-trigger-warning/

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Tybee
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Just whiners looking for something to whine about. We've raised a whole generation of whiners. These kids have absolutely no idea what real life is all about. They'll find out one day though.
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Tybee
Sep 19 2015, 06:55 PM
Just whiners looking for something to whine about. We've raised a whole generation of whiners. These kids have absolutely no idea what real life is all about. They'll find out one day though.
It's odd how they feel the need to find pretty much anything offensive.
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There is a horrible right winger here. Foul to the max.

But on a morning news show, he did say something I sort of agreed with.

He described the current crop of youngins as "pussification" with all their gold stars and blue ribbons no matter how they do. Parents providing a hedge of protection at all times.

Were we raised like that?
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Tybee
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Good God no! I can't even remember the number of times I was told "get your butt in gear boy!", when I started whimpering about something.
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Sep 19 2015, 07:05 PM
There is a horrible right winger here. Foul to the max.

But on a morning news show, he did say something I sort of agreed with.

He described the current crop of youngins as "pussification" with all their gold stars and blue ribbons no matter how they do. Parents providing a hedge of protection at all times.

Were we raised like that?
In schools I have heard that they do not want teachers to fail students or give them bad grades since that would hurt them and their feelings/self-esteem.

A friend of mine is a teacher at a private school where students have to apply to get in, and he said how there are more than a few students who should not be attending that school or taking certain advanced classes, but because they and their parents want this it happens and they're not supposed to fail them or tell them how they're not a good fit for an advanced class or that private school.
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I hope all those parents are very rich and will take care of their low achieving kids for the rest of their lives. Once they get out of school and get jobs (if they can get a job) they will probably go through a lifetime of getting fired for incompetence.
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Tybee
Sep 19 2015, 07:17 PM
I hope all those parents are very rich and will take care of their low achieving kids for the rest of their lives. Once they get out of school and get jobs (if they can get a job) they will probably go through a lifetime of getting fired for incompetence.
Did you ever work with people like that?
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More than I can count. We bought companies like people buy candy so I was constantly confronted with fools who should have never been hired in the first place and kept on for years due to management incompetence (and not a few because they were related to the previous owners). Some I was able to move into positions they could handle, others quit when they saw their protectors couldn't help them anymore, and a few (mainly idiot relatives of former owners) were sent packing.
Edited by Tybee, Sep 19 2015, 07:38 PM.
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Tybee
Sep 19 2015, 07:37 PM
More than I can count. We bought companies like people buy candy so I was constantly confronted with fools who should have never been hired in the first place and kept on for years due to management incompetence (and not a few because they were related to the previous owners). Some I was able to move into positions they could handle, others quit when they saw their protectors couldn't help them anymore, and a few (mainly idiot relatives of former owners) were sent packing.
What were some of the ways they behaved, or expected/demanded special treatment since they thought they were above everyone else or akin to a company president or CEO?
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Some behaved fine. They were just incompetent for the jobs they had been put into. Case in point, one company had a guy who had been hired to work in the accounting office. He had zero accounting knowledge and after 3 years they were still walking him through every new task, wasting everyone's time all because he was the son of the accounting manager's best friend. I salvaged him, moving him to the warehouse pulling orders where he did a fine job and ended up being much happier.

The worst were the companies we bought where we kept the previous owners on for a period of time to ease the transition. Almost without fail they thought they would be able to continue running things as if they still owned the company. It rarely worked out for the agreed upon time period.

Then we had the idiots who thought they were irreplaceable. Most of them eventually found out just how replaceable they were. A few faced with the loss of their jobs got their acts together.

After 33 years of that I'm even more glad my working years are over. I think I need a trigger warning! :eek :lol
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