After widespread outcry over a racist video posted to tik tok, Westmont College posted the following image to their Instagram story at 7:24pm on May 28th, 2020:
1 Comment
On May 28th, a video from @Clayton_Cardinalli surfaced on social media. In the video the former Westmont Activities Council Leader and 2020-2021 RA mocks Black Lives Matter in Blackface. The video has since been taken down. Various students emailed different members of the Student Life Office in accordance with the reporting procedures for racial harassment and hate crimes. A letter was drafted by various students. The open letter can be signed at THIS LINK or https://forms.gle/7ZFY2rMGBfzbtG9eA Dear Student Life Office,
On March 28, 2020, Clayton Cardinalli, a White Westmont student, posted a video on TikTok mocking the Black Lives Matter movement while presenting blackface, which was removed over a month later. By May 2, when a screen recording of the video was taken, Cardinalli’s video had acquired more than 470 likes and been viewed countless times. This act of racial hatred and anti-Blackness is unacceptable, and explicitly violates the Community Life Statement which is committed to “a learning and work environment free of harassment.” During the 2019-20 school year, Cardinalli was a student leader in the Westmont Activities Council and has been hired to be a Resident Advisor for the 2020-21 year. Given both his leadership position and more than 130,000 TikTok followers, the traumatic impacts of this video extend to both the wider cultural sphere of the internet, and affects the physical and emotional safety/well-being of our Westmont community, especially those who are within the Black community. By perpetrating caricatures and negatively discriminating against the Black Lives Matter movement, this video adds to the emotional trauma Westmont’s Black community faces both from the college and the world. It is unacceptable and this student must be held accountable. Having publicly violated the Community Life Statement, Cardinalli’s action falls under the Student Handbook’s statement that “Community members who have harassed, intimidated or demeaned others in public cannot expect their disciplinary action to be wholly private. Public misbehavior may involve sanctions, restitution, and apologies that are also public.” As Cardinalli is a student leader and therefore a visible representative of the Westmont community, this public act of racism is a part of a continuous pattern of behavior at Westmont that demonstrates to past, current, and future students of color that the environment that Westmont cultivates does not prioritize their safety and well-being. The continued occurrence of incidents like this (such as racist meme posts on the @blessedmont instagram page, op-eds claiming that intersectionality is unbiblical, the vandalization of student poster protests, and other events in our institution’s history) illustrates the ways in which individualized acts of bigotry and hate are connected to a wider culture of white supremacy at Westmont. The systemic violence perpetuated by this video on the Black community is enabled by the lack of clear reporting procedures and the institution’s endemic lack of accountability for instances of racial bigotry and hate. We, the undersigned, expect the Student Life Office to take appropriate actions including but not limited to suspension of leadership positions, behavioral and/or academic probation, required education on racial issues, and/or expulsion. We also expect Westmont to enact comprehensive systemic change proposed by the #westmontwhitejesus student movement in 2019. This change must include the construction of an easily accessible reporting system where students can report incidents of racism, prejudice, and bias. We expect each and every report to be thoroughly investigated and handled with serious consequences that ensures the safety of students, faculty, and staff of color. It is time we stop talking about change and accountability and start actively working to abolish the racism that exists on our campus. The video in question can be viewed at: Warning, this video contains hateful content including blackface and the mocking of Black Lives Matter https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nh9sgv1tH5FwrIQzrLrkSsVudOtnPlf/view?usp=sharing |