Two female Arizona State University students are crying foul after they were punished for berating two male classmates and demanding that they leave the campus multicultural study area last September because they were white.
On Dec. 29, 2021, Mastaani Qureshi and Sarra Tekola railed against ASU on social media, claiming the investigation that found them “guilty” and disciplinary action on Nov. 16, 2021 were “racially biased.”
“Dear white people, aka ASU,” both students said in unison in the nine-minute video, then accused the university of having ”openly discriminated” against them over the incident.
“We’re being persecuted for defending our multicultural center for racism and sexism,” one of the students said in the video.
The students blasted ASU over the reprimand and disciplinary action, which included a warning and them having to write a three-page paper on “how the next time when we talk to white people about race and society,” they must be “civil.”
Both students claimed “white supremacy” and “neo-nazism” on campus were to blame. “ASU is a violent place,” one of the students said.
The racially charged controversy erupted on Sept. 23, 2021, when both female students approached the two white students who were studying in the university’s Multicultural Community of Excellence Center.
One of the male students had a “Police Matter” sticker on his laptop computer, which appeared to trigger the female students.
“What did I do wrong?” the male student is heard saying as he was being recorded in a smartphone video that went viral on social media.
One of female students responded that the white students in the multicultural center was “offensive.”
“You’re offensive. Police lives matter?” she said.
“We’re just trying to do school,” the male student said.
“But this is our space,” the female student fired back. At one point, she claimed that “white is not a culture.”
“White is not a culture?” the male student asked.
“No, it’s not a culture. White is not a culture. Say it to the camera. Whiteness is not a culture.”
“This is insane,” the second male student responded angrily.
“We do not have anything to add. Federal laws governing student privacy and state regulations prevent the university from discussing the details of an individual student’s situation,” the ASU Office of Media Relations said in an email to The Epoch Times.
ASU is not the only state institution of higher learning that has been grappling with alleged racial discrimination and antagonism against white students.In February 2021, a black student at the University of Virginia came under fire after she accused her white classmates of making use of the school’s multicultural center.
A month earlier, the anthropology department at the University of Florida faced criticism after it banned white students from attending a virtual town hall.
In August 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Yale University of discrimination against white and Asian American applicants in its undergraduate application process following a two-year investigation.
Amidst a background of increasing racial division on U.S. college campuses, several states have taken steps to oppose the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools.
In December of 2021, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem unveiled a draft bill that she said would block CRT as the foundation of education in her state’s colleges and schools.
Also that month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed legislation to allow parents to sue schools teaching CRT, an ideology that blames whites for most of the ills facing American minorities.
