Players from Tulane University’s football team have involved themselves in a brewing campus-wide storm over race and politics.
Green Wave team members were among the people who dismantled a wall made of sandbags, which sat outside the house of fraternity Kappa Alpha Order, The New Orleans Times-Picayune’s Wilborn P. Nobles III reported Wednesday. The wall contained painted messages reading “Make America Great Again” and “Trump,” in reference to the candidate for United States president.
The wall stood at the off-campus house between April 7 and Wednesday, when several people arrived and started removing the sandbags.
The Tulane football team went over to the Kappa Alpha fraternity house and took the #MakeAmericaGreat wall down. pic.twitter.com/ipy9vK1CJa
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) April 13, 2016
A member of Tulane’s Latino student group described the wall as “a source of aggression towards students of color on this campus” Tuesday.
In a statement to the Times-Picayune, Kappa Alpha Order’s assistant executive director for advancement explained why members of the local chapter scrawled Trump’s name and slogan on its wall.
” … The comment was written on a makeshift wall on our private property, normally used for a game of capture the flag, to mock the ideologies of a political candidate,” Jesse Lyons said Wednesday. “This had a unintended negative effect and as such it has been dismantled.”
The university, fraternity and student groups are working together to ease tensions on campus.
It seems whatever solution they devise might stem from, and include, actions of some of Tulane’s football players.
Thumbnail photo via Danny Wild/USA TODAY Sports Images
