Discriminatory graffiti marks up student government election posters in Loomis

Photo: Josh Raab

The run-up to the CCSGA election turned ugly Sunday morning as several candidates’ posters were vandalized with discriminatory graffiti.

Sometime around 1 a.m. on February 28, Loomis residents noticed alterations to posters in the first floor stairwell for Marie Blanc and Stephanie Coba, both of whom ran for Executive Vice President. On Blanc’s photos, someone darkened the candidate’s teeth and wrote “Now you can’t see me” next to it. A talking bubble had been added to the photo of Coba on her poster with the words “I heart pussy” added to it. 

The posters were immediately removed; and the Dean’s Office, Loomis RLC, Minority Student Life, Campus Activities and CCSGA President David Carlson were all notified. Carlson said he was disturbed and could not remember any similar election problems in the past few years.

“Have posters been defaced in the past? Of course. But never to my knowledge has it been in such an obviously racially motivated way,” Carlson said. “It was clearly targeted vandalism.”

Carlson cited an incident earlier this year in the dorm, when posters depicting gay couples were repeatedly ripped down.

“This is not the first time that discriminatory vandalism has happened in Loomis this year,” he said.

While it seemed evident that the vandalism to Blanc’s posters was racial, it was unclear whether the desecration of Coba’s was bias-motivated.

“I guess you can see it as a gender slur,” Coba said. “Someone thinks I might be a lesbian, which is not true.”

“I’d like to think that it was just someone who had a few too many on Saturday night, but I don’t think there’s enough evidence to suggest that it wasn’t [discriminatory],” Carlson said. “I don’t know what the intent was but I do know it was utterly and completely inappropriate.”

CCSGA and Minority Student Life had a meeting on Monday and decided to hold a campus forum, sponsored by the Not in Our Town committee, to discuss the incident. Neither Blanc nor Coba was part of the decision to hold the forum, and neither attended.

“We decided this was an appropriate time to spawn an impromptu forum in an effort to bring about some kind of positive response to this,” Carlson said.

CCSGA executives Angela Cobian and Becca Spiegel facilitated the discussion, which was held on Wednesday evening in Gaylord. Only ten people attended, and several students expressed disappointment about the the low turnout.

“It’s clearly not a big enough deal because there’s nobody here,” student Addison Petti said.

Others agreed that the school’s response to the incident was not significant enough, and Cobian called for an immediate public denouncement of the graffiti.

“We live in a community where this should not be tolerated,” Cobian said.

“I think [discrimination] happens more than people find out about,” said Spiegel.

Not in Our Town, which sponsors discussions about issues of discrimination, race and gender, plans to continue conversations about such issues on campus. Carlson said that CCSGA considered a number of responses to the graffiti, but decided to move forward with the election as scheduled and continue to allow the candidates to campaign as they wished.

“I am disappointed at what was done and strongly believe it should not happen at CC,” Coba said. “However, I am also aware it happened on a Saturday night in a big dorm. This means it was probably just someone who had been drinking and thought what they were writing was funny.”

Blanc declined to be interviewed for this article, however wrote on the wall of her public Facebook supporters’ group that the incident would not affect her campaign.

Coba and Blanc will be competing in a run-off election on Monday, March 8 for the Executive Vice President position.

Courtney Cox and Scott Ventrudo contributed reporting to this article.