Student’s controversial Snapchat video causes outrage
Katie O’Brien, the vice president of Student Affairs at St. Bonaventure University, sent an email on Sept. 11 to the school notifying them of a bias incident involving a “hurtful video.”
The hurtful video in question was posted to Snapchat on Sept. 8 by a Bonaventure student. The video included a student and other unseen students singing a part of the song, “Freaky Friday” by rappers Lil Dicky and Chris Brown, which repeats the n-word several times. O’Brien described the video as “painful” and “inappropriate.”
A concerned student notified Parker Suddeth, the coordinator of the Damietta Center for Multicultural Student Affairs and the Bias Incident Response Team, who then reported the incident upstairs.
“What we need to make sure is that we have a system that students know that when these incidences happen that there is a mechanism, a Bias Incident Report…there is a team, BIRT, that looks at these incidences to determine what is the next step of action,” said O’Brien.
When a student fills out a BIR online, there are SBU faculty who are automatically notified. The report then goes through BIRT, which includes: the campus security director, two School of Business deans, the assistant vice president for Student Engagement, the director for Franciscan Center for Social Concern and an SGA-appointed student representative.
Campus Security Director, Gary M. Segrue, receives the BIRs and since he’s in law enforcement, he determines whether the reports are hate crimes. If it were a hate crime, the BIRT would be referred and local law enforcement would be contacted.
If the report were to be violate SBU’s Code of Conduct, Nichole Gonzalez, the executive director for Residential Living and Conduct and the interim vice president for Student Affairs, would be contacted. Gonzalez would handle judicial cases.
BIRT meets and discusses all of the facts of the situation and looks at it from a SWOT analysis perspective (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to make a recommendation for O’Brien as how to handle the situation. Sometimes these recommendations come from the person who filed the report.
“Sometimes, I think we look at this incidences and we try to categorize them by saying ‘This is bad’ or ‘This isn’t bad,’ but when it’s a bias related incident, it’s all bad,” O’Brien said. “There isn’t a scale. If it’s a bias related incident, we have to provide the same opportunity for students to report and for the BIRT to make a recommendation.”
The students involved in the video were not identified.
“When one person does something, multiple people or a group of people, whether it be big, large, intermediary or small, does something to negatively impact the entire university community, I think that’s the real issue,” Suddeth said.
As a result of the impact of this particular incident, the Damietta Center and the office of the Assistant Vice President for Student Engagement will be hosting Tokeya C. Graham on Thursday, Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. in the William F. Walsh Science Center amphitheater. The discussion is titled, “Bigger Than the “___” Word: The etymology of the N-word and other racial slurs.”
“This is also to help how we understand these incidences that happen on our campus,” said O’Brien. “It’s not just to address one particular incident, but to also look at the climate of the campus and what we need to do as administrators to address our community in ways that can respond globally to things that we see happening on campus.”
The Bigger Than the Word campaign was also started by the Black Student Union leading up to Black History Month to raise awareness.
“This is not just an isolated incident,” Suddeth said. “And this is a way for our community to grow and raise awareness together.”
By Amber Canbek, News Editor
canbekam16@bonaventure.edu
