UMD students storm president’s speech to protest racist image shared by club tennis team

More than 100 students stormed the State of the Campus address given by University of Maryland President Darryll Pines on Thursday afternoon, in protest of the university’s response to a racist image sent by the school’s club tennis team.

The students stood quietly in the back of the room with their fists in the air and posters condemning racism. They remained quiet while Pines spoke, but they began shouting after he addressed the image.

“Will you expel the student?” one asked. “It starts with racist imagery and it ends with us hanging in trees.”

Students chanted “say their names” in an effort to get Pines to release the names of the club tennis players involved, as police officers escorted the group out of the Colony Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union. As Pines continued to address the faculty senate, students continued to chant on the other side of the ballroom’s doors. “No justice, no peace,” they shouted as the volume of Pines’ microphone was turned up.

The protest is the latest response to a firestorm that started last Saturday, when members of the Howard University club tennis team found a racist image in a Google document sent by the UMD club team. The document, which included a schedule for the tournament and a map of the College Park campus, featured a depiction of the Maryland state flag with Ku Klux Klan masks in the top right and bottom left corners. The image originally appeared in a 2017 blog post alongside commentary on the Confederate origins of the flag.

The University of Maryland suspended its club tennis team indefinitely, pending an investigation into the incident, and required the club to forfeit its matches from last weekend’s tournament. A new policy requires staff approval of all club sports’ external communications.

Howard University’s president and club team released their own statements calling for accountability. The UMD club team issued a public apology on Instagram.

The team’s use of the image, according to some student leaders, is emblematic of a larger problem at Maryland’s flagship university, which enrolled nearly 5,500 Black students last fall. The Black population at the university represents about 13% of the 42,000-person student body.

In a statement shared with the university community earlier this week, Pines wrote that the image was “deeply harmful and offensive,” and offered his “apology for its detrimental impact on one and all.”

“We share their frustrations,” Pines told the faculty after the students left his speech Thursday afternoon. “We have students on this team who have nothing to do with this situation. They’re already getting all kinds of unfortunate contact that is negative. The process by itself, by its nature is confidential.”

He added, “Hopefully we can get some answers for the protesters who just came here seeking answers. It’s been a difficult two weeks on our campus.”

The rally began on the steps of the Thomas V. Miller Jr. Administration Building. It was organized by Black student leaders like Jade Blackmoore, who wanted to bring awareness to what she called an “epidemic of racism” at the state’s flagship university.

Also present at the rally were Alison Razafimandimby and Anika Prasanna, two students who previously served as co-presidents of the club tennis team. The two women said they resigned last April after being harassed by fellow club members. They said they were incorrectly identified as leaders of the club team on social media amid the controversy.

“We hoped to build a more inclusive and respectful community,” Razafimandimby said of their tenure as club presidents. “Instead, we experienced repeated microaggressions, hostilities and a toxic culture that went unaddressed.”

Prasanna recounted one incident in which she said a teammate spit in her face.

“We brought our concerns to the university because we believed that they needed to be addressed and they deserved that attention,” Prasanna said. “Yet we were left feeling that our experiences were not adequately acknowledged and that meaningful change never came.”

The protest featured several student speakers and the opportunity for students to share their experiences with racism on campus. Students recounted stories of being called the N-word, being taunted and feeling targeted on campus for their skin tone.

Aniya Baker, the vice president for the Black Student Union and one of the organizers of Thursday’s protest, said the event was meant to “bring to light a deeply rooted issue of the university not handling and caring and protecting their Black students.”

Mohammed Salih, a senior and ambassador at the campus’s Nyumburu Cultural Center, told the crowd that he believes the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group, is present at the University of Maryland.

“The administration has created an environment where the Ku Klux Klan feels as though they can spread their imagery around this campus and that it can go unchecked,” Salih said. “We need to expel racism from this campus and expel the klan from this campus.”

While Baker remains disappointed in her university, she said that the incident has brought the Black student community together.

“Now people are understanding that this issue has been reoccurring, so they’re wanting to say something,” she said. “It’s a horrible situation, but it’s kind of uniting Black students to do something about it.”

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