The Supposed Towson University White Student Union

Over the past two weeks, I have received questions from many people concerning the supposed White Student Union at Towson University.  This is a delicate matter for me personally, for reasons I will explain.  But it demands attention for numerous reasons, including the widespread and inaccurate reporting by the press.  So I will address the matter here, while necessarily omitting certain details, as ethical and professional concerns demand.

The issue first began to gain national media attention earlier this month because of a disruptive episode at this year’s Conservative Political Action Committee (C-PAC) meeting in Washington, D.C.

At that event, an African American Conservative named K. Carl Smith led a panel on how Conservatives can deflect accusations of racism.  During his presentation, a verbal imbroglio erupted when a man named Scott Terry challenged Smith and ended up voicing some rather distasteful, ignorant, and bigoted sentiments.  In particular, when Smith mentioned that Frederick Douglass had found it within his heart to forgive his former slave owner, Terry replied:

“For giving him shelter and food?”

Much of the press initially identified Terry as a Towson University student and a member of a supposed TU student club called the White Student Union.

Let me set the record straight.

Scott Terry is not a Towson University student.  In fact, there aren’t any students at Towson University named Scott Terry.  Rather, Scott Terry is a thirty year old man from North Carolina.

However, Terry was accompanied at C-PAC by a TU student.  I will neither mention this student by name nor discuss him in any detail because not only is he a TU student, but during this current semester is MY student.  Professional ethics demand as much.

Some members of the press erroneously conflated and confused Scott Terry with the TU student accompanying him.  However, the TU student did not make these comments at C-PAC.  Scott Terry did.

Though it is important to note that the student in question is the leader of an organization called the Towson White Student Union.  But the press has habitually botched coverage of this as well.

The Towson White Student Union is misleadingly named, probably intentionally so.  It is not a Towson University organization.  Rather it is a private organization that has zero affiliation with the university.

Of course the press could have ascertained this by contacting the University, or by simply checking the organization’s own website.  The White Student Union site is not hosted by TU servers.  Rather, it is merely a blogspot page.

Unfortunately, however, modern internet journalism is, generally speaking, exceedingly lazy.   The copy-and-paste culture that infects internet journalism thus began repeating the false assumption that the White Student Union is a University organization.  It is not.

And what’s more, while the White Student Union is founded and led by a TU student, I personally suspect that most of the thirty-odd members it claims to represent are not actually students, though that is speculation.

Part of the confusion arises from the fact that the student in question did found and run a small official Towson University student organization last academic year.  It was called Youth For Western Civilization.  The group was short lived, however, because their faculty adviser, Professor Richard Vatz, himself a Conservative who blogs for RedState.com, eventually refused to sponsor the group.  Vatz objected to what he referred to as the group’s “frightening rhetoric.”  You can read his public letter on the issue here.

All student organizations at Towson University require a faculty adviser, and so YWC was officially disbanded.

Unable to reconstitute a similar student group at Towson University, the student in question has thus created a small, private organization that falsely implies association with the University, but actually has none.

Also gaining widespread attention is the White Student Union’s assertion that it plans to begin campus patrols.  Whether that comes to fruition remains to be seen, but if it should, it would constitute nothing more than private individuals patrolling the campus without any legal powers.  Of course Towson University, like nearly all major American colleges, has its own deputized police force.

A recent letter by University President  Maravene Loeschke indicates that official police presence on Towson during nighttime will increase to counter any potential vigilantism.  Personally, I thinking nothing will come of it, though that remains to be seen.

I do not believe there is currently any credible threat of violence on the university relating to these matters.  Instead, I think the real goal of the White Student Union is publicity, and that has been achieved in spades.  Sadly, however, much of that attention has been in the form of sloppy misreporting by lazy internet writers masquerading as journalists.