Florida State University (FSU) student, Amanda Thurston, has been accused of posting racial slurs on the social media site, Vine, on Wednesday Sept. 4. The Vine showed a clip of black students performing in the middle of FSU Oglesby Union during the weekly Market Wednesday. The caption for the Vine read, “Welcome to FAMU…I mean FSU #monkeyseverywhere #FSU #MarketWednesday.” Thurston deactivated her account not long after the post gathered backlash from about it. She reported to the FSU Police Department that someone hacked into her account and posted the insensitive comments.
School of Communication Interim Director Dr. Ulla Sypher and doctoral student Joseph Clark were interviewed by Tallahassee.com in a two-part article series about the incident.
Sypher mentioned that, “In crisis communication often times the immediateness of the response is very crucial, and I think FSU did what they needed to do to prevent being held responsible for that student’s action.” Testifying to the concern of the University and all their constituents helps to avoid misrepresentations based on one student’s actions.
School of Communication doctoral student Joseph Clark also stated, “To folks in more administrative or public relations within the university, it’s all bad, right, because it’s all ‘this idiot student at FSU’, that’s the story as it comes out and by extension that ‘racism is rampant at FSU’, that’s sort of the frame that comes out around this. But it can be good.” Clark looks to the brighter side of how issues like these can unite an academic community to define its values.