The student government leaders at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga don’t want to Make America Great Again™. College students around the country have been losing their minds over the fact that some of their peers support Donald Trump’s widely popular bid for presidency. Examples like The Chalkening this past weekend and the incident at Emory University show just how sad we’ve come with political discourse in this country, especially on college campuses, place that should be bastions of free thinking. But what just went down at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is beyond ridiculous.
TLDR: Student government leader makes pro-Trump chalk message. Group calls for her to be fired. Via The Times Free Press:
A group that calls itself Empower UTC released a statement on Twitter saying that it had asked for Hailey Puckett’s resignation because “we realize that her values do not line up with the pillars we’ve established ourselves on.”
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A statement released by the UTC Student Government Association clarified that the school’s student government was not itself calling for Puckett’s resignation, rather it was the coalition of which she is a member that has asked for her to step down.
Chuck Cantrell, UTC’s associate vice chancellor of marketing and communication, said though the university’s administration is staying out of the debate, neither the student who created the original Trump chalkings nor those who later erased and replaced her chalkings with their own messages followed the school’s rules, which require a reservation. However, “nobody’s in trouble,” he said.
Here’s the group’s message asking for Hailey Puckett to resign.
Clearly it’d be dumb if she did. This is America and you’re allowed to support whoever you want politically without the need for others to have a safe space from your views.
Side note: Can’t wait for the election to be over.
