Western Connecticut State University Students Stage Protest After Anti-Gay Hate Messages On Campus

Students rally in response to gay slurs: wtnh.com

Students at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) staged a silent protest this week after a series of anti-gay incidents occurred on campus.

As Danbury Patch is reporting, the words "Die Dyke" were written on the dry erase boards of two female students in recent weeks, and WCSU police are investigating threatening and harassing blogs posed on a Tumblr account belonging to two students. Meanwhile, the word "Fags," was written on a paper taped to the door of another student on March 3.

"The cowardly writing of such anonymous messages may be easy, but it causes real pain and discomfort for those targeted," WCSU president James Schmotter is quoted as saying in a campus-wide e-mail, according to the Danbury News-Times. "Enough is enough. Such hate speech has no place at this university and will not be tolerated."

Junior Autumn Christoforo, who also serves as president of WCSU's Gay-Straight Alliance, told the paper, "Well, hopefully, they (the suspects) will come forward, but our main goal is to raise awareness so people understand what's going on, and that they pay more attention to the emails that they get about this."