RNA - Two student senators at the University of Southern Maine resigned their positions Friday after students protested how they handled the discovery of anti-Muslim graffiti in the student government offices.
The resignations were announced at an emotional two-hour-plus meeting of the Student Senate, dominated by a string of student speakers demanding that the entire board resign over the incident. About half the seats in the 21-seat Senate are currently vacant.
Derrick Stanley and Benjamin Bussiere both apologized in their resignation statements.
The two were criticized for saying the graffiti – the Latin phrase “Deus Vult” or “God Wills It” – should be cleaned up and not reported to campus police. Other student body officials who discovered the graffiti, written on a desk and on a wall, had already taken pictures of it and filed a report with campus police, they said Friday.
The phrase was used as a rallying cry for Christians during the Crusades in medieval times, and recently has been adopted by the alt-right political movement as an anti-Muslim insult.
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