Two USM student senators resign positions

Two USM student senators resign positions after anti-Muslim graffiti incident .

News ID: 424880

Date: 07 November 2016 - 22:53

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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