By Gwen Frost
Tune in to Western’s student-run radio station KUGS 89.3 FM to listen to “Better Safe Than Sorry” Thursday, Nov 30 at 6:30 p.m.. Listen anywhere, with anyone, you just need access to the internet!
The 30-minute show on Thursday will be looking at safe spaces, free speech, and the impacts of these concepts on student life.
Host Matt Svilar has been the News and Public Affairs Director at KUGS since spring quarter of 2017, and has been volunteering at KUGS since January of 2016. Svilar is double majoring in History and Anthropology, with a minor in Arabic and Islamic studies.
The show will include two students from Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER), two students from the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and James Loucky, an Anthropology professor at Western and staff adviser of SUPER.
The focus of show is on Western and the recent experiences of students (in the past two years or so), but the racism if framed in a much broader context. Svilar talks with guests about racist incidents and attitudes on Western’s campus, specifically, Islamophobia on campus.
This October 2, Islamophobic posters were found in Haggard Hall on Western’s campus. The posters contained Islamophobic rhetoric, including calls to “execute islamofascist terrorist scum.”
The MSA was alerted of the initial posters by the AS Review, and made a post on Facebook after members found additional posters, writing on October 2 that “the administration has not sent out any emails regarding this situation and it is our duty to let each other know of incidents like this so we can be aware and stay safe.”
One member of the newly-reunited SUPER had to find out about the close-to-home racism from a group in Seattle that looks out for Islamophobic threats. Of the racist posters, Samia, one of Svilar’s guests says in the trailer “I was not surprised, I was disappointed.”
Samia’s last name has been withheld at her request due to concerns about online harassment she has received in the past.
Some students were reasonably distraught that this event was not more publicized, by the administration or publications.
“You’d expect that it’d be something that you’d hear about,” said Svilar.
One of the reasons Svilar felt a need to do the show was because there hadn’t (and still hasn’t) been that big of a response from the faculty. After reaching out to Paul Cocke, director of communications and marketing, Svilar said that “there wasn’t too specific of a response- it seemed pretty generic.”
Svilar emphasized that Western students need “to realize that these sort of racist incidents and these displays of hate are definitely happening, and they’re happening here, where we go to school, where we live, on campus…”
When it comes to displays of racism, white students at Western tend to turn the other cheek, because of our liberal facade of equality and equal opportunity.
“It’s easy to distance yourself from the issue, because of our pretty liberal college,” said Svilar. “It’s easy to fall in to ‘No, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen here.’”
Islamophobia in the US has always been rampant, and though certainly exacerbated in its open-ness by contemporary politics, it’s not to say that this kind of prejudice would not still exist.
In working on this project, Svilar has “learned a lot about how to involve yourself in causes that don’t necessarily involve ‘you’.”
“It wouldn’t be my place to grab their torch, run with it and champion this cause on my own,” he said. “I have the privilege to sit back and say ‘Oh, that’s horrible.’ But these students don’t have the privilege to shrug it off; they deal with this stuff everyday.”
Svilar indicated that both MSA and SUPER are open to all members of all ethnicities and religions, and if you’re interested and wanting to see what these groups are about, they are totally interested, as long as you come to learn, and without hate or prejudice.