Update to this story.
Via Student Life:
One by one, Muslim students and their peers passed the microphone to discuss past experiences with racism and Islamophobia.
For many of them, these memories resurfaced when a Halloween photo of students costumed in military garb in what some argued was a depiction of Osama bin Laden, others as a stereotypical Muslim at gunpoint, surfaced on Facebook last Wednesday.
An open solidarity forum hosted by the Muslim Students Association on Thursday offered students the chance to share their experiences with racism and discuss ideas for future prevention of acts that could be considered inflammatory.
The photo, which some students defended as a depiction of Navy SEAL Team 6 and Osama bin Laden, went viral Wednesday night and kicked off a discussion about how the University handles incidents students may find racially or otherwise offensive, an issue that the Mosaic Project was and is intended to address.
“The gravity of this matter extends much beyond the photo itself,” MSA president and senior Ishaq Winters said. “The ensuing, oftentimes hateful comments of fellow students expose wider concerns…the silence on the part of the administration and majority of our student body speaks to the systemic nature of the challenges to our university’s principles of inclusion and equality, challenges that we must address moving forward.”
The event, held in Tisch Commons, was hugely attended by members of MSA, other students and administrators.