(Image taken from: https://www.strose.edu/offices-resources/brand-toolkit/logos/)
Patriot Front, the white supremacist group derived from a larger white nationalist movement titled Vanguard America, is allegedly responsible for vandalizing nearby campuses with hate-speech stickers during the weekend of Oct. 4. Colleges affected included The College of Saint Rose in Albany, Hudson Valley Community College, and Siena College.
According to the Times Union, the stickers read “America First,” “Better dead than red,” and “revolution is tradition.” These stickers promoted an anti-foreigner, white supremacist, and anti-Semitic agenda with references to communist ideals.
The stickers with racist remarks also included a link to the Patriot Front website. Two young white men were caught on cameras located on Siena’s campus and were said to be the ones responsible for the crime. However, Patriot Front is being investigated further as a collective.
Siena College was the only school of those involved that was not targeted prior by Patriot Front on social media like Saint Rose and Hudson Valley had been, but the stickers were confirmed to be consistent with those found on the other campuses.
The local and state authorities have no insight as to why this incident happened. After taking ownership for the event, Patriot Front did share photos publicizing their recruitment on Twitter.
The Skidmore News reached to the college’s Office of Campus Safety, but they failed to comment prior to the publication of the story.
In the same vein, no Saint Rose community member reported that they had seen the white supremacists' stickers on Saint Rose’s campus, according to the college’s spokesperson as reported by the Times Union.
Mariel Martin, Director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and Associate Dean of Student Affairs, commented to The Skidmore News regarding the event saying: “We know the frequency of these acts - dissemination of white nationalist propaganda that sometimes contain racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic content - is increasing, especially on college campuses.”
She continued that “the disruptive and provocative tactics used by these groups are often anonymous and are usually perpetrated by individuals outside of the campus community, making it challenging to prevent these incidents from occurring.”
Martin encouraged that, in a time like this, community members should think about how they affirm Skidmore’s values of diversity and inclusion, to send an even stronger message about how hate speech does not have a place on our campus.