BY SHANE DIXON KAVANAUGH AND ANDREW THEEN

A member of Oregon State University's student government faces a growing firestorm on campus amid revelations of his white nationalist views and criminal accusations that he plastered racist bumper stickers on the cars of social activists.

Andrew Oswalt alarmed students, faculty and administrators after he outlined his inflammatory thoughts about minorities and women in an interview with OSU's student newspaper published Monday.

Hours later, Corvallis police arrested the 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate on suspicion of criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. Police said he put the bumper stickers on cars belonging to members of Showing Up For Racial Justice while they gathered at a local food co-op off campus in June.

Oswalt's peers on the student congress are now discussing the extraordinary measure of trying to oust him from his position. The student congress will meet Wednesday, where a vote to remove him could occur.

"His words and actions are morally reprehensible," said Simon Brundage, the president of the Associated Students of Oregon State University. "When someone on our student government espouses bigoted, disturbing views, it is plainly unacceptable."

"The comments reported are not in keeping with the values that are expressed by the OSU community," said Steve Clark, a university spokesman.

Oswalt criticized his arrest in an email response Tuesday to questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive, saying police are involved in "an extremely politicized attempt at character assassination."

He also affirmed his belief that whites have greater intelligence than other racial or ethnic groups and expressed his views that Jews control "most important institutions in modern life."

"If anyone believes that statements I have made are in error, prove it to me, and I will recant," Oswalt wrote, explaining he prefers to be known as an "ethno-nationalist."

"With some exceptions, I have thus far been met with unchecked emotion, ad hominem, and lazy stereotyping."

Oswalt declined to offer details of the police investigation beyond saying authorities "raided my apartment while I was at work last week, causing substantial damage to the door and its frame during entry."

Corvallis Police Lt. Daniel Duncan said Oswalt's arrest wasn't related to the campus article, published in The Daily Barometer.

Oswalt was booked in the Benton County Jail and released, Duncan said. Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson said that his office may seek additional charges.

"We're going to be taking a very close look at whether the evidence supports a charge of intimidation," he said, which is a hate crime under Oregon statute.

The case comes as the state grapples with emboldened white nationalists who have stepped up public displays of racism and bigotry in the last year.

The ripple effects go beyond frequent public marches in the Portland area, where anti-fascist demonstrators have clashed with white nationalists for months or the triple-stabbing aboard a MAX train last May, which police say was a racially motivated attack.

In Eugene, considered a liberal college town, an increase in documented hate crimes and neo-Nazi activity has fed community anxieties.

In Corvallis, police say Oswalt and another person placed the bumper stickers that contained a racists slur for African Americans on two cars at the First Alternative Natural Foods Co-Op.

The bumper stickers covered messages on the cars that supported immigrants and refugees, said Faith Reidenbach, co-founder of the Corvallis chapter of Show up for Racial Justice. The group is designed to mobilize white people to support people of color and take action for racial justice.

An employee discovered that someone also had placed anti-Semitic leaflets on the windshields of every car in the staff parking lot at the same time, said Cindee Lolik, co-op general manager.

"The kinds of things that you would see on the Daily Stormer," Lolik said, referring to a prominent white supremacist website, "stuff straight out of Nazi Germany."

The bumper stickers and fliers came on the heels of chalk messages around town decrying "white genocide," The Coravallis Gazette-Times reported.

Police last week executed a search warrant at Oswalt's house and recovered bumper stickers and fliers that matched the ones used in the June incident, Duncan said.

Oswalt was also identified in surveillance video captured by the food co-op, according to police, which is still trying to identify the second suspect.

Oswalt, who also works as a graduate teaching assistant in chemistry at Oregon State, was elected last March to the 25-seat student house of representatives, part of the student congress that includes a 12-seat senate. He began his one-year term last summer.

He gained a reputation among his fellow representatives for making provocative statements or asides, but on money issues, not on religion and race.

Oswalt said he ran for office in response to what he viewed as "fiscal wastefulness." He particularly focused on fees levied on students in addition to tuition and other costs of attendance. He said he engaged in what he described as "performance art" when his views on fiscal issues weren't taken seriously.

Few of on the student congress seemed to be aware of the extent of his white nationalist views, though he didn't hide them.

Junior Andrew Damitio, a member of the student senate, said he first met Oswalt at a student government orientation a year-and-a-half ago. Oswalt, Damitio recalled, showed up in a red Make America Great Again hat.

"It was very open that he was alt-right," Damitio said. "It was never a secret."

Damiitio said he agreed with Oswalt's stance on budget issues, but he would often undermine those arguments by making side comments in meetings to make people uncomfortable. Oswalt apparently decided to "pour gasoline on the fire" in the interview with the student publication, Damitio said.

Lorena Colcer, a senior majoring in chemical engineering, said Oswalt was a teaching assistant in her spring 2017 physical chemistry course and she described him as an occasionally condescending but helpful presence.

Colcer said Oswalt never discussed personal or political views, but he was a sharp scientific mind. "I was really shocked," she said of the campus newspaper's story, "I didn't expect that to come from someone like him."

In the article, Oswalt is depicted as a self-described member of the "alt-right" who bristles at his politically correct peers, believes that race and gender can determine intelligence levels and claims that he's been attacked in academia for being a white male.

Many of his views, Oswalt said, had been shaped by his experiences as an undergraduate at the liberal The Evergreen State College in Washington and as an OSU teaching assistant, where he noted that he worked with students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Oswalt disputed some of the college newspaper's reporting in his email to The Oregonian/OregonLive, but he largely stood by his views and said he believed he was being railroaded by the other student government members.

"I assume that most are so frightened by the mere accusation of association with my ideas in the university climate that it is enough to preemptively declare my 'guilt,'" he wrote.

The student congress is now looking into how to handle Oswalt's conduct, said Brundage, its president. Individuals can file complaints against elected members, which are handled by the student senate's oversight and ethics committee.

Under OSU's student government constitution, members of the congress may also move to expel a member for "disorderly conduct" with a two-thirds vote.

Should the student congress pursue that avenue, it would be only the second time since 2009, a faculty adviser said.

"This is an extraordinary situation," Brundage said. "We've all been taken aback."

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen