A social media post circulated this month at SUNY Plattsburgh showing students in blackface. The post came from students at another SUNY college, but the images revived concerns about racial insensitivity in Plattsburgh.

Marching for social justice

Last year a student at SUNY Plattsburgh posted a joke on social media about lynching black people, but used the n-word instead. The post on Snapchat went viral and sparked outrage on campus.

Hundreds of students skipped class and marched across campus and in the city streets, chanting, "Enough is enough."

The student responsible for the post later withdrew from SUNY Plattsburgh and the college created a Bias Response Team to ease racial tensions on campus.

Essence Hightower is a junior majoring in sociology at SUNY Plattsburgh. She’s president of the Student Association and she's a student of color; she’s black. Since freshman year Hightower has been really active on campus.

“I was always involved in marches— I had my signs, I had my bullhorn," Hightower said.

Last year when the post about lynching black people circulated on campus, Hightower was ready to march. And she did, she was there that Friday in February 2018 demanding racial justice.

The power and pressure of social media

She quickly found just how powerful social media could be.

“I was walking down one of the streets and I guess a woman took a picture of me and posted it to her Facebook.," Hightower explained. "She thought that I had spit on her car."

"She had a little caption on the photo and was just like, 'This is why I don’t like when they do things like this,'" Hightower said, "just kind of going off on a rant about why she doesn’t want people to be marching and that she had to be somewhere and we need to get out of the streets.”

The photo of Hightower and the accusation against her started getting a lot of likes and a lot of shares. Hightower said people started threatening her on Facebook.

“I’m very emotional. I did cry because I felt like she truly believed that I did spit on her car and I would never do that," Hightower said.

A year later, Hightower doesn’t seemed hardened by this. She’s has a huge smile and says she’s really passionate about making Plattsburgh a better campus.

Two more photos circulate on campus

But earlier this month activists and student leaders like Hightower thought they were reliving last year’s unrest. Two photos circulated in a SUNY Plattsburgh group chat. The first photo is of a woman with a charcoal facemask. It’s captioned “Blackface and sunsets with my bae.” The second photo is of two women and the caption reads, “Jk they’re face masks.”

The SUNY Plattsburgh students in the group chat thought it was one of their own sending the racist post.

“One student originally sent that photo into that group was was just like, ‘Plattsburgh is back with it,'" Hightower said.

“And so after that people started saying, ‘What’s going on, who is this?’ you know, asking tons of questions and there are 270-plus people [in the chat] so it got crazy really quick.”

Learning from last year, Plattsburgh responds immediately

As it was unfolding, a student alerted University Police to the post. The Bias Response Team also got involved and Hightower worked alongside to keep an eye on how things were developing in the chatroom.

It turns out those students were from SUNY Geneseo. The college, south of Rochester, condemned the posts and launched its own investigation.

In Plattsburgh, college President Dr. John Ettling sent a campus-wide email. He confirmed the origin of the posts and said the college would host dialogue sessions in the coming weeks.

More work to be done

Nerves are still raw among some students here, but Hightower said she’s encouraged with how her campus responded to this this time around.

“There’s always more work to be done, but I feel like we are moving in the right direction. I could say that with some pride."

But, Hightower added, "we need more resources, we need more faculty and staff of color, we could use some more diversity all the way at the top, within the administration, but I think that’s coming, so I’m excited to see where that pushes our campus.”

The college is taking another step towards that goal. It’s in the midst of hiring for a newly created position, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.