Hundreds of African American students and faculty members rallied against perceived racism at Purdue University this past weekend, holding signs and chanting things such as “Hey, hey, ho, ho, racism has got to go” and “Hell no, we won’t go.”



The students also released a set of demands, listed in Purdue’s student paper and first nationally reported on by iOTW Report.

Among students’ demands, they call on Purdue to “revise” their “free speech policy” based on what they believe is “hate speech.”

Part of the list reads, “We demand that the free speech policy be revised to address hate speech in person and through social media. We demand the university to follow harassment policies consistently to protect students from hostility.”

Purdue’s official policy on free speech and “hate” reads:

In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.

This is not good enough for students at Purdue. Students believe that speech that they find offensive should be silenced, or at the very least not allowed to be freely expressed.

They also want the university to “more actively and effectively advertise and utilize the Report Hate & Bias program.”

Among other things demanded by the students, they “demand that there be a 20 percent increase of underrepresented minority faculty and staff by the 2019-2020 school year” as well as “there be a 30 percent increase of underrepresented minority students by the 2019-2020 school year.”