By mid-week, more than 300 members of the campus community had signed a petition produced by the Panhellenic Council and Spectrum (formerly UBGlad) that speaks out against discrimination and intolerance.
The petition, available for signing through Friday in the Student Activities Office (Reamer Campus Center Room 404), decries “bias-motivated violence – including derogatory comments, physical violence, and written abuse,” said Brooke Lamparello, Panhellenic's vice president of recruitment.
“It also states that we will no longer be ‘silent participants' in discrimination; our failure to act makes us just as guilty as the perpetrators.”
The petition comes as the campus is dealing with severalalleged bias-related incidents, including grafitti, vandalism and the attack of a Union student at another campus.
Jim Underwood, interim president, sent a message applauding the student groups' petition effort and urging people to sign “as a measure of support for building a better community at Union, a community characterized by mutual respect in which no one is made to feel demeaned and isolated.”