Indiana University is asking students to report any white supremacist flyers they find on campus after discovering more over the weekend.
IU Associate Vice President for Public Safety and Institutional Assurance Benjamin Hunter says someone left flyers with various messages on cars at Memorial Stadium over the weekend, and others were plastered on signs around campus.
One of them said “Strong borders, strong nations, keep America American.”
A group called the New Jersey European Heritage Association took credit for the flyers online, which the Anti-Defamation League classifies as a white supremacist organization. NJEHA's own website says its creed is, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children."
Hunter says IU's police department is investigating.
"Placing a flyer around and the act in which they’re doing it in the middle of the night, gluing it to traffic signs or any type of street sign is vandalism," Hunter says. "Those are things that we’re looking into right now."
Earlier this month, groundskeepers at IU found a small number of flyers purporting to be from the KKK. Bloomington residents found the same flyers throughout the city.
IU posted its own signs around campus encouraging people to report hate incidents. A graduate student also created signs instructing people to report the presence of white supremacy flyers on campus.
IUPD says people shouldn’t remove the flyers, but should instead take a picture of them, and note the date, time and location where they discovered them.
"These groups are attempting to disrupt an area like IU Bloomington or our campus, trying to cause dissension between individuals," Hunter says. "It’s really an anxiety issue, an unrest."
In a welcome email sent Monday, IU President Michael McRobbie says the university has a zero tolerance policy for hatred and bigotry.
“We will be vigorous in protecting members of our university community against any threats to their freedoms and ensuring that our campuses continue to regard tolerance and inclusive diversity among their cardinal virtues,” McRobbie said in the email.
This isn’t the first time white supremacist flyers have turned up on campus. In 2017, IU contacted the FBI after someone posted flyers on the office doors of faculty members and scholars of color and varying ethnicities.
The flyering comes at the same time Bloomington grapples with the presence of Schooner Creek Farm Owner Sarah Dye, who calls herself an Identitarian, at the city-run farmers' market. Experts say the Identitarian movement is based on racism and exclusion.
