<p>This incident doesn’t surprise me. We have political figures who make statements like “Macaca,” etc., and so some young people follow suit. One function of a national university is to take ignorant students from narrow backgrounds and immerse them in a wider world where they can meet the kinds of people they have been “protected” from for the previous 18 years and discover that they are, in fact, fully human.</p>
<p>What would surprise me, though, would be for the university to keep funding such behavior, which amounts to tacit condoning of it. The Tufts administration needs to take a stand and educate these students, and that non-apology should not get the Primary Source off the hook. My suggestion would be to withdraw funding and require the students to take a course in African-American history.</p>