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MSU kicks whiteboards off dorm doors in part over racist messages

MSU is banning dorm room whiteboards
Tracy Samilton
/
Michigan Radio
MSU is banning dorm room whiteboards

Students at Michigan State University can no longer have message whiteboards mounted on their dorm doors, starting this fall. Misuse of the whiteboards has made them more trouble than they're worth.

Kat Cooper is Director of Communications for Residential Services at MSU.  She says too often, students would scrawl offensive comments on the whiteboards. 

"Racist, sexist, anything in that category. Those have happened. There's been issues with them for a long time," says Cooper. "People write things on them that really aren't not part of our value set at MSU."

Cooper says most of the time, the offensive remark hasn't been targeted at that particular student. 

She says most students use texting to get in touch with each other these days, so the whiteboards weren't very useful anyway. She says the last dorm hall she walked through, there were only three whiteboards outside student's dorm rooms.

 

Copyright 2017 Michigan Radio

Tracy Samilton covers the auto beat for Michigan Radio. She has worked for the station for 12 years, and started out as an intern before becoming a part-time and, later, a full-time reporter. Tracy's reports on the auto industry can frequently be heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as on Michigan Radio. She considers her coverage of the landmark lawsuit against the University of Michigan for its use of affirmative action a highlight of her reporting career.