• Earlier this week, a video circulated throughout social media displaying a girl utilizing racial slurs and making anti-Black threats.
• The lady has been recognized as a College of Wisconsin-Madison scholar.
• Members of the coed physique are protesting and galvanizing on-line help to demand the college take motion.

Over 50,000 folks have signed a petition urging officers of the College of Wisconsin-Madison to expel a scholar who was captured in a video utilizing racist slurs and threatening the Black group.

The video started to flow into throughout social media platforms as early as Monday, in response to the college’s scholar paper The Day by day Cardinal. Within the clip, a girl who has been recognized as Audrey Godlewski, a sophomore on the college, is heard liberally utilizing the N-word and making a number of anti-Black threats, together with references to slavery and a disturbing want for her victims to “choose cotton all day lengthy ’til they die.”)

It is unclear when and the place the video was first posted, however a number of display recordings have been re-shared on Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok this week. (Content material warning: The depicted remarks are racist and violent in nature.)

—ash ˚ * ✹✧ * noticed enha!! (@ashash202003) May 1, 2023

On Monday, the college launched an announcement saying it was conscious of the video and condemned its language. Nevertheless, college officers said that it might’t “take motion towards posts that aren’t illegal,” because it “cannot restrict what college students and staff put up to their private social media accounts.”

There was an incredible outcry on UW-Madison campus because the video proliferated. College students have begun tagging the college on-line to demand Godlewski’s expulsion.  On Wednesday, the college’s Blk Pwr Coalition organized an in-person demonstration and rally on the college the place greater than 200 college students reportedly marched to the administration’s workplace and introduced Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin with a listing of calls for that included instant expulsion and an official apology.

—Tyler Katzenberger (@tk_kutz) May 4, 2023

In response to The Day by day Cardinal, Mnookin informed college students on the rally that she would learn their listing of calls for “rigorously.”

“Given your calls for, I hear your ache,” she mentioned. “Let me take [the demands], let me learn them rigorously, let me take into consideration what we are able to do as subsequent steps and I can be getting again to you.”

On Thursday, Mnookin wrote a public letter addressing the Blk Pwr Coalition, saying she and her management workforce “strongly and unequivocally condemn racism, together with the blatantly racist slurs and sentiments expressed within the video.” She additionally apologized for the ache that it imposed on its Black scholar physique.

Mnookin didn’t identify the coed within the video and disclaimed that there are “quite a few authorized constraints” to what the college can say and do, “though the video is each hateful and dangerous,” she wrote.

“I do know that’s not what you need to hear, however we’re additionally sure to obey the legislation,” she added.

As frustrations grew on campus, fellow UW-Madison scholar Darius Lassiter launched a Change.org petition on Monday titled “The Expulsion of Audrey Godlewski.” With a objective of 75,000 signatures, the petition has gained over 51,000 names in help as of Friday.

“We won’t stand for this nor condone this habits and we have to take a stand,” Lassiter wrote. “We have to set an instance for the long run college students to return and for the scholars who’ve finished the identical, however haven’t been caught.” 

Insider has reached out to Lassiter for remark. The College of Wisconsin-Madison didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.