Over the course of the semester, New Order propaganda appeared around Longwood University’s campus. New Order is an organized group of white men and women who believe that there is a “better way of life,” which calls for a “rebirth of racial idealism” and reverence for the eternal laws of nature, according to its website.
Some of the New Order messages have included “white lives matter,” “close the borders,” “racial purity is American security,” “stand up for your race before it is too late” and racial slurs.
Jonathan Page, the director of the Office of Citizen Leadership and Social Justice Education, was the first person to bring the New Order propaganda to the athletics department.
Page spoke with Hannah Ledger, the director of student athlete enhancement, and the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) adviser. Ledger said she would seek help from the organization.
“Since athletics is one of the most diverse group on campus, as far as having males, females, and people from other countries, we thought that athletics would be a great place to start the diversity campaign,” said Ledger.
After SAAC heard about the propaganda, they decided to take a stand and take action. SAAC president Jenna Tomayko helped to start a diversity campaign to fight back against the racial slurs and propaganda that appeared on campus.
“Jonathan Page and I had a conversation about the propaganda and it all sparked from that. Jonathan has been handling it on the university side, and so we decided to help out with it on the student side,” said Ledger.
The diversity campaign began by producing a three-part video series publicizing the cause and released them on the Longwood Lancers website. The videos were of different students from all organizations explaining what it means to be a Lancer, according to Tomayko.
“It originally started as just using a hashtag, but we decided to then turn it into a video, and then it evolved into a three-part series,” said Tomayko. “We came up with the two hashtags, #WoodURespect, and #WeWood, because we didn’t want to take away from it being a campus-wide stand against the propaganda.”
The goal for the videos was to get the information out and get everybody motivated. They then released a snapchat filter later in the week displaying the hashtags from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, and held a photo booth on Friday displaying the phrase. The filter and booth were put into action to express that Longwood is a place of diversity where students are treated equally.
“(We wanted to) get the word out that Longwood is a place of equality and if there are people here who don’t agree with that then they are not typical Longwood students and that is not what we want to represent,” said Ledger.
Tomayko and SAAC paired up with other groups including greek life, Black Student Association (BSA), the LGBT community and religious groups to express how the need to be tolerant and respectful of these diverse backgrounds.
“We need to encourage acceptance of diversity and that we are all Lancers regardless of our background. We really aimed to bring to the forefront that the behavior is not acceptable and we aren’t going to tolerate it,” said Tomayko.
