A university spokesman said OU was not involved in Greek Week schedule changes, as the events are student-planned and student-led.
Following the cancellation of several events for Ohio University’s Greek Week 2016 due to some Greek life members painting “Build The Wall” on the graffiti wall outside of Bentley Hall, political groups on campus have voiced their opinions.
The OU College Republicans do not endorse any candidate, said President David Parkhill, but the group is in support of the graffiti as a constitutional right to free speech.
“Most people in the club aren’t pro-Trump, but I think a lot people are pro-wall because it’s an issue of national security,” Parkhill, a sophomore studying business management, said.
Parkhill is also a member of a fraternity, though he did not disclose which one. He said he thought the schedule change was "ridiculous."
“That was just something that whatever fraternity did it, that was just what they wanted to do and that’s their right to freedom of speech,” Parkhill said.
Building “the wall,” Parkhill said, is about national security and not race.
The Greek Week events, set to take place between April 11 and 18, were amended after unnamed members of OU's Sorority and Fraternity Life painted the graffiti wall by Bentley Hall, including the phrase “Build The Wall,” according to a letter sent Sunday to sororities and fraternities.
The phrase refers to Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign proposal to construct a wall between the United States and Mexico to discourage illegal immigration from South and Central American countries.
“Greek Week has not been canceled,” OU spokesman Dan Pittman said in an email. “It has been restructured by the student leadership of the four governing Greek councils.”
The university was not involved in the decision as Greek Week is a student-planned and student-led event, Pittman said.
Jake Fenzl, president of OU’s College Democrats, said instead of building walls people should be “building bridges.”
The Hispanic and Latino Student Union at OU painted "#BuildBridgesNotWalls” Thursday on the graffiti wall in response to the original message, according to a previous Post report.
“(The graffiti wall) just shouldn’t be used as a reason to attack (Greek Life), I don’t think,” Fenzl, a senior studying political science, said. “Anybody could have done that.”
OU’s graffiti wall is not the first instance a pro-Trump message has caused controversy on a college campus. Students at Emory University, a private university in Atlanta, Georgia, complained that chalk messages promoting “Trump 2016” threatened members of the university community, leading to a protest, according to Forbes.
The "Build The Wall" message is also not the first time this academic year OU’s graffiti wall has been in the spotlight.
In December, the OU Black Student Union painted the wall with a fist and “#BlackLivesMatter” in response to an act of vandalism of a bulletin board in Sargent Hall.
The message on the graffiti wall was altered five days later with the phrases, “Everyone goes through their own shit” and “#AllLivesMatter" painted over it.
Both graffiti wall instances prompted the university to hold discussions where students spoke about race and the possibility of creating cultural competency classes for students.
“I think the university’s really trying to hit home that we’re diverse, we’re inclusive of everybody and sometimes that just doesn’t work,” Parkhill said. “You try and put two people together, sometimes they're just not going to be friends.”
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