By Daniel Johnson-Kim, Editor in Chief

As the ACU Police Department investigates the noose discovered in the office of Students’ Association President Daniel Paul Watkins, faculty members speak out against the event.

“I don’t think this incident captures what we are all about,” said Dr. Steven Moore, associate professor of English. “Whether you’re black or white, I think it affected all of us.”

Moore said he and several faculty members he had spoken with were behind Dr. Royce Money, president of the university, and supported the decision to investigate the incident and treat it as a serious matter.

“The investigation is being taken very seriously, and I trust exactly what Dr. Money said, and the faculty and staff I’ve been talking to also trust what President Money said in Chapel,” Moore said.

Dr. Neal Coates, associate professor of political science, said he was shocked when he heard about the incident involving Watkins, senior political science major from Fredericksburg, Va., whom he has had in class.

“I was astounded that someone could be so insensitive to American History and how African-Americans have been treated in the past,” Coates said.

Both professors said students in at least one of their classes discussed the event.

“We try to be careful to explore issues of race and other issues that society suffers with,” Moore said. “I thinkit’s healthy and important for ACU faculty members to address this issue with our students.”

Moore said he has given his students time in class to convey their views about
the incident.

“I’ve talked about it in terms of allowing my students the opportunity to express
what they’re feeling,” Moore said. “I think it is a good way, like Dr. Money said in Chapel, to use it as a teachable moment for our students.”

Coates said his 9 a.m. University Seminar class discussed the event because it applied to the already scheduled lesson plan, and his students were vocal about their disapproval of the incident.

“Overwhelmingly [the reactions were] that this is a bad act because of what it implied to the person who received the noose in his chair,” Coates said.

He added that his freshman students said the act was an embarrassment to them as ACU students because “one student would be so insensitive to others and do that.”

“This is absolutely not ACU,” Coates said. “But as one student in our U-100 said, ‘This is a reminder that when things happen that can hurt other people, we need to have a conversation denouncing those sort of activities.'”