Football players at Wheaton College in Illinois participating in an off-season team-building event, presented a skit that had team members dressed up in Ku Klux Klan uniforms and carrying Confederate flags. Some of the students who participated in the skit are Black.
Members of the team said that the skit was meant to ridicule racists not to support them. But other members of the Wheaton College community were upset with the use of racist symbols on campus.
The college released a statement that read in part: “The team captain acknowledged his poor judgment in failing to consider the inherently hurtful meanings these symbols carry, though it was clear the skit was not motivated by racial hostility. The coaches accepted responsibility for their failure to provide appropriate guidance. All recognized that, regardless of the group’s intent, the skit was inappropriate.”
Wheaton is a Christian college that enrolls about 3,000 students. Two percent of the undergraduate student body is Black.
