Stickers belonging to a white nationalist group, Patriot Front, were found by the National Lawyers Guild on light poles on the North Haven campus last week.

Earlier on Friday morning, Vice President for Equity, Inclusion and Leadership Development Don Sawyer sent out an email to students notifying them of these stickers.

In the email, Don Sawyer stated, “Our Quinnipiac university family is a diverse, inclusive, welcoming community. Bigotry and racism are offensive anywhere and have no place in our university community; we are an institution committed to ensuring all groups feel supported to thrive and fully participate in our educational mission.”

The stickers that were found on the law school side of the campus promote a group that has been identified as an extremist white nationalist group by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Public Safety found that similar stickers were found on other college and university campuses as well. Multiple reports were filed that stickers from the same group were being sent to homes in the North Haven neighborhood.

“There are community members in North Haven that have posted about some of these things happening in the North Haven neighborhood,” Sawyer said. “Things have been sent to people’s homes and different things of that nature. So people of the North Haven community have been talking about some of this but this is the first time that I’m aware of, that those stickers have made [it] onto our campus.”

Sawyer feels that students often forget these ideologies exist but incidents like this serve as a reminder that thoughts like this are still prevalent in the community.

“I think one of the things we have to understand is that these thoughts and ideas exist in our world,” Sawyer said. “People talk about Quinnipiac as a bubble but Quinnipiac is not a bubble that protects you from everything.”

Sawyer says students do not need to be worried about these stickers.

“I wouldn’t say that people should be worried about this right now,” Sawyer said. “I mean I’m sure it was shocking to the people who saw them initially and then looked at what they were representing when [they] went to the website, but I would say just to be vigilant.”

The school should do everything in its power to reinforce the ideas of equity and inclusion.

“Racism still exists, homophobia still exists, sexism still exists, anti-semitism exists,” Sawyer said. “I think we, as an institution of higher education, I think we have to do what we can to impact our sphere of influence. I don’t think that we can go out there [and] change every corner of the world. But our sphere of influence is the Quinnipiac University community, and so I think it’s important for us to do all that we can do to create an environment where everyone feels safe, where everyone feels that they are heard and where everyone knows that they matter in our part of this community.”

The Student Government Association (SGA) released a statement on their Instagram denouncing this behavior. Vice President for Public Relations Jennifer McCue feels the statement was necessary to clarify their stance on the incident since the organization represents the student body.

“It’s something our school should not stand for in any way, shape or form which is why we, as Student Government Association, felt it was beneficial if we put out the statement,” McCue said.

According to Sawyer, students are a big part of the process towards this change.

“It’s not just what the administration can do, or what the faculty can do. We also need students to help us in this effort to let people know what we stand for at this university in addition to what we stand against,” Sawyer said.

Chief of Public Safety Tony Reyes stated that the incident is under investigation and he could not comment further at this time.
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