Last week, UW police began investigating the distribution and placement of fliers throughout campus that claim the Holocaust was a hoax. The posters claim the Holocaust, a period of time when approximately 6 million Jewish people and 5 million others were killed across Europe and the Soviet Union, did not take place.
The placement of the illegal litter coincided with both Holocaust Remembrance Week and a visit to campus by conservative speaker, Dennis Prager.
“The content is protected by the First Amendment but the placement of this material is against city ordinance for littering,” University of Wyoming Director of Institutional Communications, Chad Baldwin, said.
Baldwin also said that while he cannot comment on UW police investigation techniques, such as reviewing surveillance cameras for specific criminal activity, he could say that UW police effectively used security cameras to catch a thief in the UW Athletic Complex a couple years back.
UW Posting Boards require authorization for each piece of literature posted on the corkboards throughout UW’s campus. Each legitimate piece of informative material on the boards must be approved through the UW Campus Activities Center. If it does not have a circular stamp indicating “Approved by Campus Activity Center” it probably should not be there.
“It’s pretty sad to think someone took the time out of their life to go print and hang those up,” Christy Jackson said.
Baldwin said, “No explicit threat was made to anyone. But, history shows that this outrageously false information has been used to harass Jewish communities before. Sometimes these kinds of blatant insults warrant immediate rebuttal and condemnation.”
Six of the eight students asked about the fliers said they had not seen them but had only been alerted to their presence through UW President Laurie Nichols’s E-mail to all students and faculty. President Nichols’s letter began by praising students for their ability to carry on dynamic but polarized political activities with a modicum of decency during conservative columnist, Dennis Prager’s, visit to speak on campus. The letter also denounced the anti-Jewish propaganda and informed readers that an investigation by UW police is underway.
“Yeah, I saw it on my e-mail and heard it’s a matter of littering and illegally posting fliers rather than what was actually on them,” student Dan Drinkwine said. “I’m a huge proponent of First Amendment rights so this is a tough situation. It’s a slippery slope when you start defining not only what isn’t free speech but also who makes those decisions.”
It is important that the Jewish community feel safe and welcomed at the University of Wyoming.
“This is not a big Jewish community but we want to let that community know they should feel safe and welcome here,” Baldwin said. “These flyers are a condemnation of our open and welcome community, they so badly represent history and UW’s history as an academic institution that they must be repudiated, there’s just no tolerance here for hate.”
