SLU officials promise ‘justice’ after racist texts by baseball team become public – STLtoday.com

St. Louis University officials promise a “just outcome” after racially insensitive texts between two members of the baseball team were made public.

“This is an important moment in our community, and we all understand the language of that exchange is racist, offensive, inappropriate and unacceptable,” Jonathan C. Smith, special assistant to the president for diversity and community engagement, said Monday. Smith has held the job since July. His position was created by SLU President Fred P. Pestello in response to the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

The texts were sent in May 2015 through the group messaging app GroupMe. The baseball team was on a trip to Washington, when talk between team pitchers using the app turned to getting dinner.

In the course of that conversation, one of the players wrote:

“I heard they got a colored running the country.. This Tru?”

“Unfortunately, it is,” responds another player.

“(Expletive) watermelon eatin baboon,” reads the following text.

University officials did not find out about the texts until this month, about 11 months after they were sent.

One player took a photograph of the messages and sent it to his roommate, Brenden Twomey, an African-American senior at SLU and former manager of the baseball team. Twomey viewed the message, but did not share the image with anyone else. However, in March, a friend of Twomey’s saw the photograph on his phone and urged him to file a report with the university’s Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity.

“When I received that screen shot, obviously I knew it was wrong, but I was in a tough situation because I didn’t want to necessarily hurt anybody,” Twomey said in an interview with SLU’s student newspaper, The University News.

“You become close (to the players) because you do spend so much time with them, so you overlook (that),” Twomey said. “At the same time, I felt extremely disrespected. I knew there should be some sort of punishment, but I didn’t know how to go about that.”

Twomey and his friend, Dominique Morgan, a fellow SLU student, filed the report April 4, and an investigator from the Equity and Diversity office met with them the next day. The case was then forwarded to Smith.

“Since that time, we have been meeting with a wide spectrum of students,” Smith said. That includes “students who might have felt harmed by the broad publicity of this.”

Smith said SLU officials also have met with the baseball team and coaching staff. Next up will be a meeting between members of the baseball team and students offended by the remarks, including Twomey and Morgan.

“Those parties harmed have the opportunity to articulate that harm to those who did that harm,” Smith said. “This process seeks both restoration and justice” and will be determined by those having the conversation, he said.

One of the two baseball players who wrote the offensive texts is no longer at the university, Smith said.

The thread of texts became public after Morgan and Twomey, concerned that the university was not seriously addressing the issue, turned the photo of the text thread over to Jonathan Pulphus, head of the Black Student Alliance, who posted it on his Facebook page. The names of the baseball players were redacted in the posting.

“What kind of value-driven campus is this where people think they can represent the university and spew this awful hatred?” wrote Pulphus, incoming president of the BSA. “This answer is simple: this is a campus whose mission and values are not taken seriously.” Pulphus could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Morgan sent a note to Pulphus along with the photo of the text. She said it was SLU’s Jesuit mission and their Oath of Inclusion that drew her to the university.

“Which is why it pains me to reveal a specific instance of which certain members of the student body did not live up to standards set by the Oath of Inclusion,” Morgan wrote. “It would appear the entire 2015 SLU baseball pitching staff had no qualms with the dialogue, as no player objected to the stereotypical and racist remarks directed toward the president of our country.”

Last week, a letter signed by the four captains of the baseball team was published in The University News.

“The leaders and captains of the team would like to extend an apology to anyone offended by the biased messages,” said the letter signed by Michael Bozarth, Josh Bunselmeyer, Matt Eckelman and Braxton Martinez.

“We, too, are frustrated, and we feel that the comments do not accurately reflect the values that we hold. In light of the incident, the SLU baseball program and athletic department are working to actively address and thwart any action that threatens our inclusive community. To ignore such an incident would be remiss and detrimental to the SLU community.”