By Police1 Staff
HANOVER, N.H. — A display in honor of National Police Week that prominently featured the slogan “Blue Lives Matter” was taken down and replaced with Black Lives Matter posters at Dartmouth College, causing controversy among students.
The Dartmouth reported the display — which brought attention to officers killed in the line of duty — was taken down by a group of students and replaced by Black Lives Matter posters on May 13. The bulletin board was reserved for the Police Week display until May 15.
Employees of the student center took down the newly hung Black Lives Matter posters on May 14 to allow the student group that had reserved the space to repost their Police Week display. The posters read, “We will not be silenced. Blue Lives Matter.”
The Black Lives Matter posters were reposted on an adjacent board and read, “You cannot co-opt the movement against state violence to memorialize its perpetrators. #blacklivesmatter.”
‘Blue Lives Matter’ display vandalized by #BLM supporters @Dartmouth https://t.co/xwSp634NJV pic.twitter.com/6KZivlL2jZ
— Campus Reform (@campusreform) May 17, 2016
#BlackLivesMatter Activists Tear Down #BlueLivesMatter Display at Dartmouth College https://t.co/LTAyUr47Nk @greta pic.twitter.com/dswT7nwThR
— FoxNewsInsider (@FoxNewsInsider) May 17, 2016
In a campus email, school President Phil Hanlon called the removal of the Police Week display “an unacceptable violation of freedom of expression.” He compared it another incident last November in which a Black Lives Matter display was vandalized.
One of the students involved in pulling down the Police Week display, Mikala WIlliams, told the publication she and other students replaced the signs because they took issue with the use of the slogan “Blue Lives Matter.”
“It actively co-opted a movement that is supposed to comment on police brutality against black individuals in this country,” she said. “It took that and by framing that as ‘Blue Lives Matter,’ it normalizes and naturalizes violence against people of color in this country. And that is not okay. That is in no way okay.”
In their request to reserve the space, the student group responsible for the Police Week display, the College Republicans, detailed their intention to use the bulletin board to honor those killed in the line of duty, but did not mention their planned use of the phrase “Blue Lives Matter.”
The College Republicans released a statement in response to the controversy:
“All we ask is that the protections and freedoms of self-expression afforded to other student organizations be extended to us,” they said. “We do not see the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements as mutually exclusive.”