A student government campaign at Western Kentucky University was temporarily suspended for using the controversial “Pepe the Frog” meme in campaign advertisements.
A picture obtained by Red Alert Politics shows that the school’s “MEA” campaign, standing for the initials of three students running for the student government’s executive team, chalked an image of Pepe the Frog on campus next to a word bubble stating “MEA for SGA.”
The campaign, consisting of students Stephen Mayer, Garrett Edmonds, and Harper Anderson, announced Tuesday that the Student Government Association’s Judicial Council had “disqualified” them and had all of its votes “nullified.”
“We received phone calls asking us what our intentions were when using a ‘Pepe the Frog’ meme on campus because we had a chalk team do meme theme advertisements. According to the ruling for the judicial council, the meme is a symbol of hate which has been determined by the Anti-Defamation League,” the MEA campaign’s statement read, noting that the “council voted 5-2 to disqualify our entire campaign and nullify our votes because this meme was used and we had no knowledge of this symbolism.”
The campaign went on to claim that the vote was held during a “secret meeting” in “which only select people were invited.”
“We are very disheartened that we are now deemed ineligible to be your next SGA executive team or even senators for the next year over a meme that was used. We are sorry this frog has offended anyone at all,” the statement concluded.
According to the WKU Herald, Judicial Council Chief Justice Annalicia Carlson commented in an email sent to the MEA campaign that the SGA would “not stand for the use of such hate symbols,” noting that it violated an election code that prohibits candidates from using “inappropriate language or depictions of any kind in sidewalk chalk.”
Carlson also claimed that the meeting was not “secret,” asserting that the meeting was advertised and four members of the campaign were called to speak to the Judicial Council.
Notably, as the Herald pointed out, the Pepe the Frog character did not originally have “racist or anti-Semitic connotations,” but “internet users appropriated the character and turned him into a meme.”
“The majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted,” the anti-Defamation League explains. “However, it was inevitable that, as the meme proliferated in on-line venues such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, which have many users who delight in creating racist memes and imagery, a subset of Pepe memes would come into existence that centered on racist, anti-Semitic or other bigoted themes.”
The MEA campaign later apologized for its use of the meme, and announced that its appeal to continue campaigning has been approved.
