The president of Smith College was bullied into apologizing after writing “All lives matter” in the subject line of an all-campus email last Friday.
In her email, President Kathleen McCartney used that subject line to kick off her email about the “struggle” and “hurt” the Smith community was experiencing following the grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Mo. and New York. She also announced a new Chief Diversity Officer for the campus.
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“We gather in vigil, we raise our voices in protest; yet we wake again to news of violence that reminds us, painfully, of the stark reality of racial injustice,” McCartney wrote in the email obtained by Campus Reform.
“…We are united in our insistence that all lives matter.”
But despite the message, the email’s subject line set her campus on fire. McCartney was immediately criticized for using “All lives matter” instead of the Ferguson rallying cry of “Black Lives Matter.”
“No, Kathy. Please do not send out an email saying ‘All lives matter.’ This isn’t about everyone, this is about black lives,” Sophia Buchanan, a Smith student, said on Twitter.
Several other students sent McCartney emails directly.
“It minimizes the anti-blackness of this the current situation; yes, all lives matter, but not all lives are being targeted for police brutality,” a student wrote, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Just six hours later, McCartney apologized in a separate email to the student body and offered to hold a vigil Monday, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. McCartney said in that email that she was not aware the term “all lives matter” had been used as a counter to the “black lives matter” movement.
An estimated 130 people attended the vigil. Students at the event told the paper that McCartney was right to apologize.
“It felt like she was invalidating the experience of black lives,” sophomore Cecelia Lim said.
Sophomore math major Maria Lopez, said McCartney’s first email was poorly received on campus.
“A lot of my [Facebook] news feed was negative remarks about her as a person,” she said. But, Lopez added, “she acknowledged her mistake.”
