COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Texas A&M University is still trying to determine which students are suspected of shouting a racial slur to a group of black and Hispanic high school students touring the campus.
About 60 students from a southwest Dallas charter school reported they were taunted by students on campus during a visit Tuesday.
Two black high school students said they were approached by a white A&M student wearing Confederate flag earrings, state Sen. Royce West said Thursday. Others in the tour group said they heard white A&M students telling them to “go back where you came from” and using an anti-black slur, said West, who said he was contacted by university officials.
The Dallas Democrat called for the possible expulsion of any students involved and said he wanted to see action from the university’s leadership next week.
Texas A&M’s leaders “have political capital with me,” said West, the vice chairman of the Texas Senate’s higher education committee.
No video or audio of the incident has emerged yet, complicating efforts to find out who said what, university President Michael K. Young said Friday. A counselor from the tour group appears to have called the police, and a campus officer investigated at the scene, he said.
Young said that prejudice needed to be addressed broadly at Texas A&M, where the student body is 3.4 percent black, and elsewhere.
Joshua Lewis, a Texas A&M student who serves on the university’s Black Student Alliance Council, said he’s never had racial slurs directed at him, though other students have told him that they have had them. Subtler forms of racial insensitivity are more common, he said, such as other students assuming he is a scholarship athlete because he’s black.