The WSA is sponsoring a town hall-style meeting Sunday for students to discuss the issue. A WSA member would have to request a formal discussion before any official action could be taken in response to the petition's demands, Cullen said. That had not happened as of Wednesday.
"The WSA has never restricted free speech and promotes respectful discourse," Cullen said. The meeting is expected to include conversation about "collaborative steps forward and … community building through greater equity and inclusion," she said.
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Many students have written their own opinion pieces and have flooded the Argus website with counter-arguments in the days since Stascavage's op-ed appeared, and the Argus staff wrote its own editorial, published Sept. 17.
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She said the Argus has made a promise to Wesleyan students to include more views of students of color, and that staff is open to participating in discussions about how to make the paper more inclusive.
Much of the discussion about Stascavage's op-ed in recent days has been around the right to free speech, a subject Wesleyan President Michael Roth, Provost Joyce Jacobsen, and Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Antonio Farias weighed in on with an op-ed of their own titled "Black Lives Matter and So Does Free Speech."
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"Debates can raise intense emotions, but that doesn't mean that we should demand ideological conformity because people are made uncomfortable. As members of a university community, we always have the right to respond with our own opinions, but there is no right not to be offended. We certainly have no right to harass people because we don't like their views. Censorship diminishes true diversity of thinking; vigorous debate enlivens and instructs," the op-ed said.
