Student Owen Howard has since apologized for his actions and called it a “joke.”
The Florida State University chapter of the NAACP has stepped in and gotten involved in pushing the university to investigate a social media post including hate speech from a student on Oct. 23. The FSU junior and honors student named Owen Howard posted on Snapchat, the “Chimps are going to chimp out” ahead of a photo of a Fraternity and Sorority Life table weekly event where vendors were selling products from student groups, including Black Greek-letter organizations.
The Tallahassee Democrat reports that the NAACP FSU chapter said in an official statement, “This type of rhetoric, disguised as casual language, is profoundly damaging to the well-being of Black students at FSU. It contributes to a hostile environment where students feel unsafe, unwelcome, and devalued.”
In the statement, the NAACP FSU chapter continued to explain how the term “chimp” is offensive when it’s used toward people of color. They explained that there’s a “long history of being used to equate Black people to apes or other primates,” and they linked the word back to being used to justify slavery by defining Black people as inferior to their white counterparts. Florida State University issued a statement addressing the social media post after the NAACP got involved.