90.1 FM San Luis Obispo | 91.7 FM Paso Robles | 91.1 FM Cayucos | 95.1 FM Lompoc | 90.9 FM Avila
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Issues & Ideas: A Cal Poly professor reflects on racism on campus

Tyler Pratt/KCBX
Dr. Neal MacDougall in his office at Cal Poly.

Racially-inflammatory behavior at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo has become a focal point over the past week and a half, stemming from an incident regarding a student wearing blackface at a campus fraternity party.

On Tuesday Cal Poly's president announced that he was suspending all Greek life on campus - indefinitely. That affects all official activities of fraternities and sororities. The administration also hired a campus diversity specialist, enacted new diversity initiatives, and touted some that are already in place. 

But coinciding with this announcement, apparent white supremacist propaganda is showing up around campus. One such instance was found by a Cal Poly professor Tuesday.

Neal MacDougall is an Associate Professor of Agribusiness at Cal Poly. He had placed posters promoting diversity on the bulletin board in front of his office. An unknown person or persons slashed those posters and placed racially charged material on the bulletin board. MacDougall publicly posted photos of that material on his Facebook page.

Cal Poly's president, Jeffery Armstrong, has said he doesn't believe Cal Poly has a racist culture. KCBX News sat down with MacDougall this morning to talk about what kind of culture images like these represent.

Please be advised that listeners may find portions of the embedded audio content disturbing.

Tyler Pratt was a reporter, host and producer at KCBX from 2018 to 2020. You could hear him on weekdays filing news reports and hosting afternoon programming. Tyler hails from the deserts of West Texas but likes to call the the swamps of Louisiana home. He fell in love with public radio over a decade ago while studying improv comedy at the Second City in Los Angeles. He spent so much time in his car listening to KCRW while driving between auditions and various jobs that he eventually became inspired to switch careers from acting to radio journalism.
Related Content