A black female student at the State University of New York at Buffalo, 25, got people really scared with some signs which she hung around campus.
The signs which read: “Black only” and “White only” were part of a project, called ‘Installation: Urban Space’ which according to the graduate student of a two-year-art programme, was intended to provoke a searing conversation and she achieved her aim just effortlessly.
The signs shocked students and jolted the university at a time when discussions about race and race relations have been prominent in the news.
Ashley Powell, from Chicago made the signs on cardboard papers and posted about 17 of them in several buildings on campus, next to elevators, water fountains, benches and bathrooms.
Shortly after the posters went viral, the university police began receiving phone calls from alarmed students who felt traumatic and unsafe, according to a student newspaper, The Spectrum.
More than 100 students turned out for the Black Student Union meeting in the night of Wednesday, September 16, 2015 and emotions were inflated when they discussed the signs and Powell admitted to have hung them.
The President of the Union, Micah Oliver, said: “There was fear expressed, anger, disappointment all of that.
“It brought up feelings of a past that our generation has never seen, which I think is why it was so shocking for us to see.”
Powell in a statement, described her project, called “Our Compliance,” as an effort “to expose white privilege.”
She said: “Our society still actively maintains racist structures that benefit one group of people, and oppress another.
“Forty to fifty years ago, these structures were visibly apparent and physically graspable through the existence of signs that looked exactly like the signs I put up. Today these signs may no longer exist, but the system that they once reinforced still does.
“I apologize for the extreme trauma, fear and actual hurt and pain these signs brought about. I apologize if you were hurt, but I do not apologize for what I did.”
