Ole Miss Chancellor Condemns Angry Student Protest of Obama’s Re-election

Daniel W. Jones, chancellor of the University of Mississippi, said on Wednesday that university officials were “very disappointed” in the actions of some students who apparently used racial epithets during a protest of President Obama’s re-election Tuesday night on the Oxford campus. In a news release, the university said that campus police officers were notified shortly before midnight that students were gathering to protest the results of the election. Rumors fueled by a video of the disturbance spread quickly on social-media channels, leading some news outlets to describe the incident as a riot. But Dr. Jones said in a written statement that those early accounts of the protest were “inaccurate,” and added that some of the photographs circulating online “portrayed events that police did not observe on campus.” Dr. Jones said that reports of some students’ using racial slurs “appear to be accurate” and that those students took a “very immature and uncivil approach to expressing their views about the election.” Two people were arrested during the incident, though no one was injured and no property was damaged, according to the university. Later on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, about 700 people held a candlelight vigil on the campus to call for racial harmony.