Arianna Mbunwe said she was fed up when her school appeared to remain silent last year during protests that followed the death of African American George Floyd in police custody in Minnesota.
Mbunwe, a junior at the University of Georgia (UGA), ignited a debate over so-called "cancel culture" when she opened a Twitter account called "ariexposesuga" to call attention to what she perceived as racially offensive incidents on campus.
In September 2020, she posted screenshots of messages from a group chat among University of Georgia Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity members. One fraternity brother posted: "Lord give me the strength to not call that woman [Mbunwe] a racial slur."
The in response.
"I just wanted people to realize what they were doing was wrong and change their behavior for the better," Mbunwe said through email. "Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but that's their own free will."
Not all of Mbunwe's classmates saw it that way. Some accused Mbunwe of perpetuating cancel culture, a pattern of ostracizing, boycotting and publicly shaming people or organizations over perceived offenses.
"It created, especially at UGA, an anti-cancel culture," said sophomore Patrick Mosley, political affairs director of his school's chapter of College Democrats. "Especially if you're outside of that more liberal sector of UGA."
Meredith Clark, assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia-Charlottesville, defends cancel culture as "an expression of agency, a choice to withdraw one's attention from someone or something whose values, (in)action, or speech are so offensive, one no longer wishes to grace them with their presence, time, and money," in October 2020.
But canceling, which usually targets celebrities, politicians and companies, tends to drive a wedge between progressive liberals and social conservatives, of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
"The public outing of heretics and dissenters is nothing new, as exemplified by the fanatical prosecution of religious nonconformists, the medieval punishment by stocks and pillory in the town square, or the notorious Salem witch trials," Norris wrote in August 2020.
In today's context, there is genuine concern if legitimate criticism has morphed into "a tidal wave eroding tolerance of … free speech, and enforcing a progressive or left-wing orthodoxy among professors, administrators, and student," she continued.
"But is there evidence, beyond some specific anecdotes, that this has actually occurred?"
A majority of Americans — both liberal and conservative — think so: A new found 64% of Americans perceive cancel culture as a threat to freedom. Many students complain on social media that cancel culture has gone too far, dividing people on lines of race, gender, political views, age and class.
Mimi Groves, an incoming freshman at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, was pressured to withdraw after a Snapchat video circulated of her when she was 15, using a word considered a racial slur. The video was three seconds long and three years old.
The controversy didn't erupt until May 2020 when Groves urged people in a tweet to "protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something" in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, as reported by The New York Times. A former classmate objected to her tweet, citing the three-year-old slur, and recirculated the video.
Groves was swiftly removed from her university's cheer team and soon withdrew from the school after receiving pressure from admissions officials, . VOA's attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
Professors also get canceled, critics say.
in March over a widely viewed video that showed her making what were considered racially insensitive comments about her Black students.
And at Duke University in North Carolina, biostatistics professor in January 2019 after an outcry ensued over an email she sent, asking Chinese international students to speak English in department buildings.
Some students say their political beliefs will get them canceled for being in the minority on college campuses, which have largely leaned liberal and Democrat.
"It's not an explicit cancel culture, like Twitter going after a person, but a social cancel culture where if you're a conservative, we're not going to support you or hear out your ideas," said Andrew Waldman, a Pennsylvania State University freshman involved with his campus's College Republicans.