SU Student Terminated From School Paper, Threatened For Opinion Piece Rejecting ‘Institutional Racism’

After writing an opinion piece for a conservative news outlet rejecting the notion of “institutional racism” with studies and statistics, Syracuse University student Adrianna San Marco was removed as a columnist from the school’s largest paper, The Daily Orange.

The student has also been receiving “physical threats” in response to the piece, San Marco told The Daily Wire.

In an email (see below) sent to San Marco outlining her termination, The Daily Orange claimed the student’s column, published at LifeZette on Friday, was “particularly harmful to our Black community members” and included “racist undertones” — an accusation the Political Science major utterly rejects.

In the piece, titled “Why institutional racism is a myth,” San Marco cited a study published in scientific journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) that found “no overall evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities in fatal shootings.” Additionally, the student linked the number of police interactions by race to fatal interactions with police officers to contextualize the raw numbers.

“The current media trend indicates that blacks are targeted by the police; however, new research reports just the opposite. A study released in late 2019 found ‘no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities’ across police shootings,” she wrote in the opinion piece. “The findings continue, citing that ‘white officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.'”

“Rather, police are far more likely to kill whites during a confrontation. For example, in 2017 457 white Americans were shot to death by the police in comparison to 223 black Americans,” San Marco outlined.

Noting that black Americans are only 13% of the population, the student contextualized the data with crime statistics and noting that “black American men represent 33% of cop killers despite being only 6.6% of the population.”

“Instead of looking toward the percent a population represents, we should also take into account how often populations interact with police,” she emphasized. “The chance of having a deadly confrontation with police increases as the rate of interaction rises.”

“As politicians are working to find solutions to police violence, having a comprehensive understanding of the statistics is essential,” San Marco closed. “The idea of institutional racism existing in the U.S. is a myth—and a dangerous one at that.”

On Tuesday night, the paper announced the removal of San Marco via Facebook.

“The Daily Orange removed a columnist because she wrote an op-ed in another publication arguing that institutional racism doesn’t exist,” read the post, signed by Casey Darnell, The Daily Orange editor-in-chief.  “Racism is real and deadly. Dismissing that is harmful to our community members of color.”

Darnell claimed San Marco “reinforced false and dangerous stereotypes of Black people as criminals, and dismisses that police officers kill Black people at disproportionately higher rates than white people” and claimed the student’s “values” are incompatible with their own.

https://www.facebook.com/thedailyorange/posts/10158388113371100?__xts__[0]=68.ARAAoJnZeOM11Srzkoi55hrxxc5pI5WhTX33zulTWc8ubOpSr5AKzvBW6NGoExS5yp7cvtbRAU5i8yQ7Gf2JdPIsYOMIGOBgbV6gIcsvB6hNGm4BSPcRP1BCzfbGDw4hu6h09M9vFGIXPbMvZcfQiWhsL73rAOmUy5sWVhzBY1HkEISw-WzkLHOFD6DZ4TagimDGIXLtpsk1ZV9p91iyWo56L1m4NVQHhVjU5-mLG8me0SB2wz4ZiaG-ESRAOzh9Xn7jsejH9RRMwnAD6yoqugLqKApci9T1SR9bLjwqVkpgthGlhqKbSoiKu4AddZz-O0MkNDqtsrFF9A&__tn__=-R

In an email to The Daily Wire, San Marco said The Daily Orange only has two conservative columnists left. When she was hired, she said, “the editorial editor asked me to confirm that I didn’t have any  ‘extreme’ Republican beliefs before I began writing for him after citing other students he wouldn’t hire because of their views.”

“College campuses are havens of liberal ideology and any opinion that diverges from the progressive left is attacked viciously,” San Marco said in a statement sent to The Daily Wire. “This isn’t the first time a conservative voice has been censored at Syracuse University and it’s apparent that it won’t be the last.”

Below are screenshots of an email outlining San Marco’s termination from The Orange Daily provided to The Daily Wire:

Courtesy of
Adrianna San Marco

The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.