A Wisconsin college student seen spouting a torrent of racial slurs directed at black people in a video that went viral last month has finally delivered a groveling apology.
Audrey Godlewski was heard spouting racial slurs directed at black people in a TikTok video widely circulated on social media last month, May.
Godlewski was filmed dropping racial slurs while sitting in a room with friends.
‘F*** you. I’m going to kill myself,’ she said. ‘I hope everyone f****** misses me because I’m going to go back and haunt every f****** little n***** who f****** did me wrong.
‘I literally hate all of them. I’ll make them pick f****** cotton in the fields all day long until they f****** die of thirst.
‘Their bodies are going to dry out because of how much cotton they’re picking for me.’
It remains unclear what led to the venomous rant or how it ended up online and ended with Godlewski and a friend laughing together.
After the video circulated online, protests from black students were made in a bid to acknowledge racial inequities.
An online petition was launched that saw 65,151 signatures demanding Godlewski be expelled.
The petition read: ‘At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a student by the name of Audrey Godlewski was recorded spewing racial slurs, threatening the black community, and stating her intentions of wanting to make black individuals pick cotton, dry up and die.
‘We will not stand for this nor condone this behavior and we need to take a stand.
In an email to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, Godlewski acknowledged her comments as ‘harmful, disgusting and unacceptable.’
The apology comes nearly a month after protests erupted by black students at the University demanding the administration to expel Godlewski.
Despite Godlewski’s widely-criticized comments, UW-Madison Deputy Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion LaVar Charleston said in a statement that the sophomore would remain at the institution citing freedom of speech.
‘Quite simply, this is not who we are: A few do not speak for the whole,’ Charleston wrote May 2.
‘I, along with the Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and the entire UW–Madison leadership team, strongly and unequivocally condemn the racist sentiments expressed in this video.
‘Hate in all its forms has no place on our campus. We must reject racism and discrimination. At the same time, as a public institution, we are bound by the First Amendment, which protects a person’s right to say very offensive and hateful things.
‘Some have called for the speaker of these racist words to be expelled. Some have called for worse. Simply stated, the law does not allow the university to take punitive action for words like these spoken in private spaces, even when those words are racist and hateful.’
