Students at the University of California San Diego filed a complaint and triggered an administrative probe after pictures of Kate Steinle were hung on campus.
Gregory Lu said he hung up 150 posters picturing Steinle with the caption, “She had dreams too,” on Dec. 7. Four days later, he said he received an email from the Office for the Prevention of Harassment & Discrimination asking to meet with him.
“Our office received an online incident report and I would like to schedule a time to speak with you about it,” an investigator wrote in the email, reported The College Fix. “Are you free this week by phone or in person.”
Mr. Lu said the meeting has not taken place and he has contacted an attorney. He said the probe is an attempt to intimidate conservative students on campus, arguing that the same scrutiny would not be applied to a poster advocating a liberal stance on immigration.
“We have had a bunch of left-wing posters go up all the time,” he said. “So the argument they might make is, ’This is a political poster, we don’t want you to put it up,’ is a nonsensical argument because leftists put up posters all the time.”
The UC San Diego College Democrats called the posters “racist propaganda” and “displays of hate” targeting “undocumented students and the undocumented community.”
“We urge all students, staff, and other UC San Diego community members to condemn these displays of hate,” the Democrats wrote in a post on Facebook. “It is unacceptable to allow racism, bigotry, and hate to dominate the campus conversation, shifting the rhetoric of our university.”
Steinle, 32, was shot and killed in 2015 while walking on a San Francisco pier by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a Mexican national residing illegally in the country who had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation at the time of the shooting.
Her death has been a rallying cry for proponents of immigration reform, including President Trump, who question the wisdom of San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” laws barring local officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Garcia Zarate, who said he accidentally fired a stolen gun that he found wrapped in a shirt under a chair on the pier, was found not guilty of murder on Nov. 30.
Mr. Lu said the poster campaign was the initiative of a newly formed campus group called Right Wing West.
The group posted a video on Facebook showing the pictures of Steinle being torn down.
“The media and our politicians want to erase Kate’s name and story from history,” Right Wing West wrote on its Facebook page. “It’s on us to speak the name of America’s lost daughter: Kate Steinle. #EndSanctuaryCities.”
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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