After five police officers were shot and killed during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, Rohini Sethi went to Facebook to express her thoughts about the tragic event.
"Forget #BlackLivesMatter. More like AllLivesMatter." was her social media post. Sethi is the vice president of the Student Government Association at the University of Houston.
Afterwards, the post was deleted. But it was not until over 43,000 students saw her post and then vented their own outrage on Facebook. The Washington Post has it that her status went viral. Minority student groups reacted to the post. Citing it as a hateful and inflammatory post.
They described Rohini as an unbecoming leader. They denounced her as a representative of the entire student body. She also receives a stipend from the student fees.
As a fire-back, the student body organized a new hashtag called #RemoveRohini. They called her out to resign or be removed from the student office.
Student body President Shane Smith said that her post was very divisive. The student campus became upset with her. In the same way, they lost confidence in her ability to represent the student body. They feel that "she did not understand or respect the struggles in their lives."
During a recent Student Government meeting, Smith had taken over temporary control to sanction Sethi. She was suspended from her role and she also acknowledged to take a three-day cultural sensitivity workshop.
However, later on Sethi fought back saying she disagreed with the SGA's decision. She wanted to address her post and create a dialogue about race and cultural sensitivity.
University of Houston students are already engaged in such discussion. Ten percent of the student body is African American. One student named Kadidja said that there is fear. "For her to say on her social media 'forget black lives matter,' it's almost as if to say if all of us were to die tomorrow, she wouldn't care."
Different people have different views regarding the movement. Here is a video about BLM.
