ST. PETER, Minn. – Social justice warriors at Gustavus Adolphus College are claiming responsibility for posters on campus that declare “America is a white nation” and urge students to “report any and all illegal aliens.”

“A notice to all white Americans,” the posters read. “It is your civic duty to report any and all illegal aliens to U.S. Immigrations (sic) and Customs Enforcement.

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“They are criminals. America is a white nation.”

The posters were put up last week in the Beck Academic Hall and the message triggered students to rip them down and throw them in the trash, and to immediately report what they considered racist hate speech to college officials, Campus Reform reports.

Others posted images of the flyers to Facebook.

“Today this sign was posted at the entrance of Beck Academic Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College,” Gustavus alum Michelle Thompson posted. “My cousin, Walker Pearson, discovered, reported, and shared it. Thank you!!!

Thompson urged alumni to lean of professors in Beck Academic Hall to discuss the posters, and “to hold the institution as a whole accountable, especially when acts of hatred have gone viral.”

One of the students who reported the racist posters received an email from Dean of Students JoNes VanHecke the day after the outrage explaining why it’s “NOT an actual hate/bias incident.”

“Thank you so much for filing an incident report about the racist poster this morning,” VanHecke wrote. “I’m writing to let you know that the poster and the incident was part of a series of education ‘invisible theater’ events taking place this week that have been planned by I Am We Are theater troupe, The Diversity Leadership Council and the Bystander Intervention Committee and is NOT an actual hate/bias incident.

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“The planning team will be sending a campus communication out this week to educate about today’s event and the other upcoming ones.”

That statement, from the Diversity Leadership Council, alleged the posters were “an effort to help educate peers and campus community about issues of bias, and the importance of being an active bystander.”

The group alleged the racist posters were an effort to “put an end to bias-related incidents that happen on our campus, social media, and in our communities by forcing individuals to have dialogues about forms of hate and bias.

“We hope that members of the campus community will reflect on today’s events and join us in ensuring
that no one student or group of students are ever a victim of this form of discrimination,” the Council wrote.

Students weren’t impressed with the excuse.

“The poster was used to start a conversation without taking into account the real life feelings and experience the Latino community goes through,” student Angela Herrera told Southern Minnesota News.

“With those posters being put up yesterday in the manner that they were, to me just made my fears come to life and had me believing that if someone could be that vocal about their feelings about immigrants…who knows what else they would do,” classmate Kevin Hernandez said.

“Sometimes I walk around crowded theaters yelling ‘fire!’” another student posted to Facebook. “I do it because I want to create awareness; thus no punishment is warranted.”

“You hurt a lot of people, tarnished the college’s reputation, and will be losing alumni donations. I hope it was worth it,” wrote an alumni who “won’t be donating … anytime soon,” according to Campus Reform.

College officials, meanwhile, stood by the posters, though VanHeck told Fox Minneapolis “a message to students earlier in the day would have been a good move in retrospect.”

It’s unclear whether officials and social justice warriors at Gustavus Adolphus are aware of very similar posters going up at universities across the country.

“The white nationalist posters found on college campuses, including our own, contain detestable language that is an affront to who we are, and what we stand for, as the State’s flagship university,” University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loch said in a statement in mid-March, which the fliers appeared on the College Park campus.

According to The Washington Post:

The University of Maryland fliers were found on the same day that similar fliers were discovered on the campus of George Washington University in Washington. The Anti-Defamation League says more than 100 such incidents have happened this academic year at universities across the country, with more than half of them since January.

The posters at the University of Maryland allegedly directed people to a website for Vanguard America, a white nationalist group that leverages white privilege theory to recruit supporters.