The University of Maryland (UMD) has indefinitely suspended its club tennis team after a graphic featuring images of the Ku Klux Klan was distributed to other universities before a regional tournament, sparking widespread condemnation.
The controversy erupted after Toni Rachal, president of the Howard University club tennis team, spotted the offensive material in a shared Google document sent to participating schools before last weekend’s tournament, WUSA9 reported.
The graphic features a modified Maryland state flag incorporating images of Ku Klux Klan hoods. Rachal discovered the image while reviewing a Google document emailed to tennis clubs participating in the tournament.
In a letter to UMD, Rachal described the images as “associated with racial hatred and intimidation” and called for “meaningful accountability” following the incident, WUSA9 reported.
The tennis club at Howard, a historically black university in Washington, D.C., released a statement on social media describing the image as “a recognizable symbol associated with the Ku Klux Klan.” He wondered how the image ended up in official tournament materials.
University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines said the tennis club “distributed programming materials that featured a graphic containing racist imagery directed at black or African-American individuals,” according to a university statement.
Although the incident “may have only directly involved a few members of the student team,” the university’s Department of Recreation and Wellness has decided to suspend the entire club indefinitely “pending an administrative investigation by the Office of Student Conduct,” the statement said.
The University Police Department and the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Abuse also opened an investigation into the incident.
Bryant Reed, president of UMD’s Black Student Union, said in a telephone interview that UMD’s black students were “extremely disturbed” by the “blatant act of racism” by the school’s tennis club.
“No one is comfortable with the fact that something like this happened so openly and blatantly, and there are people on the tennis team who didn’t know it was happening and who are also extremely disturbed in general by the situation,” he said.
Reed also said he believes this is just one more incident in a long-standing pattern of racism that black students at the institution face.
“This is certainly not an isolated incident,” he said. “Here at UMD, people often report things like microaggressions or just a general feeling of isolation as Black students.
“I can talk about a specific instance where a friend of mine was sitting in a dorm and someone said to him, ‘Oh, you’re diversity, admit,’ and it was blatant, it was random. He didn’t know this person. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time,” he added.
The isolation black students feel at UMD is even reflected in its demographics. According to the U.S. Census, 31 percent of Maryland residents identify as black, but black students at UMD make up only about 14 percent of undergraduates.
Aniya Baker, vice president of UMD’s Black Student Union, said she believes university officials are not taking the steps necessary for meaningful change to occur.
“Any time an issue comes up on campus that specifically targets Black students, I don’t feel like our concerns have actually been taken seriously,” Baker said.
She gave the example of a black student who was discriminated against last year, saying the union responded by notifying the school’s Student Government Association (SGA), which Baker said would not even issue a public statement to students acknowledging the situation. “This is just one example of many where Black students have simply been ignored,” she said.
And unlike SGA, the Black Student Union does not have a relationship with the university administration, which she said puts the organization “at a disadvantage when it comes to issues that surface in the Black community, because we don’t have easy access to our administrators, which I find extremely unfair.”
Reed said the university’s efforts to become more involved in black student spaces are the first step toward improving conditions. The school’s vice president for student affairs contacted the union immediately after the incident was announced, which the union said it appreciated, but nevertheless believes that more concrete measures must be taken to make things improve.
The tennis tournament proceeded with the remaining participating teams, but the Maryland team withdrew from the competition and lost their matches. Howard’s club tennis team reached the semifinals of the tournament, marking its best performance in the event since the organization’s inception in 2021.
The Maryland club remains suspended indefinitely as university officials investigate the spread of the racist image.
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