Rolling Toomer’s Corner after a gameday win is an iconic aspect of the Auburn experience. Some students, aiming to make a more inclusive environment for all students, feel it is time to expand the TP gamut.
Roll Toomer’s Rainbow is an event jointly sponsored by Spectrum and the Auburn Justice Coalition, a community organization that formed last year after the Southern Poverty Law Center’s student organization shut down. Students will have the opportunity to throw toilet paper across the color spectrum after an Auburn basketball win next month.
Lucas Copeland, senior in psychology, serves as the programs director for Spectrum and the LGBT+ Equity project manager for the Auburn Justice Coalition.
In an email to The Plainsman, Copeland said the all-white toilet paper draping off trees on Toomer’s Corner could be seen as a representation of the current state of Auburn’s culture and classrooms, where “students of color, LGBTQ students and religious minorities experience isolation and marginalization.”
Last year, the Princeton Review ranked Auburn as the fifth most “LGBTQ-Unfriendly” school in the nation. The University was also ranked ninth in “Little Race/Class Interaction.”
Copeland said there have been many issues surrounding minority students at Auburn within the last year, such as associate professor Bruce Murray’s Facebook posts that some students, faculty and staff viewed as homophobic and the low number of black students being enrolled as new first-time freshman.
Copeland said he was frustrated with the time it took the University to respond after The Plainsman brought Murray’s posts to light. However, he was happy with the decisions that were being made as a response.
The University made a statement of support for the LGBTQ community six weeks after The Plainsman published a story on Murray’s posts. With the Critical Studies Working Group, a group of professors “committed to the critical analysis of education,” the University committed to more LGBTQ-friendly practices in Camp War Eagle and Successfully Orienting Students sessions.
In the fall 2019 semester, 4,808 students were enrolled as new first-time freshmen. 179 of those students were black, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
Copeland said while Roll Toomer’s Rainbow is a protest of the status quo, it is more of a celebration of the presence of minority communities on Auburn’s campus.
When the white nationalist Richard Spencer came to campus in 2017, students held the Auburn Unites Concert to protest his presence on campus and provide a positive space for all students. Copeland said he was assigned to standing guard on the perimeter, watching for any protestors who may disrupt their concert and make students unsafe.
“During that event, some students decided to physically protest and other students organized a concert where we had people playing instruments, we had speakers and all sorts of different things,” Copeland said. “That was a protest, but it was also a celebration of the community in defiance of the individual that was speaking over a couple buildings away.”
When the SPLC’s campus group did not return last fall, it was decided that the new group should be a community organization as opposed to a student organization in order to reach groups beyond Auburn’s campus, so the Auburn Justice Coalition was created.
According to Hannah Krawczyk, junior in public administration and AJC executive director, the AJC is working on other projects like awareness of the need for reform in Alabama’s prison systems.
The group is trying to get a polling location on campus, which is a goal that has carried over from the group’s days as the SPLC Auburn chapter.
Roll Toomer’s Rainbow will have a community meeting at Auburn Unitarian Universalist Church’s Busch Center on Monday, Jan. 13, at 5 p.m. for those interested. At the meeting, a date for the event will be decided and a statement of purpose will be drafted.
“We want this to be a community event — it’s not going to be explicitly run by one group,” Copeland said. “At our meeting, we want community buy-in and we want it to be for all students who want to participate in the event.”
Copeland said he views this event as a pilot program to see what kind of support it would gather if it happened more often, such as once in the fall and once in the spring. He said he thinks rolling Toomer’s Corner with colored toilet paper could have an impact even if it only happens once.
“I feel like once it’s out of the box, like once people realize, ‘Oh, you can roll in any color,’ maybe that will encourage other students to do that,” Copeland said. “It’s not too expensive to buy your own toilet paper.”
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Trice Brown, sophomore in english language arts education, is the campus editor of The Auburn Plainsman.
