Air Force Academy Head Gives Forceful Speech Telling Racists on Campus to 'Get Out'

After five black cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School woke up to racial slurs written outside their dorm rooms, the head of the school denounced the vandalism on Thursday, instructing any student who “can’t treat someone with dignity and respect” to “get out.”

“If you’re outraged by those words, then you’re in the right place,” Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, the superintendent of the school, said of the racist graffiti. “That kind of behavior has no place at the prep school, it has no place at USAFA and it has no place in the United States Air Force.”

“You should be outraged not only as an airman, but as a human being,” he added.

Silveria also said the graffiti, some of which reportedly said “go home nigger,” was even more troubling given the frayed racial tensions in the nation.

“We would also be tone-deaf not to think about the backdrop of what’s going on in our country—things like Charlottesville and Ferguson, the protests in the NFL,” he said.