Allie Vandee (left) said she and her friend Sarah Allequist (right) were confronted by Howard University students who called them “disrespectful.” (Image courtesy of Twitter
It turns out there’s more to the story of a pair of white teens who caused quite a stir over the weekend after strolling onto the campus of Howard University wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, according to a recent report by Buzzfeed News.
High school students Allie Vandee and Sarah Allequist sparked backlash when they visited the historically Black college Saturday, Aug. 19, prompting angry reactions from students and exacerbating tensions over Trump’s tepid response to the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Va. Both the teens sported “MAGA” hats, while Vandee also wore a Trump T-shirt she’d recently purchased.
Students who were on the trip with the girls during their stop at the Washington, D.C. college said they warned the young Trump supporters against wearing the paraphernalia, given where they were.
Vandee, who tweeted about her “pathetic” experience and claimed she was harassed by Howard students for being a Trump supporter, claimed she and Allequist had no idea HU was a historically Black institution. However, Eunissa Pullium, a 16-year-old student from Pennsylvania who also was on the trip, told Buzzfeed News that their tour guide informed them Howard was indeed an HBCU.
“Our tour guide told us it was an HBCU and everything, and that’s when we looked at what they were wearing and said, ‘You can’t wear that to a historically Black college,'” Pullium said. “They just ignored it, like we didn’t say it at all.”
Quityn Rodgers, another student on the trip who attends school with Pullium, said although he didn’t hear the tour guide through his headphones, he too advised the teen girls against sporting the pro-Trump gear, noting that it might anger some HU students.
“Before we got in the cafe, we told them to take off the hats,” Rodgers told Buzzfeed News. “I had a pit in my stomach. I knew something was going to happen. They ignored us. They took matters into their own hands and kept them on.”
As expected, something did happen.
In her account of the incident, Vandee recalled a man yelling “Fuck ya’ll” in her and Allequist’s direction and another student running up and grabbing Allequist’s hat as they waited in line. The student group was touring the D.C. area and stopped in HU’s cafeteria to grab lunch that day.
The 16-year-old tweeted that she and her friend were confronted by students “who took videos and pictures of us, saying WE were being ‘disrespectful’ and that ‘us being Caucasian, we should know better.’ ”
Speaking with Buzzfeed News, Allequist said the Howard visit was a last-minute stop and not a planned part of the trip. The teen said she never would have worn the MAGA hat had she known she was visiting a historically Black college. Vandee begged to differ, saying she felt the HBCU visit was planned.
“I think they did plan ahead, because on Thursday when we arrived [in D.C]. I knew about it,” Vandee said.
Both Pullium and Rogers provided the news site with a photo of the trip itinerary, which listed “Saturday Brunch at Howard University – Bethune Annex Cafeteria” under the Aug. 19 section. The teens said they received the document about two weeks before the trip.
An itinerary provided by Vandee, however, listed a restaurant in Alexandria, Va., as the spot for Saturday’s brunch, among other changes. In the top right corner of the page, it stated that her version was a preliminary schedule and not the final one, like the others.
“The original itinerary does not say, ‘Eat Lunch at Howard University,'” Vandee told Buzzfeed News. “I’m very sorry that these students who you spoke to lied!! #fakenews I completely understand what President Trump goes through now!”
Both Pulliam and Rogers said they were embarrassed and disappointed that they had to leave Howard because Vandee and Allequist refused to remove their pro-Trump gear.
“You can wear political gear on a field trip. There’s nothing wrong with it,” Rodgers said. “But when you’re going to particular places, don’t do that. You have to be nice. To me, I felt like that was wrong.”
