Public Safety is continuing its investigation into flyers left on campus by a white supremacist group weeks before students arrived for the fall semester.

“We are actively investigating it,” Public Safety Director Steve Bequette said. “Hopefully, something will break.”

A staff member working in the Health Professions building reported the flyers to Public Safety Aug. 6. 

Bequette said the witness saw a suspicious person in Lot G.

Written on the flyers was the phrase “Proud to be White? Contact like-minded people.” They were left on vehicles across the university and distributed by a member of the Creativity Alliance, a white supremacist group who claim they are also a religion.

“They are a neo-nazi group that is an offshoot of another group called the creativity movement that was founded back in the 70s,” Bequette said.

The group has a small following, but chapters have been discovered in Texas, Illinois, Florida and Pennsylvania.

“Our people are very vigilant for it, they are looking for it,” Bequette said. “They always seem to happen on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we had heightened vigilance on those days.”

Bequette notified state police, FBI, Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office, Ivy Tech and the University of Evansville. Public Safety also notified other higher education universities that belong to the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administration (IACLEA).

This is not the first time white supremacist flyers have been discovered on campus. Public Safety found racist flyers on campus parking lots Nov. 6. Neo-Nazi posters that used threatening antisemitic derogatory language were also discovered in the Rice Plaza in April of 2018. 

Similar flyers were also found on Indiana University’s campus in Bloomington Aug. 5 and 27.

Bequette said two different white supremacist groups have visited campus in the past: the Creativity Alliance and the American Identity Movement.

“What they do is go into your space in the school and put their posters on bulletin boards,” he said. “They are professionally done and if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would think it’s part of a civics class or something.”

A picture of the Dean of Students Office can be found in the background of one of the posters from the American identity Movement.

Bequette said he believes the person who left the Creativity Alliance flyers travel from city to city to spread their message.

“They come in and do this because they’re cowards and they leave and don’t get caught,” he said. “They stir things up and get everybody upset, make the newspaper and that’s what they want. It’s free advertising.”

The group claims they are expressing their first amendment rights by spreading their posters across college campuses.

“I strongly believe we will find out who it is,” Bequette said. “We have the resources in place to do so.”