On the morning of Halloween, two instructors came across a grouping of pumpkins displayed near the student union. They were carved with Nazi words and symbols, including a swastika.
One of the instructors was Adam Blackler, a history professor whose classes focus on modern Germany and the rise of fascism.
“This is an absolute effort by whoever they were to intimidate people on campus, and specifically meant to intimidate those who are already abused as minority communities, as people who are religious minorities, racial minorities,” Blackler said. “It's meant to be intimidating.”
UW has identified the students responsible but is withholding their names, and the name of the student group they belong to, as an internal investigation plays out.
University of Wyoming Police removed the pumpkins soon after Blackler reported them, declaring them “abandoned property.” They were not removed for the content of their carvings, which included a swastika, a klansman and the word “Hitler.”
The “pumpkin incident,” as those on campus have started calling it, is one of two incidents UW is now investigating in which antisemitic and other hateful or violent comments were displayed on campus.
While no criminal charges are being filed, UW’s equal opportunity office is investigating both the pumpkin incident and a separate “free speech ball” as possible instances of discrimination or harassment.
A week before the pumpkins were displayed and discovered, a student group hosted a “free speech ball” outside the student union. Passersby were invited to write whatever they wanted on the ball.
Photos included in the subsequent police report show the messages ran the gamut from “Free Palestine” to Bible passages to statements celebrating immigrants. Many others targeted marginalized groups, including in at least one spot the words “Kill Jews” and another glorifying the 1998 murder of gay UW student Matthew Shepard.
Another message altered an earlier statement of “Kill the Nazis” to read “Kiss the Nazis,” using the lightning bolt SS runes associated with Hitler’s “Schutzstaffel” — a paramilitary division that helped to carry out the Holocaust. One week later, the pumpkins also included the stylized SS among their other carvings.
Both incidents have ignited conversations across campus about hate speech, countering fascism and appropriate institutional responses to the presence of bigotry on campus.
Condemning antisemitism, upholding free expression
UW President Ed Seidel addressed both incidents in a campuswide email Friday afternoon.
“Given the inseparable connection between these symbols and the murder and persecution of millions, many have understandably been frightened and offended,” the president wrote. “I want to express my deep-felt compassion for the many who find the expressions on the pumpkins to be reprehensible, which I personally share. I am sure we all recognize that such displays, while generally protected under the First Amendment, run counter to the values of respect and care that define our university.”
But Seidel, who has made advancing the university’s commitment to free expression a cornerstone of his tenure, reiterated that feeling unsafe is not justification enough to silence hate speech, adding, “the best way to fight bigotry and ignorance is through education and dialogue, not censorship.”
Some students and faculty were disappointed that UW only issued an official statement on the events two weeks after the free speech ball and one week after the pumpkins.
“We’re trying to create a safe space for everyone here at the university,” said Jeff Means, an associate professor of history. “It’s cowardice to do anything other than what’s ethical and right and correct. And I think 99% of the citizens of the state of Wyoming would agree with me that this was absolutely horrific, absolutely unacceptable, and the university should have had the courage to get up and say that immediately, instead of fearing for some kind of retribution from the state legislature.”
Hanging over these campus discussions are directives from state lawmakers, including a 2024 budget amendment that defunded the university’s now shuttered diversity office and a 2025 law that outlawed promoting the concept of “institutional discrimination” in classrooms or employee trainings. Other lawmakers have attacked gender and women’s studies courses as “woke” and sought to cancel them as well.
The university has been accused frequently of having a left-wing or anti-free speech bias despite its willingness to comply with these legislative demands.
Malicious intent
Student, staff and faculty leaders were invited to a meeting earlier this week with President Ed Seidel and UWPD.
Paula Medina, the student government president, said she was told UWPD determined there was “no malicious intent” behind the pumpkins. Medina relayed this to students in an email Wednesday, but told Wyoming Public Radio it’s inaccurate.
“I do not believe that the claim [of] ‘no malicious intent’ is a valid one,” she said. “I think that it is pretty universally recognized that Nazi symbolism is a universal symbol of hate against a variety of different communities.”
Blackler, the history professor who discovered the pumpkins, agreed.
“The only way one can confront hatred Nazism, fascism, in all of its forms, is to call it out for what it is,” he said. “People don't carve SS runes into pumpkins next to a swastika and not have malicious intent.”
Blackler said he felt Seidel and other university leaders want to do what’s best for students and did not believe they were trying to downplay the incidents.
But he added that many students felt threatened by the hateful messages and would have appreciated a more forceful and immediate rebuke from the administration.
“President Seidel does not think this is funny,” Blackler said. “He takes it very seriously, as does everybody. I know this, but what happens every time, seemingly, in these kinds of situations, when someone is caught? What do they say? ‘I was joking.’ ‘I didn't know what it was.’ ‘As serious as it was, I thought this would attract attention.’ … And that's oftentimes accepted.”
Blackler said the use of Nazi symbols should not be written off as a joke, nor should it be viewed as valid political discourse.
“I get very tired of this notion that there are two sides to every issue,” he said.
Removing ‘abandoned property,’ not hate speech
It’s not the first time UWPD has removed offensive items from campus as litter. In 2017, UW did the same with Holocaust denial leaflets and white supremacist flyers left around campus by non-students. In the wake of that incident, UW’s diversity office hosted an event teaching students how to confront anti-semitism.
In 2023, when an out-of-state activist group left anti-transgender messages painted on small rocks around campus, those rocks were removed as “abandoned property” as well.
UW spokesman Chad Baldwin said the messages themselves, unless they’re determined to be direct incitements to violence, would not be banned.
“I do think that, for instance, if somebody had a table and had those pumpkins displayed, it would have been a different situation than nobody being around them and them just being left there,” he said. “Simply being deeply offended by something is not a justification to stop someone's right to free expression.”
Baldwin speaks from recent experience. In 2023, a Christian preacher tabled in the student union, displaying a banner that named an individual transgender student and denied her gender identity.
UW banned the preacher for one year, claiming his sign constituted harassment of the student, but the preacher sued, claiming his removal violated his First Amendment rights. The preacher won the lawsuit and was allowed to return to the union.
