Two black WKU students who live at the The Crown apartment complex were victims of a racial hate crime.

Emani Boards, a joint enrollment student from Bowling Green, and Paige Glass, a senior from Bowling Green, had feces smeared and a racially charged note posted on the door and windows of their apartment unit. 

Boards said she saw the feces and note this morning while taking out her dog before leaving for work. She said she was shocked and thought about the incident all day. 

“The only thing I could think about all day…is this person still out there and why would somebody do something like this,” Boards said.

Glass said she immediately reported the incident to the Bowling Green Police Department. 

According to a field information report from the Bowling Green Police Department, maintenance employees at The Crown apartment complex cleaned up the feces following the incident and “the property did not sustain any damages.” 

Management employees at The Crown told BGPD “there are several minority residents” living in the building where the incident occurred. 

“The management indicated that poop, dirt, other fluids, and writings are routinely found in the breezeways and are usually cleaned off before residents see it,” according to the field information report. “In the previous incidents throughout the entire complex, there has not been any similar notes left behind.”

Glass has requested that the area receive “extra patrol for fear of a possible hate crime occurring.” The report states that the area has been put on the “extra patrol list.”

Glass said the incident was especially powerful given she participated in a walk honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday. 

“It’s very heartbreaking we have to deal with something like this in 2018,” she said. 

The post-it note said “Make America Great Again” a tagline that was used during the campaign, and is continually used, by President Donald Trump. 

The Bowling Green-Warren County chapter of the NAACP released a statement on the incident earlier this evening. 

“This type of incident is both disgusting and intolerable! Racial slurs and sophomoric actions have no place in a community such as ours will not be tolerated,” the statement reads.

Glass said this should not be treated as a minor incident and those responsible are ignorant and cowards.

Boards said it’s important to not stay silent when these types of racially charged incidents occur.

“Speak out, your voice needs to be heard…hate crimes do happen in small towns like Bowling Green,” she said.

The Herald will update this story as more information becomes available.