Some people are saying a campaign poster used by a candidate for a student election at Johns Hopkins University was in poor taste.
The poster references the incident last month in which a Johns Hopkins student killed an alleged intruder using a samurai sword.
The election happened over the weekend, and the candidate -- Wyatt Larkin of Phoenix, Arizona, won.
The campaign poster in question includes a picture of the Johns Hopkins Blue Jay in front of two crossed samurai swords, and it reads – ‘Nine out of 10 Hopkins samurai are voting Wyatt Larkin for president.’
Larkin said he won by meeting as many of his fellow students as possible -- he even held the door at the freshman dining hall. In the end, he beat the student who came in second, by just 15 votes ‘The campaign was about peer-to-peer contact and how you presented your issues, meeting new people and telling them what you're all about,’ he said.
He also had six different posters made – including the one with the samurai sword reference.
An editorial in the campus newspaper read, 'Poking fun at a death that occurred in Charles Village mere weeks ago is not the mark of a high-caliber candidate who fully comprehends the resounding effects of this incident.' Some students agreed.
‘You've got to think about their family you've got to think about the message you want to send and if you want to be a class president,’ said Joe Borelli, a senior at Johns Hopkins. ‘I feel like you should be taking it a little more seriously you shouldn't be joking around about death and stuff like that.’
Other students say Larkin was hardly alone – students all over campus were talking about the samurai sword incident. ‘I don't think that generally describes the person he is. It's just a minor mistake, I think,’ said Nardos Makonnen, a freshman at Johns Hopkins. ‘I guess it's pretty insensitive when you think about it in the larger community but for us, a lot of people were making jokes out of it,’ added freshman Priyanka Bajaj.
That’s why Larkin said he made the poster in the first place. ‘People identified with it as sort of a first big event that we all experienced together,’ he said. ‘I don't really know what the thought process was I mean at some point I thought you know this was something we've all experienced something we all know and I guess I played on that.’
Ten of the posters were made -- Wyatt Larkin says at least six of them had to be taken down because of improper placement. So he's not sure whether many of his fellow freshmen even saw it. ‘It was a joke. It was a joke and I tried to keep it, I knew there was some controversy to it but I was not trying to offend or shock and if I did I am sorry.’
