(KTXL) — Sacramento State President Robert Nelsen and Associated Students, Inc. President Salma Pacheco denounced a university staff member who reportedly did a Nazi salute while recording a student podcast and apologized for the delay in responding to the action.
Several students were recording a podcast about World War II in February when a staff member performed a Nazi salute after a student made a reference to Adolf Hitler, according to the university officials and The State Hornet, the university’s student newspaper, which first reported the incident on April 6.
The State Hornet obtained unaired audio of the recording, in which a student makes a reference to Hitler, saying, “I mean, just a dude with a mustache.”
There is a silence afterward, during which the salute is reportedly done, and another student says, “That just threw me off.”
The staff member was a sound engineer during the recording and can be heard saying, “Sorry, my bad, I shouldn’t have done that.”
In a video message issued on April 7, a day after the Hornet’s story was published, President Nelsen said, “That is something that should not happen on our campus, it should not happen in this city, it should not happen anywhere. We will make sure it never happens again.”
Following the incident, the students reportedly attempted to report the action through the university’s official channels, but they were unable to select an appropriate option that matched the issue.
The students also requested a new sound engineer but were reportedly unable to obtain the change from university officials.
“To our students, you did everything right,” said Pacheco in the video message. “You went through the process, you filed a bias report…and I’m so sorry that the process failed you.”
Nelsen said that they are working to fix the process, saying “we know what went wrong” and that “we will make sure that it never happens again.”
The Sacramento Bee reported Monday morning that the university’s director of news and communications said that the staff member’s employment “is being handled through the human resources department.”
