- An employee in the Vice Chancellor’s Office for Development has drawn scrutiny after sharing a social media post which seemed to justify the killing of Charlie Kirk. Her profile has been scrubbed from university websites.
Lauren Stokes serves as the executive assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Development at the University of Mississippi. In the moments following the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday, Stokes reposted a graphic from Instagram which labeled Kirk as a white supremacist and “reimagined clan member.” The post negatively caricatured Kirk’s social and political views as a lead up to “I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”
On Wednesday night, a viral social media posts connected the dots between Stokes, her employment in the Lyceum at Ole Miss, and the inflammatory statement. The post also indicated Stokes and her husband own and operate a restaurant in Oxford. Ole Miss alumni have since been active, calling the Chancellor’s Office and questioning next steps on social platforms.
University officials told Magnolia Tribune a statement from the Chancellor’s office on the incident was forthcoming Thursday afternoon.
UPDATE: As of 1 p.m. Thursday, after this article was initially published, Ole Miss sent the following statement confirming that Stokes was no longer employed by the university. Chancellor Glenn Boyce called the statements from Stokes “hurtful” and “insensitive,” and said the comments “run completely counter to our institutional values of civility, fairness, and respecting the dignity of each person.”
Stokes employee profile from the Ole Miss Development Team webpage appears to have been removed and her personal Instagram account has been put under “protected” status — meaning the posts are no longer visible to the public.
Since the viral post, the Stokes’ Tarasque Cucina has received over a dozen pages of 1-star reviews on Yelp. An apology attributed to Stokes on Yelp explained that the couple know and employ people from all walks of life and that they “do not support violent of any sort.” The posted apology went on to read, “This re-post on my private account was not kind. It was reposted in a heated moment (on the Internet?! Never heard of such!) I apologize to those I have offended…”
Other universities are also grappling with how to handle employee comments following Kirk’s death. Middle Tennessee State University’s Associated Dean of Students Laura Sosh-Lightsy was fired today after a social media post that expressed she had “zero sympathy” for the slain conservative activists.
Russ Latino
