A racist poster on the campus of Mary Washington University is causing controversy tonight. The controversy prompted about 100 people to march in a unity march today in silence across campus.

They then held a rally on the steps of the administration building. Organizers hope the attention to this incident will help bring about change in the future.

"This was the straw that broke the camel's back. We've finally awakened our community to the problems we face on this campus, its not a race issue its other problems," says rally organizer Osob Samantar.

UMW student Candace Kent says that "One of the ultimate goals is awareness of your personal actions, awareness of other people's feelings."

It was an article featured in the student newspaper, The Bullet, after the controversial poster was discovered that furthered the controversy.

In it, the student that hung up the poster was quoted as saying, about the housekeepers that had reported it...."it's not their job to be offended."

8News spoke today to the student that wrote the article, she's been accused of writing an inflammatory story but tells us she printed the truth.

"We've definitely heard that we've misquoted people, that we got the facts wrong, but we haven't been contacted by anyone in the original story or the follow up story saying that we had misquoted them personally," says newspaper reporter Katy Burnell.

School officials say they didn't know about the racially insensitive poster until the article came out in the school paper.

It was a famous sports photo that had a racially insensitive caption put on the bottom of it. It was found inside of a freezer here in Jefferson dorm on the Mary Washington Campus. It was found by housekeeping staff on October 15th but it wasn't until a campus article appeared in early November that school officials found out about it.

"I apologize to the campus community to the slow response the administration has had, but it wasn't that we knew about it and weren't doing anything, we didn't know about it," says UMW acting president Richard Hurley.

Campus police were investigating, but determined the poster didn't meet the definition of a hate crime because it did not target a specific individual.

The student who printed it off the internet was charged with violating university policies...and is facing a hearing from the university judicial review.

Residence staff at Jefferson Hhall was working on sensitivity training after the incident but administrators were never notified.

Yesterday officials announced that the university is creating a bias related incident policy and is re-examining its statement of community values to deal with incidents in the future.

"There are policies in place at other universities that we don't have, that's our next step," says Hurley.

One of the students at the center of controversy has apologized for comments he made.

Stay with 8News for updates.

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