A Facebook group that listed itself as a "safe space for white students," as if Berkeley itself were not that space, has been the talk of campus at Cal since this weekend. Update: Time and NBC Bay Area, among others, have posited that the group, like others that appeared with purported associations to schools, was introduced from outside the University.

The New York Daily News reports that, in internet junkyards like 4chan, users conspired to introduce the pages at the “the most leftist colleges and universities in the western world.” And, you know, get people mad about them.

“I think it’s just people who are racist, or don’t realize they are racist,” speculates student Nikola Kendis about the group called "White Student Union at UC Berkeley" which recently came to the school's attention according to CBS SF.

Even as a sophomoric prank, the call to create the “safe space for white students to air their true feelings about the future of our nation” is loaded with racist and belittling implications. And to make the implicit totally explicit, the page added something about the “invasion and degradation of the lands, institutions, and cultural heritage that are rightly ours." These guys define themselves as "European," but here they seem to have themselves confused with an Indigenous American student group.

Nonetheless, ABC 7 has it that the page received upwards of 900 likes. It correctly points to the largest ethnic group represented on campus as Asian, with "white" students still 29 percent of undergraduates. But, I guess the groups goal is what, 100 percent white?

In the vein of "Men's Rights" groups which claim the need to form fraternal societies (as if they didn't exist, like, everywhere) for their voices to be heard (as if those weren't loud and clear), thoroughly unnecessary and deliberately demeaning "White Student Unions" have appeared, perhaps just in Facebook group form, across college campuses of late. The Chronicle puts the number at 75. But, says Kendis, her exasperation palpable, “There’s no oppression. Like, what? ... That’s not a thing."

"While UC Berkeley honors First Amendment rights, we do not endorse this attempt to create conflict and make light of the efforts of activists locally and nationally," Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Vice Chancellor Na’ilah Nasir told it like it was in a statement proffered yesterday. However, their office conveniently [Update: probably correctly] maintains the page was likely created by someone outside of Cal.

After that statement was circulated, the Facebook page disappeared. But a spokesperson for the social network say that the deletion was for another reason. The page was created with a fake name. You recall Facebook's real name policy, don't you? Well, we should all like it now, at least just this once.

Previously: UC Berkeley Republican 'Diversity Bake Sale' Deemed Racist