An online fundraiser for a white Ole Miss student caught on camera making racist monkey gestures at Black classmates has pulled in $20,000 since launching late Tuesday.
The GiveSendGo campaign, started by a self-described “independent journalist” with a history of inflammatory posts, had hit two-fifths of its $50,000 goal by Wednesday afternoon. The student it purports to help has not publicly confirmed her identity, though internet users have named her as a 19-year-old from a Memphis suburb.
The fundraiser’s bio frames the incident as harmless youthful mischief blown out of proportion. “She did nothing wrong. She did not assault anyone. She did not break any law. She made noises in a public walkway,” the page reads. “The rest is a campus bureaucracy and online mob treating a juvenile stunt as a hate crime because the residents were black.”
The campaign’s creator has used his platform to encourage “segregation” and to mock at least one Black Ole Miss student in prior social media posts. His pitch to donors rejects any gesture of accountability. “No apologies. No ‘I didn’t know.’ No bending the knee,” the fundraiser states. It promises proceeds will cover “lost income or opportunities, and anything else required so she does not to fold.”
The organizer added a call to action aimed at a broader audience: “Donate so the next girl (or guy) who gets the same treatment has a reason not to issue the scripted statement.”
The three Black roommates who were targeted shared their account Wednesday in a sit-down interview Mornings, describing what the viral Ring doorbell footage did not capture. Jakiyra Metcalf, who originally posted the clip to TikTok, explained that the women went outside to confront the group directly.
“We actually went outside and tried to, like, approach them and get them to explain why they did that,” Metcalf said.
Victoria Johnson, another roommate, said the encounter took a sharply different turn depending on which white student was speaking. One woman, later identified as Alaina Kunes, tried to downplay the incident with an apology and an excuse.
“One girl was apologizing. She was like, ‘I’m sorry, we did that to like four doors.’ And, mind you, we didn’t see anyone else’s door – it was just ours that was targeted. And she was like ‘We didn’t mean any harm,'” Johnson said.
But the blonde student’s response undercut any attempt at de-escalation. “She continued to make the gestures after [Kunes] was apologizing – so it was like a slap in the face,” Johnson continued.
Kunes, the only one of the three women seen in the footage to publicly acknowledge her role, released an apology statement Tuesday. She has since voluntarily left the university, according to reports that day.
Ole Miss officials announced Monday that they had opened an investigation into the incident, which unfolded when the white students approached the Black roommates’ off-campus residence and were recorded on their Ring camera making the gestures and sounds.
The fundraiser’s rapid traction highlights how viral moments of alleged racism on college campuses increasingly become flashpoints for competing online campaigns—some demanding accountability, others framing the accused as victims of cancel culture.
Ole Miss has not announced a timeline for completing its investigation.