Bus company serving University of Illinois criticized for ‘racist and bigoted’ ad

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A bus company serving the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is under fire for a racially insensitive ad.

The ad seemed to take a swipe at the fact that there are several Chinese students at the university.

In an emailed ad sent out on Saturday by Suburban Express, the bus company publicized routes that would be available during the Christmas break for the university and extolled the benefits of using their service, according to screenshots that were provided by a spokesperson for the university.

However, in the list of 11 benefits of choosing their bus service was a strange one: “Passengers like you. You won’t feel like you’re in China when you’re on our buses.”

After massive backlash quickly descended on the company, they issued a second email with the subject line “Apology.”

“We made a remark based on the fact that our competitor mostly handles Chinese international students,” the message began. “The remark is being interpreted as a slap in the face of all non-caucasians for some reason, and that it not how it was intended.”

— Trump’s travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries approved by Supreme Court — 

It’s not clear what competitor was being reference.

The email then went on to wrongly assert that nearly 20% of university students are from China and that they are admitted because they pay higher tuition.

“We agree that having a healthy mixture of different cultures and ethnicities is valuable,” the message said. “But we’re not comfortable with the idea of selling our university to the highest foreign bidder.”

“In any event, we did not intend to offend half the planet,” the message ended.

The university has since responded in a statement on Sunday.

“These types of racist and bigoted statements attacking any members of our community deserve nothing but condemnation from all of us,” the statement from the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs read. “We cannot prevent a private company from operating in our community. But we can, loudly and unambiguously, say that the opinions expressed by Suburban Express are offensive, bigoted, insulting and in direct opposition to the values of this university. And we would encourage any potential future customers of this transport company to carefully investigate its record and customer concerns before using its services.”