UMass Says Jokes About Harambe the Gorilla Are OK After All

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst isn’t banning jokes about the Harambe, the internet’s favorite gorilla, the Springfield Republican reports. In fact, UMass administrators value the humor, and students are free to make jokes about the gorilla, the university said in a statement.

Harambe, the gorilla that was shot at the Cincinnati Zoo in May after a 3-year-old boy fell into its enclosure, became a wildly popular internet meme over the summer.

The university’s statement responded to concerns, expressed on blogs and social media, that the university was censoring speech. After seeing Harambe jokes posted in a dormitory, two resident assistants mistakenly thought students were referring to the African Heritage Student Community at UMass, which also goes by the name Harambe. (In Swahili, “harambe” means “pull together.”) The RAs warned students that their jokes could be taken as microaggressions.

UMass said any efforts to stop Harambe humor perceived as inappropriate was not in keeping with the university’s free-speech policy. The statement said that students who joked about Harambe would not be labeled as sex offenders, as racists, or as perpetrating microaggressions toward black people.

Students can share their memes in peace.