CNN –
Michigan State University apologized for displaying a picture of Adolf Hitler on the video board during a quiz before the school’s football game against in-state rival the University of Michigan on Saturday.
“MSU is aware that inappropriate third-party content was displayed on the video board prior to the start of today’s football game,” Michigan State athletic director Matt Larson said in a statement. “We deeply regret the content displayed as it is not representative of our institutional values.”
Before the kickoff of Hitler on the video board at Spartan Stadium, photos circulated on social media with a quiz question about where Hitler was born.
The university will stop using the third-party source from which the image came and will implement stricter review procedures for all videoboard content in the future, Larson added.
The apology is part of a dismal series of events for the Michigan State football program, which lost Saturday night’s game against rival Michigan 49-0. The university also decided to fire head coach Mel Tucker for sexual harassment, just two years after he signed a massive 10-year, $95 million contract.
The trivia also comes amid heightened tensions on many college campuses surrounding the Israel-Gaza war and amid concerns about rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
The university said the quiz video came from a YouTube page called The Quiz Channel. Videos from the same YouTube page were used before every home game throughout the season, the school said.
“As of last night, the content was not offensive,” the school said. “As the statement acknowledges, we will conduct a more rigorous review of all content to better ensure this never happens again.”
Floris van Pallandt, the creator of The Quiz Channel, told CNN in an email that the university’s use of his channel’s content was unauthorized.
“I was completely unaware of this and due to this incident, only learning content created by me was used,” he wrote. “While I offer customized content packages for businesses, the use of my publicly available YouTube content for stadium entertainment is highly questionable to say the least.”
Van Pallandt said his channel is currently receiving a wave of negative feedback.
“The following statement from MSU appears to refer to a third-party source, suggesting that The Quiz Channel is that very source. If this is true, that is unacceptable to me as it is unacceptable for The Quiz Channel to suffer any reputational, performance or financial impact as a result of MSU’s unsolicited use of our content,” he wrote.
Furthermore, he defended the question of Hitler’s birthplace as legitimate, although not necessarily in this context.
“The trivial question being asked in the stadium is a valid one and it is important that we do not shy away from the darker facets of history. However, I certainly would not have chosen this particular question for a live stadium audience,” he wrote.