A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student has resigned from their teaching position after confessing that they lied about being black.
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According to the New York Post, CV Vitolo-Haddad said they were actually Southern Italian and Sicilian and also uses the pronouns “they” and “them.” Haddad claimed they lived with the lie for years after their friends assumed they were black or Latino. They said in an essay for Medium, “When asked if I identify as black, my answer should have always been ‘No,’ “I have let guesses about my ancestry become answers I wanted but couldn’t prove. I have let people make assumptions when I should have corrected them.”
Haddad further apologized in a video where they claimed about having Cuban ancestry and “attaching myself to people’s perceptions of me as though it would.”
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“I repeated things I heard growing up from my family that I now know to be lies. I am so sorry. I take full responsibility for spreading these lies and am deeply sorry.”
The graduate student resigned from their teaching position and stepped down as co-president of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chapter of the Teacher Assistants’ Association. The school said in a statement they expect their students to “represent themselves authentically and accurately in all aspects of their academic work.”
Before the resignation, Haddad studied at the schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.