Complacency Poor Response to Slurs
Scott Baumgartner
Issue date: 11/14/06 Section: Opinions
Tarzi's logic follows this track: if all activists are liberals, and Trinity's campus is overrun by activists, then all activists accomplish by holding demonstrations is a fueling of their own liberal righteousness. But if he had been reading the Letter to the Editor section of his own newspaper for the past few weeks, he would find that there are plenty of equally valid contrary viewpoints.
Tarzi's logic gets tripped up in its first move -- not all activists are liberals. There are conservatives, moderates, and people who avoid political classification but are passionate about one issue or another everywhere, even on Trinity's campus. And a community where people speak out and take ownership of their statements, especially when people disagree with each other, is the type of community that Trinity should strive to be, not shy away from. Tarzi is only half right when he says, "One person using a racial slur and a handful of people demonstrating their homophobia does not create a climate of fear." His belief hinges upon the small number of activists who express their opinion, but when an act is anonymous, number becomes unimportant.
One becomes everybody. I could have written the N-word on the door of a girl I don't know just as easily as the girl in Uggs walking on the Long Walk behind me, or the IDP student crossing the quad in his workboots could have.
The confusion lies not in whether somebody is or is not, but in whether somebody could be.
I do not mean to advocate suspicion; in fact, just the opposite. Nobody is uncertain about how Zee Santiago feels about the word written on Shantell Scott's door, or how Kat West feels about the state of recycling on campus. But we are all accountable to each other when people refuse to attach their names to their activism; when people become suspicious over who did what, then a climate of fear is born.
Tarzi seems to think that we're all hypersensitive blowhards, and that tolerance has been achieved on this campus.
Tarzi's logic gets tripped up in its first move -- not all activists are liberals. There are conservatives, moderates, and people who avoid political classification but are passionate about one issue or another everywhere, even on Trinity's campus. And a community where people speak out and take ownership of their statements, especially when people disagree with each other, is the type of community that Trinity should strive to be, not shy away from. Tarzi is only half right when he says, "One person using a racial slur and a handful of people demonstrating their homophobia does not create a climate of fear." His belief hinges upon the small number of activists who express their opinion, but when an act is anonymous, number becomes unimportant.
One becomes everybody. I could have written the N-word on the door of a girl I don't know just as easily as the girl in Uggs walking on the Long Walk behind me, or the IDP student crossing the quad in his workboots could have.
The confusion lies not in whether somebody is or is not, but in whether somebody could be.
I do not mean to advocate suspicion; in fact, just the opposite. Nobody is uncertain about how Zee Santiago feels about the word written on Shantell Scott's door, or how Kat West feels about the state of recycling on campus. But we are all accountable to each other when people refuse to attach their names to their activism; when people become suspicious over who did what, then a climate of fear is born.
Tarzi seems to think that we're all hypersensitive blowhards, and that tolerance has been achieved on this campus.
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