A death threat directed at a student was written on a bathroom stall in Clark hall, but do you know what is more disturbing? No one seems to care. Yes, President Bennet sent an all-campus e-mail, and Clark held “mandatory” discussions. But where is the outrage, the outpouring of voices, the all-campus response? In Clark, only a portion of residents bothered to show up to talk about the incident. Why don’t we feel affected when someone targets a peer? Do we really believe there is there such a thing as an innocuous death threat?
The general sentiment around campus seems to be that “Clark will be Clark.” Hateful graffiti has been found many times in the all-freshman dorm, and these acts have been written off to immaturity and stupidity. But consider for a moment that there is a fellow student among us who has committed this act. Consider for a moment that this University, a reputed champion of diversity and community, will very likely hand a diploma to the perpetrator of this hate crime. Can we continue to sit by and discuss racism and homophobia in comfortable academic contexts when it exists so painfully real among us?
Clark is not an inherently bad place. Other dorms have reported hate incidents in the past. But why does it happen in Clark year after year? The administration believes that freshmen need time to get used the community standards here. We doubt that this is the crux of the issue. This incident occurred in February, not September. Will two more months and a summer off transform hateful individuals into accepting community members? The Dean’s Office puts a lot of effort into fostering dialogue about the campus climate. But there are some students who are not just missing the message, they are acting out against it. The Dean’s Office should be much more aggressive in pursuing those very students who do not want to listen.
So again, why Clark? It is not that Clark residents are the most immature students on campus; that is impossible to measure. But freshmen are the students on campus with the least degree of self-selection in their housing. Do problems disappear because students become more welcoming, or might program houses, frats, and housing groups allow students to retreat into environments were they can avoid people who make them feel uncomfortable? Avoidance does not equal tolerance.
The student body has shown an alarming amount of apathy, and the administration has been reluctant to transform the graffiti into a call for public action. The fact that Bennet wrote the all-campus e-mail, as opposed to Dean Cruz-Saco or Teraguchi, was itself an indication of the seriousness of the situation, but we have yet to hear more. Why wait? Let’s make this a campus issue, now.
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