Political Vandalism at UD?
The latest dispatch from the Flyer News is most disheartening. Apparently, a vocally anti-war graduate student found his door vandalized after he spent a weekend off-campus working with the homeless:
… Standing with my homelessness handouts and sleeping bag at my door I read a note that said, “we protect your ass and my buddies die and all you can be is an ungreatful [sic] bi*** f*** you! U.S.M.C. cause you will never know US Marine CORPS!!!”
In addition, other derogatory words were written across my door covering my St. Francis prayer for peace, Safe Place sign, and an image of Iraqi children who have lost arms and legs from bombings. The text on this image was rendered to contrast the original message.
I could nitpick other elements of the article, but I’m not going to. Frankly, dissecting the author’s reasoning serves no possible purpose: If nothing else, the author’s entirely justifiable anger means that this piece will not be a paragon of clear and rational argument. Instead, I’m only going to say two things.
First, although the author suggests that the perpetrators may have been members of the UD ROTC program, I very much doubt that this is the case. I have known a number of ROTC students and a few ROTC instructors, and all have struck me as being disciplined and professional. Furthermore, I very much doubt that members of an Army ROTC program would be writing the praises of the Marine Corps on the door of a graduate student. In fact, it would greatly surprise me if the perpetrators of this act were members of the military at all.
Secondly, to whoever did this: Although I have been a vocal critic of the stance of UD Campus Ministry on the war in Iraq, don’t even think of trying to cite anything I’ve written in some halfhearted defense of your actions. My goal in criticizing Campus Ministry has been to increase debate - the goal of your actions was to stifle it. Those who resort to intimidation to win an argument have had many names throughout history. In Germany, they were called the Sturm Abteilung, or SA, or simply the brownshirts. In Iraq, they now being called Al-Tawhid wal Jihad. Presumably, you would consider yourselves allies of democracy. Consider that you are adopting the tactics of its bitterest enemies.
Why am I so focused on this point? There are two reasons. First of all, the last incident of door vandalism on this campus led to the establishment of an anti-bias program at UD. This incident, as public as it now is, is sure to spark some form of official reaction and quite a bit of unofficial ire.
This brings me to my other reason: I am the most recent, most visible, and most vocal critic of UD Campus Ministry at the moment. (Which is a somewhat surprising thing given the traffic, or lack thereof, that this site gets.) If someone should decide to make this act of vandalism worse with an intemperate response, I am the low-hanging fruit on the tree. Let me say, therefore, that my ire at being tied to this incident by supporters of Campus Ministry will hardly be less than my ire at being cited by the vandals. My opinions have been blatantly misrepresented before by supporters of Campus Ministry who did not take the trouble to respond to my central arguments, read my work correctly, quote me accurately, or represent their status as authors honestly. I did not respond to this misrepresentation because I did not feel it was necessary. However, I will forcefully respond to any attempts to tie my criticism to the actions of these thugs. They are no compatriots of mine. My arguments derive from the classical desire for rational debate, while their actions stem from a different historical inspiration.
All opposition must be stamped into the ground. — Slogan of the Sturm Abteilung
Well written and interesting posting. You raise interesting and very valid points. I concur about the unlikelihood of a member of ROTC being the culprit for the same reason: the traditonal Army/USMC rivalry. My instincts even whispered of the possibility of a bit of “Tawana Brawley” in play, but being unfamiliar with the people in question, accusing someone of vandalizing their own (or their fellow’s) door to draw attention to their own agenda, would be unseemly. Recently I have had discussions about vandalism with people I care about: apparently some people actually feel vandalism, while patently illegal, is a form of self-expression that is quite legitimate, including tagging, grafitti, even possibly an action like your example above. My response is always very similar to yours. Thanks for pointing out the obvious, that unfortunately some people are incapable of seeing– you have a tagged wall, your example of a vandalized door, jewish headstones tipped over (a local example from my area), or another local example here in the Seattle area– millions of dollars worth of broken Starbucks’ and other shopkeepers windows during an anti-WTO protest, or similarly, long ago and far away, Kristalnacht with its added violent attacks on the shopkeepers themselves, as well as other Jewish citizens. Unfortunately in the continuum of vandalism, acceptance of the least egregious examples are not far away philosophically from the most extreme examples on the other end, although some would beg to differ that crimes against property have no relationship to physical violence against people. A perusal of the photos coming out of the current anti-WTO protests in Hong Kong show that the protesters are not just tagging walls with spray painted slogans, they are attacking police with poles and metal barricades.
Comment by redmarilyn — 18 December 2005 @ 22:04