Graffiti at Northwestern - how big of a deal?

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/11/11/3fb07737d42bc

On a few occasions this year, there have been reports of antisemitic graffiti being found on the Northwestern campus N of Chicago. As I understand it, the incident this past weekend involved swastikas and the phrase “Die Jews” written in marker in 2 locations.

A quick google reveals that this incident received national news coverage. And some type of student protest is proposed.

I’m just wondering - exactly how big of a deal is it for this much attention to be afforded to some idiot with a magic marker?

We have this quote from a local Hillel person: “One (incident) in itself is horrific,” he said. “The fact that someone is willing to write these things more than once is meant to continue to scare people.”

Horrific? Well, if you choose to be horrified by a message scrawled on a wall in marker.

I wonder if such a significant reaction in fact provides the moron more satisfaction than necessary.

The atmosphere at Northwestern right now is less than desirable. There is a mugging/robbery about once every day and a half, the most recent being yesterday at 8pm. A hispanic student had a racial slur written on his dorm door, then later had a knife held to his neck. There have also been slurs against asian and black students.

All of it combined may have contributed to the coverage.

First, let me say that I am a Northwestern graduate (so please speak slowly for me :slight_smile: )

It sounds like this is the work of one immature and ignorant jerk. Organizing protests, writing articles in the paper, and putting it in the nationwide media just gives this kid a false sense of power and importance. It’s like the first grader who learns he can get a big reaction by swearing on the playground.

If there were evidence that there was some kind of organized anti-semetic group on campus, then it would be a more serious thing that would demand administrative attention. But this guy wants attention. Put up some kind of reward, let the university police catch him, and kick him out of school for vandalism (or for hate speech, if there is such a policy).

NU shouldn’t let itself get distracted by this moron. The Michigan game is tomorrow, people!

[On preview] Trom, why do you think that is? Those kinds of incidents were nearly unheard of when I was a student, and that was only a dozen years ago…

I blame thier helping Bernadine Dohrn.

Weren’t there recently some disciplinary issues concerning at least one or a couple of frats at NU? The place is going to the dogs, I say.

I don’t mean to suggest that racism and antisemitism are unimportant. But from what I heard of this incident, it seemed the banner headlines could scream:

College student does something stupid! Other college students over-react!

As a near-native Evanstonian, it seems to me that one N.U. frat or another is pretty much always in trouble with the university administration. The issue is usually booze or wild parties, though, not semi-random hate crimes.

It does sound like one scumbucket, or perhaps a small group of like-minded scumbuckets. Maybe if the campus police would spend their time actually preventing assaults rather than kicking townspeople off the landfill because they want to take a nice walk along the lake after dinner, violent assaults against students and other hate crimes might be less of an issue.

Sorry to bump the old thread, but this is rather disturbing and confusing…:confused:

That is just bizarre.

We had a similar incident in Ohio where someone basically wanted to play the victim. I think the age of adulthood is creeping ever higher.

Business as usual on any given college campus, then?

I remember college…the inflated sense of self-importance that comes from being away from home for the first time, the newly-energized hair-trigger sensitivity that makes everything from that rotten glance from a passing student to bad food in the cafeteria a racist/sexist/homophobic/ablist/classist/looksist incident. That said, I can understand why the Jewish population of the campus would consider anything like this a warning sign in the same way I can understand why African-American students would get upset over nooses suddenly appearing in trees on campus and rumors of Ku Klux Klan meetings on the commons at 3AM.

Northwestern senior checking in. Yes, it’s possible people are overreacting to what’s happened here. But there have been several racist graffiti incidents here since the spring, and I hope you can appreciate that some people are rather alarmed by that. The students who had those things (“sand nigger,” etc.) written on their doors were probably quite alarmed. Police have been investigating those.

Now, the ‘attention’ issue is a big one. I don’t think we have a Nazi presence here, and it’s entirely possible that making a big deal out of these incidents only encourages the people who did them. That sucks as well, but ignoring them isn’t so good either. What’s the appropriate thing to do given those two options?

Also, keep in mind that there have been an unusually high number of robberies and muggings (10 so far, I think, and we’re about 8 weeks into the quarter) near campus this year. It’s not related, but people are a little jumpier than usual.

Xander Saide made up his stories, it seems, to draw further attention and support to this anti-hate movement. That’s according to the news reports regarding his confession to the Evanston police, anyway. There was one large protest a week and a half ago; this scumbag was the first speaker. There was a little chanting and there were speeches from members of various minority student groups. The question I asked before the rally, and have asked since, is “Great, but what are we actually doing?” Nothing, as far as I know. If the incidents with Saide had been real, we might’ve had a criminal on campus, but there’s not some sort of racial chasm here. Nothing that you wouldn’t find in many other enclaves of the upper middle class, anyway. Which is not to say things are perfect here on that level, but they’re not terrible either.

So perhaps some pointless rallying and chanting is okay. It does no real harm.

There’s some of that here, as there is everywhere else. But the things we’re dealing with here are unquestionably racist. Swastikas, racial epithets, that sort of thing. It’s not oversensitivity in that sense. Maybe a mountain has been made of a molehill, but oversensitivity isn’t the problem.
People here were stunned when the found out the Saide incidents were made up. I think expulsion would be a small price for him to pay; he’s being charged with two felonies and deserves a conviction from where I sit.

Occasionally, a frat does indeed have a problem with the administration. I’m gonna guess that’s not a very unusual thing; NU has not ‘gone to hell’ as far as I can see. A jerk or a few jerks (given the lack of evidence that it’s anything worse) doesn’t mean anything has really happened to the school overall. Bernadine Dorn (whom the FBI isn’t interesting in, so who gives a shit?) is also a non-issue. :wink:

Marley, I actually have no reason to doubt your assertion that this particular rash of incidents is clearly more than a frat putting on blackface for a homecoming parade or something similarly offensive but relatively harmless. My comments were more an editorial about the typical college-student mindset than commentary on that particular incident.

Right. As I said, “College student does something stupid! Other college students over-react!” does often apply here, as anywhere else. It applies to the hate crime thing, anyway, not to Xander. He didn’t do something stupid, he did something criminal and he deserves to pay for it.

Well, it’s the only appropriate response on a campus claiming to be a liberal arts institution, IMHO.

Northwestern doesn’t claim to be any such thing, and it’s not one. Drafting a hate speech code is definitely not the action of a liberal arts school, and NU did that. I don’t see why organizing a protest or two is not in keeping with a liberal arts insitution anyway.