Letters to the Editor | Raymond swastikas: Emphasis should be on issue, not clean-up

I just came back from a conversation at Raymond about racist iconography and the swastika graffiti that was found, and read the article in The Miscellany News about it (“Swastika discovered in Raymond, Residential Life responds,” published on 2.17.2006). I was surprised and to tell the truth disheartened to see such an emphasis in the article on what Buildings and Grounds did or didn’t do, as somehow part of the “biggest issue...the failure to respond.”

Painting over something offensive doesn’t exactly make the issue go away, so having a discussion or sending messages out is a much more substantive and important part of the response. Do you really have to wait for someone else to be “bothered to put paint on the wall”?

If it really bothers you so much, couldn’t you paint over it yourself, put white-out on it, or a piece of paper (as the house-advisor did, in fact)? It is very impolite in my opinion to blame B&G in this way for a slow response. I’m sure they have their own priorities and busy work schedules. This is disrespecting the people who clean up all of our messes anyway, and you are projecting your anger on the wrong target.

At our meeting in Raymond we discussed some practical ways of dealing with this particular graffiti using counter-graffiti (disarming the offending symbol by drawing a wastebasket under it, for instance), and many of you are doing what is most important: learning about the problems created by racism, hatred, and any kind of exclusionary ideology in the fine courses offered by many departments on this campus.

—Michaela Pohl
Assistant Professor,
History Department