Exreality.NET

A few weeks ago, I received a forwarded e-mail to all aerospace students from a 2nd year student, which was initially from the Chapter President of the Society of Black Engineers and Scientists (NSBE). This e-mail documented a hate crime that occurred on campus and how angry he was about it and asked us to come to an impromptu rally the next day. Brilliant idea in theory, but God this entire thing has just degraded into a clusterfuck.

Two weeks before the Presidential election that restored hope to the nation, some agriculture students from Cal Poly decided it would be a good idea to throw a party at their on campus residence that is tucked out of the way on the outskirts of campus. Honestly, I had no idea that it existed, but apparently upperclassmen in the agriculture department are granted student housing in the far parts of campus where they are able to tend to the cattle, horses, livestock, etc. Outside their house was a picnic table and a flag, both donning the Confederate emblem. Adjacent to the Confederate Flag was a noose, which they claim was left over from a corn maze they had helped but on recently. I cannot confirm the accuracy of the following statement, but the coup de grace of their display was a large banner at the entrance that read, “NIGGERS, FAGS, & HIPPIES ARE NOT ALLOWED!” There’s such a tolerant and understanding community we have here at Cal Poly because it took one week before anyone actually reported this to the news media. Certainly the administration didn’t start to do anything until people like the President of the NSBE started making people aware of the atrocity. The school’s official action was a letter of apology signed by some of the administration and the idiots who created the display got off scot-free because they were protected under the first amendment. That is until word finally got out about what they did.

In the e-mail I received from the NSBE, there was a brief statement about wearing a black shirt at school the following day and coming to a “peaceful” demonstration in the University Union the next morning. The message ended with “Don’t let this be just another hate crime in SLO. PLEASE.” I received this e-mail at 9:49 pm on a Wednesday night, how the hell am I suppose to get the word out to a large group of people by the time they go to sleep for the night? No one has time to check their e-mail in the morning, it was by chance that I happened to check mine so late at night. You’re asking me to get people to come to a protest early in the morning after I just learned about a horrible act of hate? Sorry, but I’m going to be sleeping into the late afternoon. I’m actually surprised you said that you’ve met so many people of different nationalities and backgrounds in this city, because the majority of people I meet here are WHITE. Cal Poly is still a prominent agricultural school in the California State system, and although in recent years it has been shifting to a prominent engineering program, it hasn’t really helped to bring in the cultural diversity that is desired by most universities. In fact, it fails to have the blatant liberalism that most colleges have because it caters to many agricultural sciences in which the profession is dominated by conservative whites. Thus I was not surprised when I saw a mere few hundred people standing in the UU for a protest out of the 10,000+ students attending the school. If you want to organize a protest, make sure you get the word out before hand that you’re having one, or else there’s really no reason to have one. Honestly, it took a week for news to actually leak about the “incident”, why not wait until Friday to hold a protest, because by then people would have heard about it and been outraged by it. Yes, there is something to be said about acting fast to combat racism, but you already didn’t, you were just trying to have the protest coincide with the local paper printing a story about the racism. It’s as much as a publicity stunt as the university “condemning” the students for their actions and apologizing to the students. But it served its purpose of showing that not all students at Poly are prejudice lynchers and the local media ran a story the next day about it.

Now that the tenants of the Crop House have been ousted for their racist acts, fire and brimstone is raining down upon them. Everyone is calling them racist, ignorant, conservative, prejudice, kkk-loving, white supremacist douche bags that in their free time enjoy sleeping with their cousins and lynching the “colored folk.” One of them is quoted as saying, “It’s like a nightmare, I just want to go to sleep and have this to not have happened.” Another told the school paper, “I want to get it across that no one in the house is racist. We know it was stupid and immature and ignorant that it got put up; we’re not trying to downplay it, but it does not represent who we are.” I’m sorry, no. It represents EXACTLY who you are. You’re the prejudiced guy who is silently intolerant of other races, the one who makes jokes about the abundant amount of Mexicans in California, and furthermore, it represents that you are a person who believes that you can get away with putting up two symbols that when combined is an allusion to a horrible period in our country’s past and laughing it off as a joke. Obviously we’re all missing the fact that they were trying to throw a great theme party, duh. I mean you have a confederate beer pong table, flag, racist banner, and a noose, how could you not have a good time? A third tenant at the house tried to play it off as if he had no idea what the confederate flag meant, “I mean, the thing is, none of us are from the South. What it meant to me is rebel youthism ala The Dukes of Hazard.” While that may seem like a plausible reason to have a confederate flag at a conservative get-together, it is a weak argument when added to the fact that they hung a noose next to it and if you saw the crappy Dukes of Hazard remake, you might’ve seen the scene when they’re driving into Atlanta and the black people are flipping them off and the white supremacists are yelling rock on because the confederate flag is atop the General Lee. You idiots should stand up and take responsibility for you actions. You acted like idiots and denying the fact that you did something stupid is just making you look worse in the eyes of the school community. The fact that you can say in good conscious that you weren’t being racist, concerns me. You were trying to be funny within your own social group that is tolerant of such racism and an outsider found out about it and blew it out of proportion. You still are at fault for this, you were the ones who decided to broadcast your intolerance at some stupid party you hosted, but at the same time you represent Cal Poly by living on campus at the Crops House. All you had to do was stop being stupid fucks, apologize for what you did, and allow us to get past this stupid event.

But you didn’t do that did you? You allowed this entire incident to be blown out of proportion, causing the University President to take action because he was being pressured by the student body, and now you’re out of housing, that house is set to be demolished (as if there was some sort of bio-toxin that causes racism in there), and for the past 3 weeks, you’ve allowed everyone to just bitch constantly about the racists acts that occurred. All because you wanted to protect your self-image by claiming not to be racists and not taking responsibility for what you did. I might’ve been initially offended by the fact that you’d display something like that, but it’s your first amendment right to do so. What offends me more is that you were stupid enough to actually put up that display in the first place, there’s a time and a place for a joke, but if you display something publicly, then you are open to scrutiny. The fact that you wish people would stop making a big deal about it or stop calling you racist because you’re not is laughable. This wasn’t some sort of satire and it wasn’t a political statement, it was a personal statement that all of those who lived in the Crops House were IDIOTS. And although you can’t blame people for wanting to protest intolerance, having an impromptu protest is almost as stupid as having a lynching themed college party.