SkidNews op-ed: SPA Chooses Silence Over Action

By Josh Keefe
Opinions Co-Editor

Strolling about campus in my usual crunch-time stupor, I was surprised to see posters depicting head shots of college-aged persons underneath the eye-grabbing "We Are Silenced everyday" slogan. At first I thought this was some sort of pro-activist call to get students involved in the political process. Upon closer examination, I realized the poster was advertising a "day of silence" in honor of the silencing that gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered people experience everyday. To protest the silence society has forced on them, the Skidmore Pride Alliance is going to force themselves even further into that state? I get the strategy; it's a common one in political activism these days: exaggerate the injustice instead of fighting against it.

Now, let me just say that I fully agree that gays and people with alternative sexual orientations are silenced by societal norms, both overtly and subtly, especially outside of the safe haven of liberal arts colleges. As a white hetero male, I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a society where idiotic religious figures see you as some sort of criminal for loving as you see fit. (Although, as the oldest sibling, I do know what its like to be blamed for everything.) I'm not picking on the Skidmore Pride Alliance for their day of silence. One, it's a national event, and two, I think it's a good way to raise awareness, so long as there aren't bigger issues to deal with. But there are bigger issues; specifically one bigger issue that the GLBTQ Alliance is shying away from, and that is the documented discrimination that occurred downtown a few weekends ago. I couldn't imagine a better opportunity for the GLBTQ to speak up.

The allegations were made in a March 31 Skidnews article by Alex Alsup. The events described in the article were shocking, especially since they occurred in a Northeast college town and not in a "left-wing liberal out of touch with American values" type of way, but a "what the hell I thought this was America" type of way: a bouncer at Club Caroline, a downtown bar, refused to admit a patron on the basis of his sexual orientation alone. Not only that, but when the student in question called the Saratoga PD in hopes of using the law to restore some kind of sanity to the situation, the police promptly arrested him, the one who called the cops, on bogus "disturbing the peace" charges and harassed him over the course of the night he spent in jail. The whole thing read like some gross anachronism from the sixties. The allegations are outrageous, disgusting, and, if found to be true, should result in somebody being fired. (According to the chief of police, the department has already opened an internal investigation.) At the very least, gay groups on campus should have seized the opportunity to defend their core values. Instead, they decided to be silent.

The difference between the student activism of the sixties and the student activism of today is not so much a matter of numbers as it is a matter of risk. Nobody risks anything in today's protests. Protestors at the 2004 Democratic and Republican National Conventions agreed to stand in "free speech zones," caged off areas far away from the event they were protesting. Political expression is hard to take seriously if no one is willing to break the laws that they are opposing.

All this being said, I'm not asking anyone to go out and get arrested or take over the president's office. We are full-time students, not revolutionaries. But it's hard to imagine an issue more incendiary to a liberal college campus then [sic] the arrest of one of its students for the crime of being gay. When word of what happened to Manny DeJesus '06 reached the leaders of the gay groups on campus there should have been plans for a protest of the bar in question - which hires Neanderthal bouncers who say things like "no faggots allowed" - and outside of the police station - which hired someone who mocked a Latino "suspect" in their custody with infantile chants of "andale, andale, hombre." At the very least a call should have been placed to the local media outlets, (as a former reporter for a small town newspaper, let me tell you, this would've been front page stuff) to let the taxpayers know what kind of law enforcement their dollars are paying for. It wouldn't have taken much, just a phone call to the local newspaper, a national gay rights group, or the good old ACLU.

During the last five years, I have watched our government behave in ways that should have people marching in the streets. I have told myself that virtually no resistance has arisen because people weren't affected by these policies like the draft affected students during the Vietnam War. But here we have something that affects every gay person on this campus and still nothing at all is done by anybody. Maybe it's not apathy, it's not the situation, maybe it's just fear. The generation before us, because they were so very different from their parents and the establishment, had no problem with risk, because the system they opposed wasn't their system. But we, as much as we pretend not to be, are invested in the current system as much as our parents. So we are afraid to make waves, and afraid to stand up for ourselves if it requires actual confrontation. Instead, we stay silent, and tell ourselves it makes a difference.

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What do I have to say about this? First, he's right. We should have done something. Media attention would have been great. Boycotting might have been a good idea. Perhaps a letter-writing campaign . . .

What pisses me off about this point is that Skidnews knew long before, say, I did about Manny's arrest. Why didn't these student reporters call other newspapers? Didn't they care? Or are they not supposed to care, because they're not queer? The other thing that pisses me off about it is that they covered this story in their April Fool's Day edition of Skidnews. There were serious and joke articles in that issue and it was difficult to tell which was which. I looked up the arrest in the Saratogian to make sure it was real, and didn't see it. I guess I can go check again. I understand at this point that it was not a joke article, but that wasn't clear at the time.

Also, Josh Keefe clearly knows very little about "political activism these days." (He wants high-risk activism, eh? Has he missed the entire anti-globalization movement?!) I was actually at the RNC protests in 2004, and we marched through the streets. Where was he? Two of my friends were arrested at that same protest, during a kiss-in with Queerfist. Is that risky and radical enough for you, Josh Keefe?