This week’s events over the racist and sexist remarks made by Don Imus about the Rutgers female basketball team were very unfortunate and made clear that we still have a very long way to go before we eliminate discrimination in all its forms. In many ways the Imus incident also highlighted the progress made on racial and women’s issues in America. It speaks to our culture that MSNBC and CBS were so overwhelmed by the response from the American people that they chose to cancel the Imus program. It was a big win for civil rights and women’s rights, but the Imus remark uncovered the deep-rooted stereotypes about African Americans and women that continue in our society. Read More »
MOQA Co-President Nick Ballen '09, in an interview last Tuesday, described the graffiti as directed at specific individuals, mentioning names along with words and images.
"The campus, in general, is pretty accepting - but there are underlying things that don't come up," said Ballen, on whether the incident was related to a larger sentiment across campus. "Sometimes that is harder for an organization to deal with. These incidents are 'isolated' but 'not' because there are smaller versions [of the graffiti] everywhere. This sort of incident reminds us to pay attention to such things around campus, because when we ignore the little things, something big like this happens."
The school has responded: with two open meetings—April 3 and tomorrow—and Middlebury’s Queer Alliance has been determined to bring up a necessary—if uncomfortable—dialogue at Middlebury.
Sage Bierster, in an opinion piece for the Middlebury Campus, calls for us all to stop unintentionally fostering discrimination by using certain, still commonly used words:
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