While some students praise Ms. Hamlin as trying to create a safe atmosphere for minority students to voice their concerns after the beatings, others, including friends of several athletes on campus, accuse her and some students of fostering a divisive, fearful atmosphere.
“It’s just driving a wedge between us,” said Emily Bradford, 20, a third-year anthropology, sociology and forensic science major from Hillsborough. “That’s not what Guilford is all about. That’s not what community is all about.”
Even the most ardent activists say the incident has led to a lot of stereotyping and name-calling.
“I have a friend who’s a footballer,” said Casey Thomas, 18, a freshman from Queens. “He wasn’t even here that weekend, but he said someone came up and just cursed him out — lectured him.”
Poor footballers.
I know you hate the NYT, but you’re letting your dislike get the best of you. When I read this article, my first thought was surprise that the NYT was covering an event that took place in rural North Carolina. Upon reading the article, though, I thought it was okay. And I haven’t seen anyone else cover this story, so I was pleased to see it in the NYT. Now, true, some will argue that the “vast jewish media conspiracy” is the reason no other paper covered this story, but that’s ridiculous. There are over 2,600 four-year universities and colleges in the US, and fights between students happen everyday. Kudos for the NYT for taking one of these incidents and tying it in to a bigger global issue.
Andrew, I think they covered this pretty much as a curiosity (“rude shock for liberal Quaker oasis in rural SC” etc etc), but they framed the event in a partial way – i.e., how the bash-up brought tensions between crunchy multiculturalists and redblooded athletes to the fore. That’s an interesting angle of course, but the other major part of the story, the hate crime issue, which attracted the FBI’s interest, they all but dismiss as speculation. Is it not significant that this was a potential hate crime against an ethnic group, and wouldn’t that have been an important part of the story had the victims in question been, say, African American? The story’s angle seems to be mainly that the “PC brigade” is being ‘divisive” and unfair to athletes.
I don’t see how the article addresses any bigger global issues – it avoids discussion of the fact that the victims were Arab, and pretends this is purely a campus-conflict matter. It’s small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, but the framing of the piece was jarring, particularly for those of us who have seen Americans set aside their liberal principles when it comes to the Arabs and Muslims in their midst in recent years.
How would the Times have covered it had Jews been beaten up?
Andrew, actually I read the story the same way SP did — it’s about (from a NYC perspective) weirdo Quakers and how they just want to be “Friends.” (I’m saying here that’s how the writer wrote it, I have nothing against Quakers, quite on the contrary!) The Palestinians who were beaten up — that did not even register, in fact there is no effort to get the bottom of whether this was just standard bullying or discrimination of some sort — and whether that discrimination might have been because, for example, they had brown skin, or because they were Arab/Palestinians. It’s ok not to pick up every discrimination story, of course, but to do this story and not talk about the possible discrimination angle and just do a “Don’t Quakers say the darndest things?” story… sheesh!
I’ve been following this story in the media and was happy to come across your post, which expresses my frustration. It has been widely covered in the west(top of Google US News Page for a day), but, as you point out, too little focus on the assault itself.
For links to some coverage that has been decent and a few lucid comments that have emerged amid a lot of ignorant and hateful ones, please read my post:
http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2007/01/guilford-college-assault-blaming-real.html
it’s funny how in mainstream conservative circles in the US the NYT iis often the enemy. It is thought of being critical Israel by right of center Israel supporters and anti-religous (o’reilly on fox), and too multi-cultural and pro-abortion by social conservatives.
RL, the NYT used to be thought of as liberal some years ago, and now most liberals don’t particularly like it; it’s also let its standards fall in international reporting and become more about opinion-page ‘stars.’ Like the Dems, NYT has made more of an effort in recent years to increase coverage of religion and “red-state” issues – moved to the right in an effort to retain its ‘centrism’ in a changing America. Conservatives associate the NYT with bicoastal liberal elites and will till kingdom come, so it’s not a surprise they haven’t bothered to re-evaluate it.
Well this story shows that despite their efforts for “centrism” they don’t really get people with traditional/religious values either.
I thought the Christian Science Monitor did a pretty good job on the story (Jan. 29). There are quite a few issues in this one — the university’s African American community is complaining that if the victims had been black there would have been less uproar (?!?!), also at least one of the attacks was black.
What comes across to me in the articles though is a caution about labeling this a hate crime until all the facts are out there. An op-ed in a local Greensboro paper noted the fiasco over the accusations of rape against the Duke lacrosse team who were tried and convicted in the press before it was exactly clear what happened.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Arab-hating Quaker footballers didn’t beat up the Palestinian students, but before the term hate crime is thrown around, there should be clear evidence.