College News

I learn via Volokh, no less, of a recent cross-burning incident at my college. Here's the article from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Note that the article is about the reaction to a "racial controversy" about a scavenger hunt, and the cross-burning is in the background.

Just a few weeks before the scavenger hunt, students returning to campus for spring semester were informed that four drunken Claremont Colleges students had stolen an 11-foot-high cross from a Pomona art student over the break, carried it several blocks to Harvey Mudd College and burned it in front of a dorm.

Now I don't know about you, but when I read this, I was thinking Please don't let it be West Dorm. So I dug up the Collage article:

On January 9th, four students from Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Scripps colleges stole a student-made cross, brought it to Harvey Mudd's North Dorm, and burned it. In response to widespread concern among students, faculty, and administrators, Pomona College convened a student forum on February 4th to discuss the meaning of the incident and its aftermath.

Thank God it wasn't West. I bet whoever the West Dorm Proctor is, he's getting down on his knees every night thanking God it wasn't West. (Even if he's an atheist? -Ed Especially if he's an atheist! -SOM)

Gotta love the Collage, by the way. No non-Pomona student is quoted. Here are the best copy-editing failures from that article:

"to try and exonerate what happened without first speaking to students of color.... I think that speaks highly[!] of race relations at Pomona"
I think you mean "speaks volumes", dear.

"...we're letting in students into these college who are so ignorant than the fact that they don't even know what burning a cross means."
I think it's worse that we're "letting in students into these college" who don't even know how to speak.

And the PoMoney quote is: "The second thing....is that we're told it's a broader 5-C issue and there's only so much Pomona can do." Yes! It's true: Pomona is like Belgium! Apparently they want to be able to discipline the students of the other colleges for hate crimes now. Perhaps they will start prosecuting war crimes next, eh? How long before no-one is safe from the long arm of Pomoonie justice?

I hope the idiot students who did this get smacked down appropriately, but I expect they'll probably be over-smacked. Probably they'll get kicked off campus and mandatory diversity training, which is almost certainly overkill. I would be very surprised to learn there was any racial or hateful motivation: more likely the four are anti-art, or at worst, anti-Christian.

It was good work getting Scripps involved: HMC alone would be very bad. HMC+CMC still bad but at least the blame is spread onto two campuses. A full-on CMS art-stealing-and-burning dilutes the blame heavily.

Just going from what's in the two articles, I would guess that what's going on is:

• Some drunk folks from up north (CMC, Mudd, Scripps) stole an art project cross and burned it, got caught, confessed
  
• The students were punished by their own colleges, but (this is a key assumption) were punished for stealing an art project and burning it, not for committing a hate crime
  
• Pomona administration didn't hear about it for a long time
  
• Rumors filtered down to the Pomona students
  
• Pomona administration finally heard about it and acted, weakly
  
• Students were outraged, especially those who felt that the students should have been punished for a hate crime
  
• Administration responded by sending flak-catchers to a "blame-us" forum, defusing outrage
  
• Administration goes onto hair-trigger alert for future "hate incidents"
  
• Then OAD came up with their photo scavenger hunt
  
• Administration finds out about it and jumps on them with both feet
  

So basically, the first event has probably no racial content, is a crime (theft, vandalism, playing with matches, whatever), and is off-Pomona. The second event has racial content ("a photo with 10 or more Asians") but is probably not motivated by racism; is not a crime, but instead is merely speech; and doesn't ever happen, since the administration steps in before the scavenger hunt actually starts.

But: pretend you're Ann Quinlan, Pomona's Dean of Students. The wolves are howling, the local press is already involved, what to do? Shoot the students, of course. As Volokh points out, Pomona College may well be breaking California law by punishing the students for exercising their free speech rights.