America's elite universities are taking turns melting down under the intense media-scandal spotlight. For reasons founded and entirely unfounded (the distinction is rarely attempted), mass hysteria has slapped each school with its own crisp crime tag.
So. Duke rapes minorities. Columbia assaults speakers. Brown funds orgies. Harvard plagiarizes chick-lit, columns, cartoons. Yale admits terrorists.
And Penn takes pictures.
The pithy sentence shocker fails. But that's okay; they've got visual.
Last year a two-tiered scandal unfolded when the university charged a student with sexual harassment, for snapping and posting pictures of two students presumably having sex in front of their full-length high-rise window. Now another Penn picture is under the media microscope, and again the student in question is just a side dish.
Penn President Amy Gutmann came under attack last Thursday for smiling for the camera with a student dressed as a suicide bomber at her annual Halloween party. Controversy broke out after senior Saad Saadi uploaded the picture onto his Facebook profile, which was linked to his personal website. He has since removed the picture and offered condolences to those upset by the costume. But the picture is still circulating. The international publicity bubble has officially popped, and it's not Saadi, but Gutmann stuck mopping up the residual mess.
According to the Daily Pennsylvanian, she released an official statement shortly after the buzz began, explaining that she had not realized what Saadi was dressed as when the picture was taken. She has reiterated her position in a guest opinion in the newspaper, where she apologized to those offended.
The party held annually in Gutmann's home is evidently something of a Penn tradition, as the paper describes it, during which students crowd the president for individual photo-ops. But the rest of the world is affording Gutmann little understanding about the factors that played into the picture take. Officials are scrambling as outraged alumni and outsiders (and not current students, as the DP notes) make the shallow depths of their inflated fury known.
For a brief sample of the depraved threats that have been made with paradoxically patriotic flavor, check out the hundreds of online comments posted on the DP's front page Friday. I guarantee it will make you queasy. The denunciations grow monotonous, but the absurdity linking them together remains impressive.
One jewel from a letter to the DP editor: "If Muslims [sic] students demand we not insult their prophet despite the 'free speech' right, they should apply the same standard to the way in which they behave and not abuse the privilege of free speech." In an interview, Saadi reveals he is Christian, though that's beside the point. Clearly categorical generalizations are being made, nonexistent links wrought and unrelated parties censured. In more ways that one.
Critics have not only conflated dressing as a terrorist with glorifying terrorists, but accused Gutmann of being guilty of far worse. Generally praised for the force of her leadership and personality in her brief tenure as Penn president, Gutmann is suddenly facing intense criticism and even scattered calls for her resignation. The hoopla suggests her lifetime of achievement and amiability constitutes a minute detail, rather than the appropriate context in which to interpret the situation. We are not what we do, or what we say, but how we (ostensibly) mess up.
The hastily snapped picture has taken on the force of a visual soundbite; and in America, that bodes very badly. Just ask Kerry. It presumes to speak a thousand words, and ten thousand acts. The outpouring of anger and the refusal to withhold judgment in the recent Penn case invokes images of bloodhounds pouncing on raw meat. Now that's demoralizing.
Sound familiar?
The more details you learn about the situation, the more ludicrous the agenda-driven hyperboles become. One misconstrued event is being cut out and framed as representative of the racist, bigoted, violent, elitist University at Large.
Is there an echo in the room?
This is not a Penn thing, and apparently it's not a Duke thing. It's not even a name-brand university thing.
Scandals everywhere are short and snappy. Unless a harsh new angle is introduced. It's what prevents them from being logically deconstructed, turned into explainable events. The news vans don't stay long enough to exonerate or forgive. The pictures are only snapped once, and the resulting images forever frozen in the public eye. We could criticize the offenders, but concise as we tend to be, we'd most likely fall victim to perpetuating the cycle.
Sounds familiar.
Soundbites are sexy. They're easy on the ears and eyes, whatever form they takes. Bloggers, reporters, so-called analysts and schmoes have a great time ripping them to shreds, and the people underneath. There's something seductive about dismantling reality, jabbing low, playing dirty, swiping at straw-men. Destroying people. With a sentence or two. With a picture in hand, and interpretations already in mind. It's a different kind of terrorism.
So go ahead: sum yourself up, in three words or less. Or with an "incriminating" Facebook picture.
Beat someone else to it.
Jane Chong is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every Wednesday.
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