Vandalism, the blame game, and LGBTQ identity

As most people who have read any of my other community posts know, I go to Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Georgetown is a school filled with pride for its Jesuit heritage. Many Jesuits teach classes at Georgetown–often classes with some of the longest wait lists. There is a chaplain-in-residence in every dormitory, and more than one daily mass in the campus chapel. Now as a feminist, I’ve run into some issues with my school’s Jesuit identity, particularly because they do not acknowledge the pro-choice student group on campus as a legitimate campus group; however, I love Georgetown and am proud of its heritage in most situations. Plus, the Jesuits are probably the coolest priests ever.

So, on Friday, it came to the attention of some of the students that an act of vandalism had taken place on campus. A statue of Mary on the front lawn of the school had been defaced. The face of the white stone statue had been painted black. Of course there was a facebook outcry, which I thought was necessary. It’s ridiculous, in my opinion, when any school property has been defaced. Georgetown tends to be a very clean campus, and graffiti of any kind is usually cleaned up rather quickly. Two years ago after a very intense basketball game, Pitt students/fans vandalized our campus, and Georgetown quickly took action to remove or cover the graffiti. So, I was very happy to see that there was a public outcry about the vandalism of the Mary statue, because outcry generally leads to action by the University to clean up such things.

But then, the outcry about the ridiculousness of vandalizing the Mary statue became a blame game. One student in his facebook status about the incident asked where the school’s Catholic identity had gone. One of his friends quickly replied that it had been "replaced by the gay identity." The first student replied that he couldn’t argue, because it was true. Truth? Here’s the truth: after multiple "bias-related incidents" last year (I airquote, because I think they should be called hate crimes, not incidents) involving LGBTQ students, one that ended up being taken to court as a hate crime (though later dropped ), students rallied for a change. The University, after much debate, decided to create an LGBTQ resource center that would work to aid students and hopefully serve as a deterrent to such crimes. The pope was not so happy with this, and some students, obviously the ones writing this stuff on their facebook, think that because LGBTQ students have a resource center on campus, they are somehow undermining the Catholic students. Because, according to their flawed logic, creating a safe space for LGBTQ students equates to destroying Georgetown’s catholic identity, and as such, relates directly to the vandalism in question.

I’m really upset about this. I’m upset that anyone finds it remotely okay to say that people who identify as LGBTQ and allies are the reason that bad things happen at our school. If we just consider historically what has happened when a single people group is blamed for all of the bad things that happen in a country/community, we’ll realize how messed up this is. That is, if you didn’t already realize that this facebook status and comment pair was completely bigoted and hateful. We’re on the verge of sex positive week on campus– a week (sponsored in part by GU Pride) about what it means to be sex positive, and about fostering a conversation about sex positivity on campus. And though I don’t think it will help the facebook-people in question, I think that some understanding of sex positivity and acceptance is what this campus needs. And the vandalism on Mary, and on facebook, needs to be cleaned up!

Cross-posted here