Follow-up on the Massachusetts rednecks who drove “through the [Wellesley College] campus waving a Trump flag out the truck window and yelling ‘Make America Great Again.'”: “Pro-Trump Babson students cleared in Wellesley incident” (Boston Globe)
I’m wondering if these guys should be classified as performance artists.
Related:
- Oberlin student shuts down campus by placing a “whites only” sign above a water fountain
- Hillary’s anti-poverty achievements (starts with a commencement speech at Wellesley)
Liked the link to Oberlin. The place never ceases to amaze.
Speaking of “performance art”, here is a true story (happened last year around this time of the year).
Some student at a Mass Public University used the school’s shuttle stop station to setup his/her “performance art”. It was a setting of a homeless person sleeping on the bench with his belongings. The homeless person was a manikin all covered up, thus there is no way to tell it was not real and there was no sign stating this is “art” or that there is no real person here.
Guess what happened? There were 100’s calls to the University police as well as to the City police ranging from anger (a homeless person is taking over the bench) to people feeling sorry for the homeless person and asking for help (some even left money next to the manikin!!) The police was NOT notified of this “art” and thus had to response on all early calls. Later, once they get a handle of it, they informed the callers it is not real.
1) Who took the tab and risking time away from real emergency when the police is responding to the calls?
2) Now that students learned from this experience as “art” what makes them to ignore it next time they are in a similar situation but instead of a manikin it is a real person and they don’t know it?
Yes they (barely) escaped criminal prosecution and college disciplinary action for exercising their First Amendment right to celebrate their preferred candidate’s victory but they did not get off scot free. First of all, they were forced to undergo Maoist self-criticism:
“Publicly celebrating the election at a time and in a place when so many were deeply disappointed about its outcome and, indeed, genuinely grieving about it, was just not smart,” Mr. Rand-Ricciardi wrote. “We had no idea that our actions would be interpreted as racist, or sexist, or harassment.”
Mr. Tomasso wrote: “As a white male, I do not feel threatened by the new president. I have not had to work for that privilege. It was something I was born with.” He included a phone number and email address where he said those he had offended could reach him directly. Quickly, though, angry comments — along with a few written in support — inundated the post, and Mr. Tomasso stopped responding. Neither Mr. Tomasso nor Mr. Rand-Ricciardi responded to requests for comment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/post-trump-how-people-explain-bias-based-attacks.html
and then they were publicly criticized by the president of their college and expelled from their fraternity (see the Boston Globe story):
“We, the Babson community, were extremely upset to learn that two of our students engaged in behavior that was, at a minimum, insensitive, unacceptable, and contrary to our core values,” Healey wrote.
Both students were ousted from the fraternity they belonged to, Sigma Phi Epsilon. The fraternity’s national leadership called their alleged actions “abhorrent to our members, alumni, and staff” in a statement. …”
While it is not (yet) a crime to publicly support Donald Trump in Massachusetts, this is sufficient humiliation that all but the most dedicated college Trumpers will in the future be wise enough to confine their pro-Trump activities to the secret voting booth.
Is there any conceivable symmetry here? Is there any place in America where a Hillary victory celebration would have been denounced and (almost) prosecuted and the “grieving” of Trump supporters validated?