Race, Class, Sex, Lax
Life in a small town is disrupted after allegations of rape and ugly racist remarks at a local university. Tensions build between the school and the town. Rifts are widened, differences exaggerated. Helmets hit the floor and the gloves come off. Tent cities are created for vagabond TV journalists who give hourly updates when nothing has changed. The lacrosse season is cancelled, popular players are charged, and parents get late-night phone calls from journalists living in tent cities. Angry marchers light candles and carry banners. Stadiums go empty and an embarrassed hush, pregnant with things that used to go unsaid, falls over the campus during an otherwise beautiful, emerging spring.
While all this is currently happening at Duke University in Durham, NC, it is important to think about what would happen if all of this had occurred in Chestertown. Durham and Chestertown have much in common. There is the peculiar relationship that emerges between a private school and a community. There is the descent of a thousand students onto a small town each year, each bringing their own set of expectations and moral standards. There is a visible class gap that nobody likes to talk about. Obviously Washington is smaller than Duke in many ways. Our population is smaller. Our endowment is smaller. Our basketball stadium is smaller. We have a smaller impact financially on the town. We employ fewer people and give back less. However, all of this only serves to create a microcosm through which we can see the similarities and hypothesize over the reaction a similar incident would provoke.
Many of the issues emerging during this debacle stem from the idea of a class divide between students and townspeople. All you have to do to witness that is drive down Campus Ave. On one end there is a community for old white people. On the other end, just past Washington, there is a community for black people. And students call one end Heron Point and the other end “crack corner.” How long would this kind of attitude hold up under intense public scrutiny? How long could people say “What an unfortunate incident” to people with cameras and microphones and bright lights? How long would it take before somebody asked the wrong student the wrong question? Maybe the student is drunk. Maybe he has had a history of trouble in Chestertown, has had bad experiences with public officials or the local police. Suddenly the reputation of 1300 students is changed by one student telling some cable affiliate their take on a sensitive situation. Let’s say he is wearing a ribbon belt, has a red face, uses a racial epithet.
There are further town-gown issues that a single incident such as a rape could ignite into a full-blown fury. Small town politicians running for re-election, like the Durham D.A. and Chestertown’s own Margot Bailey. Their motives can sometimes cloud the issues at stake. Both have to keep the college happy and soothe the citizens. Both have to acknowledge that they serve some members of the community who do not consider themselves to be members of the community.
These things can happen. They have happened. There have been brawls between gangs of predominantly white students versus gangs of predominantly black youths. Cars get broken into that are parked in lighted lots. Some girls don’t always feel safe. There is a list of local sex offenders, complete with pictures, in the Public Safety office. I wonder what would happen on this campus if an African-American convicted sex offender was caught raping your girlfriend. I dare you to go look at the pictures in the Public Safety office. Look at the faces, and think about your girlfriend and what you would do and what everybody else on this campus would do.
Regardless of what side you are on, relationships between schools and communities will always be volatile, because each side needs the other. If you add race and class issues to that tension there will be bubbles. If you add sex to that equation then you get the current media firestorm that is hanging over Durham, NC. I like to believe that nothing remotely like that will ever occur at Washington, but I also wonder exactly what would happen if it ever did.
While all this is currently happening at Duke University in Durham, NC, it is important to think about what would happen if all of this had occurred in Chestertown. Durham and Chestertown have much in common. There is the peculiar relationship that emerges between a private school and a community. There is the descent of a thousand students onto a small town each year, each bringing their own set of expectations and moral standards. There is a visible class gap that nobody likes to talk about. Obviously Washington is smaller than Duke in many ways. Our population is smaller. Our endowment is smaller. Our basketball stadium is smaller. We have a smaller impact financially on the town. We employ fewer people and give back less. However, all of this only serves to create a microcosm through which we can see the similarities and hypothesize over the reaction a similar incident would provoke.
Many of the issues emerging during this debacle stem from the idea of a class divide between students and townspeople. All you have to do to witness that is drive down Campus Ave. On one end there is a community for old white people. On the other end, just past Washington, there is a community for black people. And students call one end Heron Point and the other end “crack corner.” How long would this kind of attitude hold up under intense public scrutiny? How long could people say “What an unfortunate incident” to people with cameras and microphones and bright lights? How long would it take before somebody asked the wrong student the wrong question? Maybe the student is drunk. Maybe he has had a history of trouble in Chestertown, has had bad experiences with public officials or the local police. Suddenly the reputation of 1300 students is changed by one student telling some cable affiliate their take on a sensitive situation. Let’s say he is wearing a ribbon belt, has a red face, uses a racial epithet.
There are further town-gown issues that a single incident such as a rape could ignite into a full-blown fury. Small town politicians running for re-election, like the Durham D.A. and Chestertown’s own Margot Bailey. Their motives can sometimes cloud the issues at stake. Both have to keep the college happy and soothe the citizens. Both have to acknowledge that they serve some members of the community who do not consider themselves to be members of the community.
These things can happen. They have happened. There have been brawls between gangs of predominantly white students versus gangs of predominantly black youths. Cars get broken into that are parked in lighted lots. Some girls don’t always feel safe. There is a list of local sex offenders, complete with pictures, in the Public Safety office. I wonder what would happen on this campus if an African-American convicted sex offender was caught raping your girlfriend. I dare you to go look at the pictures in the Public Safety office. Look at the faces, and think about your girlfriend and what you would do and what everybody else on this campus would do.
Regardless of what side you are on, relationships between schools and communities will always be volatile, because each side needs the other. If you add race and class issues to that tension there will be bubbles. If you add sex to that equation then you get the current media firestorm that is hanging over Durham, NC. I like to believe that nothing remotely like that will ever occur at Washington, but I also wonder exactly what would happen if it ever did.
posted by mikemcgrath4ever at 5:00 PM
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