The widely publicized incident involving Francisco Nava ’09’s e-mail threats and faked assault is over, and it is no one’s business either to personally condemn or to vindicate him. But there is still something to learn from the initial response to these events and especially from the comparisons and implications drawn by some people. The first news of “threatening” e-mails to Anscombe Society officers broke on Dec. 14, which happened to be the date of the very last issue of The Daily Princetonian before publication ceased for winter break. The timing neatly corresponded with a flurry of letters on behalf of the Anscombe Society’s anti-LGBT and anti-birth control positions, as well as with Brandon McGinley ’10’s column “Open Season.” In this piece, McGinley contrasted what he called the University’s “indifference” to threats against conservative students with its response to the harassment of students whom he identified as “homosexual” in Whitman College.
McGinley pulled no punches, drawing an explicit comparison between the Anscombe Society and the LGBT community to the effect that conservatives are the real victims. Parts of the column were obviously inaccurate even at the time. Anyone who noted the preponderance of intolerance and heterosexism on that very opinion page could have seen through his argument that Princeton silences conservative voices. To identify the students harassed in Whitman as “homosexual” was unsubstantiated, insulting and, incidentally, incorrect. The term “homosexual” is itself offensive because the psychiatric community originally used it to pathologize people with same-sex attraction. And as it happens, bisexual and straight students were among those harassed in Whitman. A point like this might seem trivial to people who do not have to clarify, conceal or reveal their sexuality on a regular basis; most people have no reason to be sensitive to language used to describe groups to which they belong.
But McGinley also asserted that the LGBT Center itself responded to the incident in Whitman by encouraging students to display pink ally triangles in their dorm room windows. This was largely the basis for his claim that the University employs a “double standard” in its response to the victimization of conservatives. In fact, however, the entire initiative for this campaign came not from the LGBT center but from the Pride Alliance, an entirely student-led organization. Our response did not represent the University any more than the Anscombe Society would have if it had organized campaigns of solidarity with Nava.The Pride Alliance is very grateful for the palpable support that so many students showed either by attending the triangle-cutting party itself or by hanging the triangles in their windows. We hope that the importance of such ally support is clear given the extraordinary lengths to which some individuals and groups have recently gone to further insult and stigmatize members of our community.
McGinley has since apologized for the fact that “nearly every word of ‘Open Season’ was untrue” without specifically referring to the paragraph about Whitman or noting that some parts of the column were clearly inaccurate even before the later revelations about the hoax itself. He did not retract his central argument about the University’s indifference to conservative students or acknowledge that in hindsight, the comparison to LGBT students was inappropriate.
But the sense that the alleged threats against Anscombe officers was somehow an issue that concerned the LGBT community was not limited to McGinley’s column. The Pride Alliance had to meet immediately to discuss a response to the threats, the column and the Anscombe members’ anti-LGBT letters, issues which were surely conflated in the minds of some readers. Unfortunately, our response could be neither timely nor widely read given the hoax’ tactically brilliant timing.
When news broke of Nava’s alleged assault, the speculation about the identity of his assailant sometimes reflected this sense that the threats had something to do with the LGBT community. In casual contexts, I was alarmed to hear the assault described more than once as an “anti-gay-bashing,” that is, a bashing conducted by some angry LGBT person or ally directed against a person because of his views about the LGBT community. There was also a surprising reluctance on the part of organizations that had condemned the assault to then retract or clarify their condemnations once it became clear that it was faked. As a member of one such organization, I received a mass e-mail that gave a truncated version of Nava’s assault and concluded with stern words against whomever was seeking to silence Nava because of his political views. I have yet to receive another e-mail stating that this was not, in fact, what had happened.
Whether we like it or not, the direct and indirect comparisons to the LGBT community and the speculation about the assailant makes the campus response an issue that has implications for others besides Nava himself. If any good is to come of this incident, it must start from an exploration of the problems that the response to it showed.
Jacob Denz is a sophomore and the co-president of the Pride Alliance. He can be reached at jdenz@princeton.edu.
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