Saturday, May 28, 2011

Are Allegations of Being White Supremacists Enough?

Students near Santa Cruz were suspended for wearing white T-shirts for their senior class photo. As one explains, the jocks were going to wear one type of shirt, the girls were going to wear pink, his group of friends--which isn't all white--was going to wear white shirts so they could easily identify themselves in the picture, so they'd stand out.

It's been alleged that they're white supremacists, though, and wearing the white shirts bought them 3 days' suspension.

With no specific actions identified, and certainly no on-campus conduct worthy of suspension, is the mere accusation now all that's needed? They'll miss finals and perhaps graduation, all because someone says they might be racists.

Somehow, I'd think we'd need more evidence of wrongdoing.

8 comments:

  1. It's the seriousness of the charge.

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  2. Anonymous12:33 PM

    It helps to have a body when bringing a murder charge :-)

    Thoughtcrime charges have no such limitation.

    -Mark Roulo

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  3. Are there campus chapters of LULAC or the NAACP? If so, publicly proclaiming white supremacism cannot be an offense, given the separatist nature of the other two groups.

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  4. Shouldn't the charge be proven, though?

    Unless there's a dress code prohibiting white shirts (!) this strikes me as extreme overreach.

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  5. Its Santa Cruz...what do you expect????

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  6. Elaine C.6:16 PM

    ... if only our kids would all wear white shirts. Then we wouldn't have to worry about who's wearing red or blue or the letters n or s or 14 or any of the other lovely gang identifiers.

    White tshirts are wonderful...

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  7. It's possible that the charges are true - kids have been known to do thoughtless things before.

    But, in the absence of hard evidence, this truly constitutes an administrative bonehead move - one with grave consequences for the students. Yes, it's just 3 days. But the taint of race-based "crimes" will hang over their heads for life.

    The thing they have to ask themselves: would I convict a minority student on such flimsy evidence?

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