The Guilford College assault case and Tuesday night's public meeting
There was a whole passel of stuff covered at tonight's meeting that we obviously didn't have room for in the print edition. If you'd like to use this thread as a place to discuss any of it, please jump in with a comment. At the moment I'm tired and going home soon, but before I do, a few quick thoughts:
-- I heard, off the record, before the meeting from a couple of people in the community who saw this event as a desperate reach for relevance by the Guilford Truth and Community Reconciliation Project, which, on the surface, has little connection with what's going on at Guilford College. Perhaps. The number of current or former Guilford students, and others with connections to the Guilford community, who spoke suggest that that's an unfair criticism. So did one of their common themes: that the college, intentionally or through neglect, has failed to provide such a forum on its own.
-- There were a lot of criticisms leveled at the administration tonight. Reporters hate this: Allegations are leveled at a public meeting, near deadline, with little time to try to get any kind of reaction and no time whatever to try to assess the validity of the charges independently. Sometimes people are accurate and sincere; sometimes they're neither. (Full disclosure: Guilford spokesman Ty Buckner and I both attend First Presbyterian Church. He sings in the choir. I, out of an abundance of Christian love for my fellow children of God, do not.) Under those circumstances, we have two choices. Both suck: Report unverified allegations, albeit allegations made by name in a public meeting, or don't tell the public what we saw and heard. I went with Door No. 1. Fortunately, we'll be publishing another edition Thursday, and another Friday, and so on. Also, I hear we have a Web site.
-- One speaker suggested that alcohol -- specifically, underage drinking -- probably played a bigger role in the Jan. 20 fight than has been generally acknowledged.
-- I covered tonight's meeting because I'm covering the GTCRP. I'm not covering the Guilford assault case, although I've pitched in a time or two. Obviously there were some angles tonight that cry out for follow-up. I'll be leaving I've left my recommendations with The Powers That Be before going home tonight. Feel free to add yours, or any other thoughts you have on the meeting, the case, or the larger issues raised by both, in the comments.
UPDATE: I wanted to take the blog owner's prerogative of offering one bit of unsolicited advice. Before I do, I want to make very clear that I did not witness the events at Guilford, have not spoken directly to anyone who did, have not covered that story directly and am not speaking specifically of what happened there when I say the following, which is based on my Scouting experience, my own college experience and a half-dozen years of police reporting as much as anything else:
If you ever see someone hitting someone else in the head with a hard object, it is never a bad idea to call 911 first, then any other authority that might be around. For one thing, it gets paramedics there faster should they be needed. For another, it's a lot easier and more pleasant to clear up a misunderstanding on the spot than to try to jump-start a criminal investigation well after the event.
Just sayin'.
Comments (10)
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Enough is enough. This Guilford College lite fight has about as much importance as Groundhog Day. Meetings, meetings, and the national media have made a campus spat morph into a scene from Armegedon.
The only people who appear to benefit are those who love to prattle about hate crimes or how it's so difficult to be a "person of color."
If you want to see a fight or a hate crime then go to some of our high schools and you'll witness a few of them yourself.
Posted on February 7, 2007 6:51 AM
I think it's very important, given the amount of time that has elapsed between the sad event and today, that some formal resolution or comment come forward; and maybe it should begin with Guilford College. Lex, I think you did a nice job in chronicling the time frame and events. Until some formal/official response, adjudication, summary or the like is forth coming, the community at large will not only remain unsettled but all kinds of speculation, rumors, accusations etc. will continue to be irresponsibly and inaccurately disseminated. I respect the desire to be complete and fair but I don't think that time is an ally any more.
Posted on February 7, 2007 12:00 PM
Thanks, Joe. (I can't recall if Joe has commented here before, but readers should know he's my next-door neighbor.) To the extent I've chronicled the time frame and events, I've relied on the work of colleagues, particularly Joe Killian, who have spent much more time on this than I. Any mistakes are mine.
Posted on February 7, 2007 12:16 PM
Lex, your last point is on the mark. And this is what puzzles me. Someone stands up in a meeting alleging that all kinds of violence has occurred on campus, including a sexual assault in the last year, and nothing was ever reported. So, who stopped the victims of these crimes from calling 911?
Posted on February 7, 2007 1:08 PM
Doug, ideally, some Guilford folks will show up to answer you directly. A couple of folks last night said that the college's culture -- and I'm paraphrasing -- strongly encourages people to call security first. Whether that's (morally/practically) right or wrong, it's common at colleges and universities. It certainly was the case at Davidson when I attended, and seemed to be at Chapel Hill during my frequent visits.
What happens beyond that, I have no idea. Perhaps Jason's story for Thursday will enlighten us.
Posted on February 7, 2007 1:18 PM
I think the reason for the Palestinian students not calling 911 includes the college culture - which, like Lex said, is not unique to Guilford at all - as well as the culture in which they were raised. Middle East politics aside, it makes sense that calling on law enforcement officials would not have been the first action on their minds. Not to mention the fact that their brains were more than a little bit addled, to say the least, in the aftermath of being beaten severely. It turns out that calling 911 would have been the best course of action in this case, but given the Guilford College culture combined with the Palestinian culture/history/present, I'm not sure we should be surprised or blame these guys for not immediately thinking to call 911 (or for not knowing the difference between going to the magistrate's office as opposed to the police department to file their reports, for that matter).
Posted on February 7, 2007 9:43 PM
Jill, I'm thinking more about the allegation that a sexual assault occurred on campus within the past year and was basically covered up. Why would the victim leave it to college authorities to decide whether to call the police? Is this culture of silence so strong that students who otherwise have a reputation for being independent-minded will submit to it, even when it involves their personal safety? Is this culture enforced by coercion and intimidation? Sounds like they're running a concentration camp out there.
Posted on February 8, 2007 9:28 AM
Joe, not to speak for Jill or speak about Guilford specifically, but a lot of sexual assaults go unreported. In the college-age population, where you often find disproportionately common incidences of binge drinking among both sexes, the questions of consent, and therefore of numbers and reporting, become even harder to answer.
And as I said earlier, this isn't unique to Guilford, even if some members of the Guilford community who spoke the other night sounded a little as if they believe it is. (And although those folks certainly can speak for themselves, I'd be much more likely to attribute that to having to speak off the top of one's head with a lot of TV cameras in the room than to any sincere belief that Guilford is singularly bad in this regard.)
I've saved enough string on this whole question of reporting to write another blog post, but that'll have to wait a bit.
Finally, to clarify my advice above about calling 911: That advice was intended primarily for witnesses. Victims in such cases obviously have more immediate and pressing concerns.
Posted on February 8, 2007 1:38 PM
Granted, many crimes are never reported. The issue here is the allegation, as I interpret it, that the reporting of crime is somehow suppressed by GC authorities.
Posted on February 8, 2007 2:47 PM
I didn't take it quite as you did, but given the general vagueness of what the speakers said -- and some of them said at the time that they couldn't be more specific -- there certainly is room for a variety of interpretations.
Posted on February 8, 2007 10:36 PM