If there's one thing that mama wouldn't put up with--pro'lly 'most any mama in these parts--it's the kids acting a fool in front of guests. It'd be one thing if the boys came in from the backyard, one with a bleeding nose and the other with a loose tooth, after fighting over some silly game. It'd be another if mama had her church group in the living room when the kids came trooping through the door. (And heaven help the kid who let fly with a cuss word at that moment.)
Adults in these latitudes don't like to be embarrassed by the kids. It reflects poorly on the adults.
Maybe we should be more specific: Last weekend, the principal campus of the University of Arkansas System, aka the flagship campus, made international news. And, no, mama would not have been happy.
A group of visitors from Africa, here on a summer fellowship, were staying in the Garland House on the UofA campus. They had to call police the other night--actually, in the wee hours of Sunday morning--because some fool was banging on the door. Apparently whoever it was outside tried to push in a window, did a little physical damage to the screen, and (sigh) started shouting insults at those inside. Racial slurs, as the news stories always put it ever so discreetly and objectively.
The campus police hadn't made an arrest by press time, but they're investigating.
Our visitors are here with the Young African Leaders Initiative and are studying best practices for public management, along with other ways to improve things in their countries. And for this they had to wake up in the middle of the night and call the police on some jackass.
Yes, the State Department had to be notified. A report on the matter appeared in a South African newspaper. The brass at UA lost no time condemning what they called criminal mischief. The fraternity that lives at the Garland House during the regular school year issued a statement saying they better not find out one of theirs was involved, or else banishment could be in the cards for their fraternity brother, or maybe former brother. Even the White House--the one in Washington, D.C.--felt it had to issue a No Comment on the matter.
Well, we've got plenty of comments on the matter, and none of them are complimentary about the goofus or goofuses responsible.
We are so sorry our guests had to see such bad manners on display. And in these latitudes, too, where Southern hospitality used to be a byword. But our visitors will probably not be surprised to know that every country has people who just weren't raised right. Or however they put it in Africa. Surely they, too, have a derogatory phrase for these . . . types.
In short, y'all please accept our apologies. And hurry back. Soon. Give us a chance to make it up to you. Maybe by the time you visit again, the jerk who woke you up in the middle of the night will have been caught. And his mouth washed out with soap.
Oh, Lord, really? The papers say the campus police in Fayetteville are investigating this incident as a . . . hate crime.
It's been a while since we've heard that bit of newspeak, but apparently it's still around. As if the punishment shouldn't fit the crime but depend on the identity of the victim or whether the perp hated his race, creed, color, etc., or just him.
Whoever woke up our visitors the other night, criminal mischief is criminal mischief, whoever it was directed against or why.
Hate crime? Isn't that uncomfortably close to the notion of thoughtcrime? And, like hatecrime, an Orwellian concept that could have come straight out of 1984, the punishment for it shouldn't depend on the ideology of whoever dunnit. Just punish it. Hard.
Instead of trying to be clairvoyant, maybe the campus police at the UofA should just try to enforce the law without fear or favor or pop psychology. Criminal mischief sounds like a good place to start. Let somebody else, and Somebody Else, decide just what politically ideological nonsense is rattling around in the troublemaker's mind and/or heart. If he has either.
Editorial on 07/29/2014