Protesters Without Borders
News of the recent alleged anti-Asian incident on campus has now reached Berkeley, and students are urging their peers to e-mail Mary Sue Coleman or sign an online petition, in a call for action that describes A2 as “a cleaner Berkeley.”
Not everyone is quite on board. “You realize that we’re at Berkeley, right? Asking for protest statements from students 2000 miles away seems a bit disengenuous [sic]. Obviously, this was a disturbing event and the people responsible should be appropriately punished, chastised, and ostracized… but, uh, what’s this have to do with us?” one perplexed Cal student asks. Imagine if we Ann Arborites were shortsighted enough to dwell on these kind of minor geographical details — the country would be embroiled in a disastrous war with Iraq for lack of a council resolution to stop it.
Oh, hell. Here come the whiners and the Thought Police again. Peeing on someone is definitely not nice, but a felony and a big media story it is not.
posted by Dave on September 30th, 2005 at 9:56 amBless you, AAIO, for not allowing responders to represent themselves with creepy little pictures and animated gifs.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on September 30th, 2005 at 10:22 amI’ll second that emoticon.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on September 30th, 2005 at 10:47 amIt’s not clear whether it was pee, beer, or soapy water at this point, but I agree, not nice. If the thrower was just being “absent-minded” or being a regular jerk, it would be one thing, but if the intent of the thrower was to ethnically intimidate the couple, then it’s another can of worms.
posted by JCP2 on September 30th, 2005 at 2:37 pmBTW, I love the title of this post.
posted by Anna on September 30th, 2005 at 3:00 pmIt’s hard to determine the ethnic intent of a flying liquid unless the guy was wearing a swastika or shouting “seig heil”.
It’s also notable that the alleged urine stream is commonly being interpreted as a racial hate crime rather than an assault or a sexual assualt.
Is R. Kelley charged with a hate crime? Was it sexual in Dave Chapelle’s sketch about R. Kelley? Is there a blue dress with genetic material?
posted by A Different Jon on September 30th, 2005 at 5:16 pmAlso, what is “beer pong”? Is that like a beer fight?
posted by A Different Jon on September 30th, 2005 at 5:19 pmyeah, because clearly causation stops at a 100-mile radius. what’s going on far far away has nothing to do with what’s going on here, at all.
posted by Jonas on September 30th, 2005 at 5:39 pmBeer pong = Beirut
posted by Carolyn on September 30th, 2005 at 6:55 pmAnd it starts VERY early in the morning around here. Like, way before normal people are even awake.
and beirut is … ?
posted by peter honeyman on October 1st, 2005 at 8:53 amNot saying that it actually happened, but what if the flying liquid was accompanied by various words such as “jap”, “chink”, “nip”, “chinaman”, etc.
posted by JCP2 on October 1st, 2005 at 9:00 amI might be stating the obvious here, but my take was that one of the charges being sought was “indecent exposure”. There was no sexual assault listed. If charged with indecent exposure, the offender would be registered on the State Sexual Offenders list. So young. So stupid. Great way to ruin your career. Nothing like spending mom and dad’s money to go to school, only to flush any hopes of landing a job after graduating when an employer does a background check. Drink up!
Blog on,
posted by Sam on October 1st, 2005 at 9:28 amSam
I don’t subscribe to the “the infraction is worse if the person doing didn’t like your race/skin color/country of origin/ethnic group” school of legal theory. Barring an accident, I think anyone who takes a piss on you doesn’t like you much, regardless, and his motive for doing it is not so important. Not to mention, these types of “thought crime” add-ons to already punishable offenses generally act as a one-way street. No one would spazz out and fling felony offenses around and make a regional news story out of it if I were called a honky/cracker/dirty Greek bastard and peed upon. So, I’d just focus on the actual act involved — that is the real punishable offense. The law cannot and should not be used in a vain effort to change people’s thoughts and attitudes. The inevitable result is tyranny. Damn, am I only the one who read 1984?
All right, I’m sounding way too serious now. Time for me to go take a piss off of my balcony… onto those damn squirrels!
posted by Dave on October 1st, 2005 at 10:19 amP.S. And I agree with Sam — to an extent, we expect college students, perhaps living away from mom and dad for the first time, to act up. But you have to be a special kind of idiot in this day and age to attend one of the most politically correct campuses in the country and sling racial slurs (and beer/urine/drool/whatever it was) at people. Not that it would be nice anywhere, but that certainly shows an appalling lack of judgment that makes you wonder how such a person even got into college in the first place.
posted by Dave on October 1st, 2005 at 10:26 amAre you implying that motive and intent should be separated from the results of actions and not considered in determining the appropriate punishment? And as for laws influencing thoughts and attitudes, I thought that was already implicit that they do. Certainly seat belt use is up now compared to several years ago, largely due to mandatory seat belt laws.
posted by JCP2 on October 2nd, 2005 at 8:38 amIntent is important, of course, but I don’t think it makes a bit of difference, legally speaking, why someone pees on someone else. And don’t get me started on seat belt laws.
posted by Dave on October 2nd, 2005 at 1:05 pmi don’t have any claim on the truth, here, but it is certainly plausible that no one peed on anyone.
witnesses other than the victims report that the accused recklessly tossed an empty beer can off a balcony, which landed too close to an unfortunate couple walking past, and this led to that (where “that” includes an e-mail from president coleman reiterating her expectation that i will help to create an inclusive community that is welcoming and respectful of all its members, but if we’re going to leave out tipsy underage undergrads tossing empty beer cans off the balcony on a thursday night, then we’re not going to have a lot left to include).
posted by peter honeyman on October 2nd, 2005 at 2:53 pmHmm so if you have no claim to the truth, then why post your opinion on what you think might have happened? Rushing to judgment as to whether or not anything happened without having been there is only purely speculative. There are questions going both ways in this story, and maybe justice will sort it out (but probably not, knowing our legal system).
As for peeing or whatever, even if it was just beer but the accusers were correct on the other parts of the story, then the accusations amount to throwing beer + yelling racial slurs. This is still pretty bad. If the racial slurs weren’t part of the accusations, then the peeing wouldn’t be construed as a “hate crime”. I don’t think peeing itself would be classified as a racial incident.
posted by Tom on October 3rd, 2005 at 2:57 amtom,
do you have trouble with the english language? (god am i in trouble if tom is korean!) if you review what i wrote, i did not state an opinion as to what happened. i stand guilty of speculating, AS DO YOU.
posted by peter honeyman on October 3rd, 2005 at 9:20 amHave to run off to another work week, so I’m feeling pissy.
* The email to Berkeley is an attempt to extend the Code of Non-Academic Conduct to students at other universities. Of course, these would only be elite univerities. We wouldn’t want to associate with the University of Montana or EMU or WCC.
* The first question I am asked at all of my job interviews is “Ann Arbor? Isn’t that where they have Hash Bash?” Piss should join the list of interview questions. Be prepared to comment on these items:
- Hash Bash
posted by A Different Jon on October 3rd, 2005 at 10:01 am- Time Machine
- Kona Matrix
- Nude Mile
- Baskeball riots
- DOD contracts to Carlos Castenada afficianados
- Acting like you’re Sherlock Holmes or Sigmund Freud
- Throwing clam at predatory rockstars who think they are Sherlock Holmes or Sigmund Freud
I stand guilty of omitting the crucial interiew item. The day that the streets of Ann Arbor run Maize with urine on Sword Fight Day!
posted by A Different Jon on October 3rd, 2005 at 10:07 am….and Greenlighting….
posted by A Different Jon on October 3rd, 2005 at 10:53 ampeter: i never speculated as to whether or not anything happened, in fact i stated “There are questions going both ways in this story, and maybe justice will sort it out (but probably not, knowing our legal system)”. perhaps it is you who needs to learn english. your post didnt add much to the previous ones, esp given that the 9/26 daily article linked above gives pretty much the same speculation you stated so i didnt see a reason to reiterate that it’s possible it didnt happen.
and no i’m not korean, i’m just someone who has been reading these articles and finding it disturbing that people here are focusing on the piss part (which is really bad) rather than the alleged racial statements (which is what made it a racial statement). if it were just a pissing incident, it wouldnt be the first time it has happened in ann arbor i bet and you wouldnt see people protesting. it’s the combination of that and racial slurs that makes it bigger.
posted by tom on October 3rd, 2005 at 11:49 amHow is this thing playing out? At the last post there were 3 unlikely and — I guess I should explicitly state — bad possibilities:
1.) a drunk guy pissing on people and shouting racism from his own balcony
2.) people accusing a drunk guy of pissing on people and shouting racism from his own balcony if it didn’t happen
3.) a drunk guy’s neighbors covering for him pissing on people and shouting racism if it did happen
What’s happened since? Have the Drake’s Five returned? Are there reports of people in yellow sheets burning crosses?
posted by A Different Jon on October 24th, 2005 at 4:18 am