Email sent to the UW AAUP Mailing List, 10/30/2021
I sent the following email to the AAUP mailing list at UW:
From reges@cs.washington.edu Sat Oct 30 09:02:12 2021 Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2021 09:02:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Stuart Reges <reges@cs.washington.edu> To: Faculty Issues and Concerns <aaup@u.washington.edu> Subject: reactions to graffiti I was not surprised to hear about graffiti showing up on campus. Young people often do immature things in college. But I found the response to the graffiti informative. On October 12th when I arrived on campus I noticed that the Paul G. Allen building had been spray painted with the phrase "DEATH 2 AMERICA" in extremely large letters. In two other places the phrase "LAND BACK" appeared. The Allen School director mentioned in an email to CSE faculty that she had requested cleaning services, but otherwise there was no particular concern expressed. Fast forward to October 22nd when racist graffiti was discovered in bathrooms in the Allen School and the response was quite different. The Dean of Engineering sent a 300+ word message to the entire college (students, faculty, and staff) saying that she was "deeply troubled" by the incident. The Allen School director sent a follow-up message saying she was "horrified." And then a member of this list suggested that perhaps the incident should be reported to the FBI. Why such a different response? Anarchists can challenge the existing social order with an actual threat of violence and our response is to call cleaning services while immature comments interpreted as racist are so troubling and horrifying that the entire community needs to be warned and we consider bringing in the FBI. There seems to be a double standard at work here. --Stuart Reges, Teaching Professor, Computer Science & Engineering https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~reges/ I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.
I'm not sure why they censored this message. They don't give an explanation. They say, "our decision is that it would be better placed elsewhere." They posted three separate messages about the allegedly racist graffiti but weren't willing to post even one message about the other graffiti incident that I described.
last updated 02/27/2022