By Dylan Lightfoot
Time for a reality check: James Ramsey is a professionaladministrator, chosen for his position by the Board of Trustees,and currently saddled with the task of operating a hugebureaucratic institution during a budget crisis. He is not anelected representative, bound to take students’ demands, howeverjustified, as marching orders. Regardless of his personal feelings,Ramsey cannot banish the Ku Klux Klan from a public institution orcancel the WHAS contract at the behest of irate students. Anyaction he takes will be guided by his sense of official propriety,the law and his bottom line. He will do as his lawyers advise.
Students and faculty want Ramsey to take a stand against thepresence of hate groups, thus making a win-win situation: eitherthe Klan backs down, or they sue for their patch of grass while theUniversity of Louisville claims the moral high-ground for fightingthe good fight. This is an excellent idea.
But the precedent of Virginia v Black seems to preclude thepossibility of winning any court case: as long as they don’t burncrosses, the Klan can say what they please while Department ofPublic Safety officers babysit them. Moral brownie points wouldhardly be worth U of L losing an expensive and nationallypublicized First Amendment lawsuit against the Klan. Right orwrong, the platitude the administration embraces is thatindividuals, not institutions, take moral stands ñ therewill be no day in court.
As for the WHAS contract, the best that can be hoped for is thatU of L will opt not to renew it. Acting Provost Shirley Willihnganzhas stated that the contract had already been under someunspecified scrutiny prior to the students’ demands. If thecontract is killed, all the protesters can claim is that theyhelped nail the lid on the coffin. If Francene loses her job, itwill be because she is a broadcaster devoid of personality or massappeal, not because a coalition of student organizations wanted herfired.
In short, the whole sordid drama, from the Bank One T-shirt giveaway to the televised march on Ramsey’s office, will come tonothing. Yes, there will be meetings and forums, talk of diversityand debates about free speech. We will see greater efforts at”education and awareness.” Self-styled activists will stage moreprotests duly noted by a hog-tied administration with an $11million hole in its budget. But in the end, U of L will still be asecond-rate commuter school preoccupied with race, and only thetruly clueless will be surprised.
The glaring absurdity in all this is that two semi-literatebigots, one aging and blind, have caused all this hysteria withoutlifting a finger. Or was it Francene’s fault? Or was it WHAS’ forgiving her air time? Of course, Brian Yates and the Cardinal arepartly responsible, and some blame must also fall on the two kidswho confessed to the racist flier prank. If any culpability is leftafter these, we should let the protest leaders have some, too.
Overstatement is no friend of reason. Likening the Klan to alQaeda is both spurious and unnecessary. The Klan is reprehensibleenough without resorting to hyperbole, and such rhetorical blurringof distinction erodes the credibility of those making demands ofthe President. Al Qaeda is a dangerous and well-funded cadre oftrained terrorists who are happy to die flying hijacked airlinersinto office buildings. They don’t hand out pamphlets on collegecampuses or inform the DPS in advance when they intend to doso.
Histrionic soundbiting by student spokespeople has as much to dowith fear and loathing here than Klan presence, of which there isnext to none. The call for an investigation into “friendlyelements” on campus making hate groups feel welcome sounds like awitch hunt and would do about as much good as one. Throwing theword “terrorists” around is plain irresponsible these days; thistype of language is pure knee-jerk sensationalism. True, the Klanhas a violent history, but organized terror hasn’t been their bagfor some time. Judging from the past few years, black students havemore to fear from the Louisville Police Department.
It’s shameful for intelligent, college-educated people to letignorant has-beens live rent-free in their heads. Make no mistake:those among us who have sensationalized this thing out of allproportion are just as responsible for frightened students droppingclasses as any kiosk vandals.
While the administration tries to make a show of paternalconcern and student activists affect all the empty drama they canmuster for the local media, what will actually happen when the Klanshows up? The smart money is on “nothing at all.” Klansman Kennedyand his slack-jawed crony will surely not be ignored. They willdraw a crowd, as Brother Jim did, and eventually the circus willleave town. If students feel the need to organize a unifiedcommunity response to the unwelcome presence of idiots, they canalways just pretend like they aren’t even there.
Dylan Lightfoot is a junior majoring in Psychology and isOpinion Editor for The Louisville Cardinal. Email him at: dlightfoot@louisvillecardinal.com.
