A rock and a hard place

Alright, I'm doing it. I've been going back and forth about this for a couple of days, but I feel that if I don't blog about this, I'm going to continue this feeling of needing to blog about something. A couple of days ago, someone at Stonehill decided to draw a significant part of the male reproductive system on a rock near our Dining Commons. Now I'm not condoning this. Despite my appreciation for/inherent use of childish humor, it has to be in the right context (which this, clearly, was not). But it's pretty understood (I hope) that drawing stuff on other stuff that shouldn't be drawn is a bad thing. What I'd like to talk about is the response by the Stonehill student body following the incident.

And before I start, let me again say that I'm not advocating bias, or conflict, or whatever you wanna call this. I'm advocating Newton's Third Law of Motion, which goes something like, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." And I'm going to come out and say that I'm not so sure everyone reacted in an equal way. Students put wooden boards in front of the rock, "reclaiming it as a symbol of peace," and encouraging others to "never be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation," and that we "must always take sides." Those last two quotes are taken from Elie Wiesel, author of the book Night.

I want to say a couple of things about this. First off, I'd like to know who sees this act as one of humiliation, aggression, and sexual violence. The people who brought this to someone's attention either thought they were being humiliated, or simply that this wasn't something that we should have on a rock. I'm betting on the latter, but if someone feels otherwise, please let me know, because I just don't see it.

Secondly, a symbol of peace? It's a rock. I know it says "Be free to be you" on it, but that doesn't make it not a rock. If the rock truly is a symbol of peace, then it's the second time I've heard of a rock being more than a rock.

And lastly, I don't think we need to rebuild Stonehill. Stonehill's atmosphere and community is the reason I came here, the reason I've absolutely loved my first three-plus semesters, and the reason I never want to leave this place. I think that this reaction was over-the-top and disproportionate to the incident that sparked it. Maybe I'm not seeing the initial incident as seriously as everyone else is, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable.