Column:

Cotton ball incident should not be swept under rug

By Ryan Beck

Published March 16, 2010

Just more than three weeks have passed since the "cotton ball incident" appeared in headlines. Now that initial reactions have cooled and the facts are breaching the surface, I feel it is necessary for the student body to make a collective stance on this issue. I ask all of you to hear me and join me in my position.

What happened was a disgusting act of ignorance, and the perpetrators should be and will be punished, but the extent of punishment is central to the many issues. For MU to completely cut ties with the accused is wrong. Both men have been enrolled at MU long enough that to write them off as bad apples is irresponsible. These men do need to change, but something else needs to change as well. MU is not directly responsible for any one student's actions, but when it comes to racial insensitivity and acts that walk the line of being hate crimes, something internal needs to be done.

A simple apology cannot change what happened that night; expelling the accused won't change it either. To truly prevent things like this from happening again, the university needs to mandate a class that deals directly with race relations in America. General education requires American history courses, but surveys of American history are bogged down with historical figures and dates and lack the intellectual critical application that is needed to ensure everyone attending MU understands actions in reference to other races and cultures, as well as their own.

After some research in the MU Archives, you will find parts of this campus were built and maintained by the hands of enslaved people. What's happened in this nation and around the world is irreversible. To combat the acts at the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center with anger is wrong. Initially, I wanted to throw the book at the accused because of how ignorant and stupid those acts are. But after contemplating this action in the grand scheme of things, I could only feel pity and shame. It is more of a challenge to forgive and educate people of small minds than to blindly punish and ignore them.

To cast off this hatred to a dark corner of life will only sew a seed that grows without light. We cannot ignore these acts, we cannot expel the accused and we cannot take proper action without changing the entire system. To expel the accused will only perpetuate their ignorance and further their small-minded misconceptions on the proper way to carry oneself as a member of MU, the U.S. and the human race.

To prevent further actions like this, education must be put to the forefront to ensure that ignorance is no longer an excuse for such acts. An apology is needed, and a punishment must be handed out, but neither of those things can reverse what has already happened. The accused need to be educated and rehabilitated in order to rejoin the ranks of the competent. Many people, mostly white people, have tried to write this act off as "not a big deal," but I urge you to do your research and understand the implications of even a tiny cotton ball. The actions of the past, the accounts of slave narratives like Douglass, the gripping tales of women like Sojourner Truth, all echo in the wake of what happened at the BCC.

Our nation cannot take away the past, MU cannot change what happened, but we can put the best foot forward to ensure that "For All We Call Mizzou" is something every person can believe in.