the blog quebecois

feelings, wo-o-o feelings
wo-o-o, feelings
again in my arms
feelings . . .

-- morris albert

I was looking through some files on one of my old computers when I came across this. It's by the columnist John Leo and is datestamped June 4, 2000, though the article itself has no date or link.

A clearer example of how feelings trump facts is the recent uproar at Swarthmore College over a mess found in the campus Intercultural Center. On Nov. 8, students said they found excrement and vomit on the floor of the center's large meeting room. Students concluded that the mess was an attempt to divide the campus and lash out at minorities and gays.

By the end of the week, the campus learned that the vomit was real, but the excrement was not -- it was actually chocolate cake with sprinkles. In the real world, this might have slowed the momentum of those who were sure the act was intentional vandalism and hate speech. But at Swarthmore it didn't.

Was the mess the result of drunkenness, a political statement or a stupid prank? Nobody really knew, but on the modern campus, offenses are defined by feelings, not by facts or intentions. College officials termed it an expression of hate, though they didn't explain how this determination was made.

A rally against hate drew some 500 people. Cries of "respect, safety, unity" echoed across the campus. The cake and vomit were described as the work of a "handful of people who are hateful and scared," and as an act that "had the symbolic effect of a hate crime." Speakers effortlessly fell into the language of feelings and the therapeutic culture, talking about how empowered they now felt after feeling so vulnerable and unsafe because of the assault by cake and vomit.

"When you violate that space, you violate me," said one speaker. Another said he had cried all night -- "I was overcome by tears and mucus. ... It wasn't a good cry: It was a bad cry." But because of the rally, he said, he now felt "tears of hope." The director of the Intercultural Center drew tears from the crowd as she spoke haltingly about the painful healing process that she and Swarthmore now face. A list of 10 years' worth of harassing incidents was read. One example was criticism aimed at a student's boyfriend because he wore a dress.

Oh. My. God.