Mike Cahill

21

Author: 

Dear Editor,

I want to preface the main points of my article with a personal story, intended only to give some perspective on vandalism in the area around Oxy. It’s a common problem. Two weeks ago my girlfriend’s rear window was broken in. Her car was parked one block from Occidental. My girlfriend is not Charm Baker. My girlfriend currently lives here without a working visa, and has to manage a tight budget before she can return to Germany and enroll in college. She is not an Oxy student. Despite her affiliation with the school, participating in a trip to New Orleans, and auditing classes on campus, she made no request for assistance from Oxy. Let me emphasize, it was not for a lack of financial need. She had to pay for the window herself. She did, shit happens.

I want to say how disappointed I am with this administration for accommodating Charm simply because the school’s reputation would suffer from her claim that this was a racist hate crime. If Charm had not made these claims, the school would not have paid for her window. I find the actions of this administration highly questionable. Windows are constantly broken and if it happens off campus, or even on campus, it is not the schools responsibility to pay for the damages. The school does not reimburse vehi-cle owners whose cars are damaged from stray softballs, and that should also apply to golf clubs, if indeed that is how the damage was inflicted. One professor I know well has had to replace her hood as a result of softball damage. When she asked the school for financial assistance, she was denied. Did the administration pay for Charm’s window to quiet her (as of yet) unsubstantiated claims of racism? If not, then why do the rules ap-ply differently to Charm than they do to everyone else? (She has since stated that she had never claimed the incident was based on race, but pictures of signs she placed on her car state that this was an “Oxy hate crime” and challenge Oxy’s “idea of diversity.”)

I do not blame Charm for attempting to have the school replace her window. It sucks to pay for someone else’s senseless behavior, and it would be nice if a multimil-lion dollar institution could help out. However, I do blame her for prematurely making the incident an issue of race, and, in doing so, pressuring school officials to act lest the in-stitution suffer from bad press. There are important (and real) issues of race that de-serve our attention. Everyone knows that there is a debate over race issues at Oxy right now. The Mikado, Pauley Hall, and increasing black student enrollment are hot button issues, and on the tip of everyone’s tongues. I for one am glad of it, we should talk about things that are important. What Charm did in the quad was destructive to that discus-sion, and in my opinion, she used our increased awareness of issues of race to her own personal ends. After being paid, Charm changed her story. We cannot quantify the damage Charm has inflicted on our school from her accusations of racism, but it has cost us more than one rear window. I hope that the school will be reimbursed by Charm, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the students of Oxy, the community she accused of racism in the quad, who are footing her bill with their tuition money. I don’t know who broke Charm’s window, but I do know what happened in the quad.

-Mike Cahill, junior, Politics

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