Vandals on Campus

I recently posted this blog on the Washington Witness' site, the conservative newspaper on campus:

Sometime during the night of November 3 and the morning of November 4th, Washington University in St. Louis’ campus was vandalized. As of today, a week and a half later, the vandals have not been caught or punished and as far as I am aware, there is no investigation of the incident.

These vandals pasted fliers over every visible portion of campus. They chalked the sidewalk, they wrote on windows and doors, they whitewashed posters to sides of buildings.

All of this hoopla was done to urge the Wash U. community to go and vote for Barack Obama. While I find the call of civic duty itself laudable, the method was questionable at best. A recent survey had shown that 80% of campus was voting for Obama, so this material was nothing more than self-congratulatory.

The propaganda posted ranged from merely bothersome to offensive. Posters stapled to trees. Soviet-style images of Obama’s face affixed to walls. Hundreds of little “Vote for Change!” leaflets littering the ground. Obama stickers attached to microwaves, tables, chairs. Posters with a vampire Sarah Palin face with the word “Frightening” glued to walls.

Was anything done about this? Of course not. One doesn’t have to wonder what the reaction would be if the “Frightening” signs had been replicated to have pictures of Barack Obama; everyone would have been up-in-arms about the “racism” of the posters. But the “sexist” posters get laughs or indifference. The hypocrisy is absurd.

All the papers and posters and writing on windows might have even been okay had the perpetrators cleaned up after themselves. (They definitely should have recycled, as they claim to love the environment.) As far as I have witnessed, they did not clean up their mess. Maintenance was forced to pick up after them as the Obamamaniacs (friends of the “everyman” as they like to be seen) celebrated the victory. The irony is palpable.

Some might say this is a rant of a bitter conservative, and perhaps that is true. But it is over a week later and there are still 12 “Frightening!” Sarah Palin signs whitewashed to the side of a building, and it’s definitely not maintenance’s job to take care of it. And they probably will remain there until a good Samaritan conservative keys them apart.