This week marks two months since the Tufts community received an e-mail with the subject, "Safety alert: suspicious person reported with a handgun." Generally, campus reaction came in stages: shock, then humor — certainly I wasn't the only one to chuckle at the absurdity of the mix-up between a ratchet wrench and the supposed gun — followed by the rapid deployment of wrench/gun posters, then other posters which reacted to the first round of posters. By some accounts, there was even third round of posters plastered around campus, reacting to reactive posters themselves. For many, these posters had a sobering effect: Suddenly the ludicrous, if not comical, scenario of assuming a black man was handling a gun turned into a pointed critique of the reality of race on campus. Without a doubt, the incident got people talking, and the provocative posters helped to this end. The students who put them up deserve to be commended for bringing the conversation beyond e-mails and articles to a public space impossible to miss. Yet perhaps most frustrating of the wrench/gun incident is how quickly it faded from the campus consciousness. Two months later, is anyone thinking about the fallout?
From Facebook statuses to a run of news articles and op-eds that filled the pages of the Tufts Daily nearly every day for a week, "Wrenchgate," as named by an op-ed contributor, senior Gregory Beach, was a big deal. For many, it was the wake-up call we needed to look at the issue of race at Tufts dead-on and publicly. For others, it was just the latest bias-free incident blown out of proportion. Both voices deserved a place at the table, and both deserved to be heard. I appreciate the Daily for publishing relatively balanced op-eds and was excited to see how the campus would grow as a result of this. It seemed that we had the perfect example of "good speech" in action: the idea that speech and media can be used to elevate campus discussion and result in meaningful exchanges without low, personal blows. For the first time in a long time it seemed that students outside of the American Studies program and the Group of Six were presented with an issue of race at Tufts that they couldn't ignore. Better yet, we were doing it in a civil, respectful way. It was a moment of light on the Hill.
Unfortunately, the honeymoon was short-lived. We must sadly recognize that the potential positive discourse from Wrenchgate was born with an expiration date, as with previous bias-related events at Tufts. In recent memory, the spring 2009 Korean Students Association incident and the Tufts Community Union referendum on Community Representatives last spring (whose implementation remains in seemingly indefinite TCU Senate limbo, despite last semester's re-vote) come to mind as examples.
First, an event takes place late in the semester, followed by a brief flurry of reaction and activity. The string of end-of-semester obligations and papers creates a pressure-cooker environment where students could use a distraction from their work and an outlet for their general frustrations. For many students of color these issues are compounded by constant awareness of their minority status and perceptions of subtle, daily discrimination that takes place even at a place like Tufts. By the end of the semester, the campus is ripe to be worked up by an event like Wrenchgate. Within a few days, however, the academic challenges of the end of the semester have a stifling, chilling effect on campus conversation. Even the most passionate students on the issue at hand must stop in their tracks to devote time to studying — after all, we are paying an absurd amount to take these exams. With the gun/wrench mix-up taking place a week and a half before finals last semester, there was only a small window before Tufts students had to put the nose to the grindstone and abandon non-academic pursuits. By the time the Daily stopped publishing and finals started, the book might as well have been closed. There has yet to be a single Daily op-ed regarding Wrenchgate this semester.
This article is a call to fight this post-break complacency. We must get beyond letting finals schedules dictate what matters to us and for how long it does so. I too am guilty of this — this article should have come out in December, and I apologize to the readership for that. But like so many of us, finals followed by winter break plans took our focus away from the incredible potential of that moment two months ago. We had the momentum and inertia to face and publically discuss an issue that is all too frequently pushed to the margins. In our attempts to smooth over the less-than-perfect attributes of Tufts by ignoring them, we stifle the very conversations and interactions that would make them better. Indeed, we deceive ourselves into believing our future is disconnected from our past. Now is our time to turn over a new leaf. We must continue to express the frustrations, angers and opinions inspired by a pair of police reports last semester. Clearly this isn't just about the police reports anymore.
My fear is that like in the past, the event will simply be swept under the rug without any significant or meaningful conversation. We'll march on like nothing happened, simply setting the stage for another outburst. Those hurt or frustrated will continue to harbor grudges, while their counterparts will never have had the opportunity to hear them out fully. No side will feel understood, lapsing again into silence and frustration. The public editor position was created, I believe, to see media conversations through to progress and understanding, not just equal-opportunity soapboxing. Wrenchgate has offered Tufts an opportunity to do something, and we need to seize that opportunity. Let's not fool ourselves into believing that the event is firmly in the past. Without a doubt it has stayed alive but become invisible. Events like Wrenchgate provide critical periods of cross-campus interest, and we must capitalize on this chance to shake up the status quo. If you're wondering how we can change things at Tufts, media can play a critical role. Don't stop the conversation. Don't bottle your frustration up. Don't be afraid to publish your view.
Stay angry … because this still matters.
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Jacob Kreimer is a senior majoring in political science. He is this year's public editor.
