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It was in the midst of such tensions and official hesitations that the water
buffalo case developed. In March 1993, just after the charges against Pavlik
had to be dropped, Hackney wrote a lengthy piece for the University's official
Almanac, explaining that Penn was paying a fearsome price for the fact that "the
Civil Rights movement of the 1960s never completed its task." He described a meeting
in January 1993 with "a group of Penn faculty and staff of color." He was shocked,
he wrote, because he had learned that "students, faculty, and staff members of the
University community still feel frustrated and oppressed by what they experience as
a hostile environment, where demeaning incidents continue to occur--in our classrooms
by faculty, on our campus by public safety officers, and in our residences by fellow
students." He did not specify the incidents--despite requests--but by "in our
residences," they certainly appeared to include the Onyx Society episode discussed
by Pavlik and the Jacobowitz case. Hackney explained what he had ordered his
administration to do:
This is the time to tell all members of our community again, but this time in a
way that must be heard, that we will not tolerate acts that demean students,
faculty, and staff--not in the classroom, not in support offices, not on the campus,
and not in our residences. We will find means to ensure that such acts have
important consequences....Those who believe they can, with impunity, damage important
members of our community have no
place.27
Hackney's letter appeared on March 18. Four days later, Read charged Eden Jacobowitz
with racial harassment. With Pavlik off the hook, Eden was now the only trophy
fish.
*****
Neither Eden nor Kors knew how to bring the water buffalo case to public attention,
but on April 15, Hackney did that himself. On that day, when Pavlik's final column
was going to appear (his topic was the lack of substantive debate at Penn), a group
of black students "confiscated" the DP's full press run, fourteen thousand copies,
from campus distribution points. When DP distributors and staff who tried to prevent
the confiscation were threatened and reviled with racial epithets, they complained to
Robin Read, who did not pursue any case of violence, threat, or abuse, let alone of
racial harassment, by blacks against the DP
staff.28 The national
media, however, always notice the unpunished silencing of the press, and they asked
the University if and when charges might be brought against the individuals
responsible for suppressing the DP. Penn responded that these would come in due
time. In fact, however, not one of the students charged with the theft was
punished. Indeed, the only person penalized was a University Museum officer who
had attempted to stop individuals from running, a trash bag in hand, from a
security-conscious museum. He was suspended from his job for overreaction and
for a failure to intuit a larger, "political"
protest.29
The Penn administration's equivocal response to the DP theft caught the national
eye. Associate Vice-Provost Moneta, on April 16, explained that "both the behavior
and the grounds for the behavior are among the most serious issues the University
can face."30 [emphasis added] Hackney issued a statement on the
confiscation, reaffirming the right of the DP to express its views, but noting that
the theft had been "precipitated by the pain and anger that many members of the
minority community have felt in response to the DP's exercise of its First Amendment
rights to freedom of the press." In Hackney's assessment: "This is an instance in
which two groups important to the University community, valued members of Penn's
minority community and students exercising their rights to freedom of expression,
and two important University values, diversity and open expression, seem to be in
conflict." By the conclusion of his statement, Hackney had dropped the word "seem":
"As I indicated above, two important University values now stand in conflict...the
First Amendment right of an independent publication...[and] a comfortable and
permanent minority presence in a diverse and civil University
community."31 By
comparison, Hackney's sense of "conflict" had been quite different on the day
after the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981, when a left-wing DP
editorial columnist, Dominic Manno, wrote: "Too bad he missed...I hope [ Reagan]
dies." As the Secret Service descended upon Penn and the media focused on the
editorial column, Hackney issued a statement to the press on Thursday, April 2.
He noted, unambiguously, that freedom of expression at Penn was categorical: "He
has a right in our society, and especially on a university campus, to speak his
mind, no matter how abhorrent his
ideas."32
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shadowu@world.std.com
9/19/98
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