Two columns, in particular, elicited a firestorm. In "Rethinking the King Holiday,"
Pavlik described the civil rights movement as an assault against property and
individual liberty, and he attacked King's political and personal ethics, seeing
the latter, in particular, as a betrayal of the obligation of Christian clerics to
"set a moral standard as consecrated ministers
of God."23
In "Not as Clear as Black and White," Pavlik attacked what he saw as Penn's
double-standard on matters of race. He claimed that the Onyx Society, an
exclusively black honors organization, had hazed its blindfolded initiates
in the residential Quadrangle at 2:30 A.M. and had thrown eggs at Quad windows.
In response, some residents of the Quad had thrown water at the egg-throwers.
Members of Onyx, Pavlik claimed, now hurled threats, more eggs, and anti-white
slogans at the awakened residents of the Quad. The University, Pavlik charged,
had treated the event as an outrageous act of bigotry against blacks, instead of
punishing the Onyx Society for hazing and for violations of the code of conduct
-- standards to which white fraternities were held. Indeed, the Judicial Office
had punished the water throwers of the Quad, sentencing them to a written apology,
fifteen hours of community service, and residential expulsion. He claimed that when
Quad residents asked the University's chief JIO, Catherine Schifter, whether they
could press charges against members of the Onyx Society for their behavior, she had
replied that "the Onyx Society would find out their identity and things could get
nasty." According to Pavlik, when he phoned Schifter to confirm the facts, she
denied nothing, but she said, "If that shows up in the DP, you're
dead."24
If the goal of having a controversial columnist was to set the campus into debate,
then the DP had succeeded. Pavlik's columns elicited an outpouring of both
substantive criticism and assaults upon his character. The most remarkable
letter, however, appeared in the DP on March 19, signed by "202 African-American
Students and Faculty," with the banner headline: AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
RESPONDS TO PAVLIK. The authors denounced Pavlik as "racist," and they
pronounced "his written attempts to discriminate" intolerable. "Hiding beyond
the delicate laws of freedom of speech" gave him no right "to slander, demean,
harass, and incite violence in those who don't share a Eurocentric upbringing."
The words were carefully chosen, because "harassment" and "demeaning"
individuals on grounds of race constituted violations of Penn's judicial code.
The DP, the 202 signers of the letter declared, was also culpable, because to
publish Pavlik was to accept his design "to demean and discredit": "If the
DP prints it, then we must infer that they agree with, and condone
it."25
Scores of the authors and signatories of the letter knew something that the
campus did not know. On March 2, the JIO, the target of his critical editorial
of February 25, had awakened Greg at 9:00 A.M., by telephone, to inform him that
he was under investigation for thirty-four student-initiated charges of "racial harassment"
by means of his editorial columns. After a week of seeking help, Pavlik found
Kors, who immediately left an urgent message for Sheldon Hackney. Hackney knew
about the charges, and assured Kors that they "aren't going anywhere." Hackney's
name already was in the media as a likely Clinton nominee to head the NEH, and
Kors suggested to him that "if someone is threatened officially at your University
for the expression of views that some find offensive, you will have no credibility
whatsoever. The phone call from the JIO was threatening and chilling." Hackney
agreed, and the next day Pavlik was informed that the case was over. On April 1,
Schifter finally wrote to Pavlik, "to inform you officially that, in light of my
investigation of thirty-four complaints of possible racial harassment against you,
the circumstances do not indicate that there was violation of any policy of the
University. Accordingly, the investigation of the complaints against you is concluded
and subsequently dismissed."26
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9/19/98
