Last week saw the inevitable return of the oh-so-carefully named Genocide Awareness Project (GAP). As I said in a survey about the GAP, run by the group behind it, disgusting pictures aren't going to change anyone's mind. Neither will the antagonistic attitude the tactic of posting them conveys.
Frankly, as I also said in the survey, it's possible that nothing will change people's minds on this issue. All those pictures do is make everyone, whether they are pro-life or pro-choice, lose their lunch. Did they have to put them right in the face of Miller Market?
The first thing I actually noticed about the exhibit was the guardrails that ran around it. An exhibit to the goal of Christian evangelism, something that, like the pro-life movement, is probably a minority viewpoint here on campus, didn't need them when it was here the previous week, nor does the ever-present Lyndon LaRouche political action committee when it's here handing out birdcage liner. So why does this exhibit? The group who invites the GAP is a student group called Western for Life.
Is the point that we must protect ourselves…from ourselves?
There were obviously two possibilities. Either the people behind the GAP wanted the guardrails there, or we, the university, did. If GAP put them there, fine. But if we put them there?
That would mean we know, or think we know that we can't trust ourselves to respectfully deal with something we don't like. Why should we assume this is the case?
We're all adults here, who can rationally deal with things we don't like (or heck, irrationally – I saw a couple of guys don Guy Fawkes masks for no apparent reason and stand on the edge of the fountain to face the GAP – but not violently or anything like that), whether it's by polite discourse with the GAP people, counter-protest, or (the best option) simply ignoring it.
While there have been past instances of vandalism perpetrated against the GAP exhibit, which I hope all of us would decry, that doesn't mean we're the same people here now that may have committed them.
Is it fair to act against all for the actions of a distinct few? I'll be blunt: most of us would like the GAP to go away and never come back. But who among us, except those perhaps already predisposed to destructive behavior, would really act out against person or property, anywhere? Shall we put guardrails around everything?
It also struck me, in an admittedly nerdy sense, as a physical manifestation of our societal unwillingness to move an inch toward one another on this issue. What is it about it that makes us put up our mental guardrails?
When I asked the organizer of the survey, he told me “the university required that [the GAP] put them there.” This disappoints me greatly.
I feel we don't need to be physically restrained from something we find repulsive, so I'm disappointed in whoever greenlit the GAP exhibit. If I'm wrong about that, I'm disappointed in all of us. We should be better than that.
I don't know how I feel about abortion. I wish I did. I do know how I feel about the GAP, but that doesn't affect the status I believe it should have on campus. I'm certain though, that we need to be able to trust ourselves more to behave respectfully in face of that which we don't like.
Maybe some of us need a lesson in this respect, but everyone I saw last week interacting with the exhibit handled themselves well. So why not tear down those walls? It just might start something good.
Mitch Lathen is a Western senior and Spanish major.
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