The folks that run SHIFT sure know how to get people talking.
Last week, your diligent Forum columnists managed to stir up 12 online comments on seven columns. A story about an event that Secular Humanists for Inquiry and Free Thought put together drew 10 comments in 48 hours. And all they had to do was paint the Rock white.
Most of you probably remember SHIFT as the group that drew chalk depictions of the founder of Islam – a collection of stick figures that dotted sidewalks on campus and launched a hail of controversy. The Daily went through ink by the gallon to cover the fallout, which included more letters to the editor than I care to count. SHIFT itself had a serious talk with President Morton Schapiro, and it might not be pure coincidence that NU welcomed its first Muslim chaplain this quarter.
At the time I sat back and watched my friend Geoff Minger, the vice president of SHIFT, as he scurried around the campus fighting fires on the club’s behalf. There were meetings to attend and reporters to talk to and a University president telling him that his club had made “a mistake.” I never really talked to Geoff about the whole mess because I figured he had his hands full. Plus I have a healthy affection for religion-and a dog-eared secondhand Bible which I’ve been reading from cover-to-cover on my dresser – so I figured Geoff and I probably wouldn’t see eye to eye on this one.
But if the chalking incident was an obvious lightening rod for controversy, the event SHIFT held in honor of “Blasphemy Rights Day” seemed about as controversial as a sorority philanthropy.
SHIFT painted the Rock. They didn’t write slogans, or draw any prophets. They didn’t even use funny colors. Geoff and the rest of the club painted the Rock white and let people write whatever they wanted.
I looked at over a hundred pictures of the result. It was pretty much what you’d expect-a mixture of pop culture references, inside jokes, lewd drawings and socio-political grandstanding – a sort of bathroom wall with a philosophical bent. The Daily was being correct, if not entirely pertinent, when they quoted Geoff as saying that the Rock displayed “quite a few wieners.”
So I understood why Geoff seemed a bit surprised by The Daily’s coverage that discussed the potentially “offensive” nature of the event, and the Internet comments that railed against SHIFT for “poor taste.” Most of what was written was harmless, but even when it wasn’t, it’s hard to figure how SHIFT was responsible. Geoff didn’t do anything to motivate undergrads to canvas our semi-famous boulder with potty talk. For that, we can thank the student body.
In fact, I think that most of the controversy that seems to follow SHIFT is created by the community, rather than the people in the club. We’re the ones that turn stick figures and white rocks into controversy, because we want to shout and argue about issues like free speech in a religious world and open discourse within diverse groups. And with the help of the Internet-or SHIFT’s Sharpie markers-we’ve been able to do it from behind a cloak of anonymity.
It’s starting those discussions that takes courage. It forces the ones who start them-people like those in SHIFT-to stand up to accusations that they’re rabble-rousers, atheistic zealots, mean-spirited attention seekers. We get to dismiss them as closed-minded when we don’t agree with them, and let them take the heat when we do.
The level of outrage has less do with SHIFT’s behavior than our own anxieties over freedom, security, diversity and identity. Find the pictures of the Rock on Facebook, or read the online comments in the wake of the chalking affair-you’ll see anonymous insults and hateful polemics from every side of the ideological spectrum. SHIFT doesn’t have to do much to draw out that ugliness. They draw a stick figure, or hand us a Sharpie. We provide the controversy.
There are real anxieties which push people toward anonymous obscenity and anger, and people like Geoff and his club provide outlets for those fears. That process can be ugly. But don’t blame SHIFT when their actions touch off a backlash of uninformed and loosely-directed anger. Sometimes it feels like SHIFT are the only ones involved who haven’t lost their heads.
Me and Geoff don’t have much common ground on some issues, especially where faith is concerned. If he’d asked me whether he should have chalked a depiction of Muhammad, I’d have told him to stay home – mostly for his own sake. But don’t blame SHIFT for the anger, meanness and directionless vulgarity that seem to boil up around their events.
SHIFT gave the campus a plain white Rock. If their event became offensive, it’s because of what we stopped to add to it.
Mike Carson is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
