Meltdown at Middlebury

The Kampus Kraziness is getting so extreme that it’s become a full time job just keeping up with all the stories that tumble out on an almost hourly basis, let alone writing it up for Power Line readers. It’s not a matter of running out of events to cover. If I worked 24/7 on these stories, I’d still need a staff to cover everything that ought to be covered.

So today’s installment will be limited to Middlebury College in Vermont, scene of the riot and assault on Charles Murray last spring, where earlier this week someone vandalized the campus with grafitti about what a racist place Middlebury is.

The Middlebury community woke up to widespread vandalism last Saturday, Oct. 14, after an unknown individual(s) spray-painted condemnations of the college at eight locations on campus.

One of the more notable examples occurred at Mead Chapel, where the word “racist” was spelled out across the six pillars at the building’s entrance. Outside Old Chapel, where the offices of senior college administrators are located, the vandal(s) spray-painted the word “shame” and a sad face. The phrase “F-ck Middlebury” was found spray-painted on the lawn in front Hepburn Hall, and “I Hate Midd [sad face]” was found outside the college bookstore.

Needless to say, it’s hard to find a place more politically-correct and uber-sensitive than Middlebury, which not only punished no one in the aftermath of the Murray assault, but also recently announced that “controversial” (meaning conservative) speakers could be banned from campus if such speakers posed a threat to order on the campus. In other words, Middlebury’s cowardly administration has surrendered to the heckler’s veto.

Thus the best part of the story is the self-abasement of the university in reaction to this criminal vandalism:

“The graffiti that was left, presumably, by members of our community on various buildings and public spaces this past weekend sends a clear and important message: We, as a community, have not done a good enough job in making people who feel marginalized and excluded welcome at Middlebury,” said Kyle Wright ’19.5, who co-chairs the Community Council.

“That is a fact that we must collectively reckon with. This consideration of our shortcomings should be the primary focus in moving forward from this instance of vandalism.”

There’s lots more of this kind of thing in the story, but this is the most delicious passage:

Regarding the graffiti, Wright said it is important to note the burden it places on other members of the college community.

“This graffiti does not affect our college administration in the way it does members of Facilities Services, for example, who are the staff responsible for cleaning graffiti off of our buildings,” Wright said.

Indeed, it impacts those groups very inequitably, which I’m sure was not among the intentions of the community members who performed the graffiti.

According to Burger, fourteen members of the facilities staff cleaned the graffiti from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. Additional work had to be done on Monday. Four members of the facilities staff came in to work despite it being their day off.

The “Facilities Services” staff are undoubtedly hourly-wage working class people without degrees from anywhere. How much do you want to bet that many—maybe most—of them are immigrants/”people of color”? Maybe some of them liked the opportunity to get some overtime pay, but it is interesting that none of the media reports asked any of them for their thoughts about the “community members” who conduct such vandalism. There’s some condescending racism right there. But who needs to ask them, since college liberals speak for them, as we know.

All it will take for campuses to blow themselves up completely will be one lit match from Trump, who sooner or later will likely say that the swamp of college administrations needs to be drained next. Not to worry: I hear the NFL is hiring.

P.S. Middlebury tuition/room & board: $67,000. Maybe it is time to launch consumer fraud investigations of places like Middlebury.

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