COLUMN: Representtions of violence

From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '97 From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '97 On Friday, October 31, Halloween, roughly two weeks ago, the front page of the DP reported a "bizarre assault" from the previous night. A student, a student's brother and a student's brother's friend apparently had words with police. They were drinking, said the article. Said the article: they were making "some sort of disturbance," arguing among themselves. Police got involved and fisticuffs followed. A "tall, white man who was 'quite well-built'" left his baseball cap and a pool of blood in the middle of Walnut Street. According to the article. Next Monday, a more detailed account and a diagram appeared on the DP's front page ("Frosh, two others charged for roles in bloody assault," DP, 11/3/97). According to the report, an assistant U.S. attorney was arrested for disorderly conduct; a Penn freshman was subdued with pepper spray, then beaten up by police for no apparent reason and that tall, well-built white man changed hue and broke some noses. Said University Police Detective Commander Tom King: "It could have been so much worse." And he's right: it could have happened differently. It might have happened differently. But it didn't have to happen at all. Bill and Richard Sofield and Warnell "Yode" Owens were drinking and making noise at a FIJI party. Drinking and making noise at a party: like reading and being quiet in the library, behaviors suited to their time and place. Richard was arrested; then Yode and the younger Sofield ran into the FIJI house. In other words, they arrested their own disorderly conduct, "subdued" themselves in effect and did the officers' work for them. The story could have ended here. But, thanks to the dogged persistence of our crime preventers, a "third assist" alert, and roughly 60 uniformed reinforcements, the action continued. The two who fled were pursued and "subdued" (a transparent euphemism): Owens and four officers were sent to HUP and Bill Sofield suffered an unprompted beating on private property. Thank goodness the guns stayed in their holsters, or, as Director of Police Operations Maureen Rush said "the perpetrator[s] might not have been so lucky," (emphasis added). To assign guilt here is to overlook the underlying implications of the episode. Boys were behaving badly and police fumbled the issue crudely and ineptly. The question is not who is responsible for the Halloween debacle, but rather, what is wrong with the University that students and police are exchanging blows. Apparently campus is wound to a volatile pitch, ready to erupt at any improper moment. The protectors are perceived as predators and their record only reinforces that role. Police are here to ensure safety, yet students still feel unsafe. And with a robbery tally silently, steadily approaching last fall's dangerous numbers, a feeling of insecurity is not unfounded. Police are seen alternately as impotent and dangerous, a threat to students and yet a permeable membrane to dangers impending from outside. Conflict with police on a college campus does have historical precedent, but negative precedent. According to the stereotypes, police defend the ideology they are given, wooden and unthinking. They are authorized to use "legitimate violence" to preserve the status quo, to keep order against subversive elements -- student protesters, hippies, long-hairs. Remember Kent State. But Penn is not the scion of protest past. Penn's violence is arbitrary, purposeless and wasteful. It's also spontaneous; but spontaneous reactions can only happen with the proper elements present. Something is wrong here. But what? Some attribute violence to drinking; some attribute everything to drinking. Drink corrupts young minds; drink becomes violence; drink is the devil's potion! The issue of drinking provides a vast receptacle for excuses, failures, abortive policy. But watch out for mountebanks offering easy solutions! Drinking is not the root of all evil on campus. Sure, it lubricates the down ladder, but only if you're already going down. No, eruptions of violence are not simply the result of drink or historical legacy. We live among vivid violent representations; force and brutality are everyday things, viable alternatives. Violence is a recurring motif -- in life, in news, in images, in fact. Though representations of violence don't translate directly to violence, they do serve to normalize it, like repeated exposure softens the sting of vodka for the Soviet. Violence develops a tangible presence, an odor and its own set of expectations. It becomes an enticing option, pseudo-heroic and proto-male. Violence is not a pair of spectacles, clarifying; it is a spectacle, an iris closing round our ken. It consumes center stage and excludes histories that are not histrionic. Violence is everywhere, seemingly inevitable and self-perpetuating. But most of all, violence is exiting, insidiously so. It brings the blood to a boil and sparks feelings that bland gray headlines cannot. We at Penn say goodbye to Stan Chodorow with a tepid wave of the hand, maybe middle finger pronounced; but a blue uniform soiled by a quick gush of red is real excitement, NC-17. A pool of blood left dribbling down Walnut Street -- that's entertainment! To acknowledge violence and call it by name -- to admit the reality of conflict, the potential for unfounded hate and its consequences -- that is the first step toward reversing a dangerous trend. The incidents around Halloween happened, in a sense, because we expect them to happen, because we've seen them happen that way -- because that's just the way it is. But how it is is not how it might be. Things do not have to be what they are, students and police do not necessarily have to be opposed, and the crude language of conflict does not have to drown out peaceful reasoned voices.