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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | February 28, 2008

Recent events surrounding the claims of appropriation of language specific to the LGBT community in the slogans of College Republican posters have initiated a series of responses and further dialogue in many areas of the college.

According to Assistant Dean and Director of the Black Cultural Center Tim Sams, at the center of this dialogue lies the issue of the appropriation of language and the consequences of outer groups adopting words, phrases or whole languages that are specific to the experiences of a certain group of individuals.

“In a pluralistic society where there is a lot of exchange of ideas … appropriation is going to happen. It happens all the time,” Sams said. “I would say that people of color create European language and dress and speech and style, and whites do it in terms of people of color. It does not mean that people have a full understanding of that which they are appropriating.”

The running dialogue on the claim of appropriation of language originated around the time the College Republicans were advertising for their group during which they used slogans like “Curious? Questioning?” and “It’s Okay To Come Out” in order to attract “closeted conservatives” to their weekly meetings. These individuals are characterized as apprehensive to reveal their right-wing views on a predominantly liberal campus.

“The Swarthmore College Repubicans used the terminology ’It’s Ok To Come Out’ to bring forth the reality that stigmas exist against conservative students on campus,” College Republicans President Justin Shaffer ‘08 said. "Believe it or not many students at Swarthmore and elsewhere label themselves as ’closeted conservatives’ due to the social consequences by being outspoken about a environment as polarizing at Swarthmore."

Some days later, a group of students came together to discuss a situation which they believed to be a misappropriation of language that is particular to the sensitive coming out experience of queer people and an offensive act that wrongfully parodied the constant difficulties a queer individual must go through in his/her lifetime, according to Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08.

These group of students then proceeded to write a letter that was forwarded by Cozzarelli to the listserves of all the cultural groups on campus detailing their discontent with the posters. Since then, the three students have revealed themselves to be Sebastian Duncan-Portuondo ’08, Nick Forrest ’08 and Shane Breitenstein ’08.

“We had noticed the fliers of the same campaign the semester before and had talked to people about it then, and when we saw it being used again this semester, we really thought that publicly people should know the way a portion of the campus feels about this,” Duncan-Portuondo said. “We don’t want to be exclusive by signing, we didn’t want to speak for one specific group. Also, we chose this public way of addressing it because we were responding to a public display. It wasn’t specifically about the College Republicans because that wasn’t the way the posters looked to us. It looked like a national Republican poster.”

“There’s a reason why we were anonymous,” Breitenstein said. “On the [Daily Gazette] boards, they specifically attacked Tatiana. She has a very specifc identity here on campus … and if we had signed, we would have been personally attacked as Tatiana was. We felt that our original actions were a legitimate use of public use and public display … We’re trying to exercise freedom of speech but our freedom is being silenced.”

Furthermore, in the letter, the anonymous posters revealed that some of their original posters had been removed and replaced with more College Republican fliers reading “If you believe in freedom of speech, do not deface or remove our fliers,” suggesting that in the process of putting up the response posters, the anonymous posters were also responsible for removing the original College Republican fliers.

According to the anonymous posters and Cozzarelli, though two posters were covered by the anonymous fliers, due to the lack of available space available on account of the numerous College Republican fliers, individuals who were responsible for putting up the fliers were specifically instructed not to remove any College Republican fliers.

“When I did send an e-mail out to the SQU Board with the letter that was written, one of the people that put out the counter posters explicitly said to tell people not to take down the College Republican posters,” Cozzarelli said. “The anonymous writers of the letter felt that the posters needed to stay up in the spirit of freedom of expression … So, with that said, I can’t imagine that those same people were taking down posters.”

“There is the issue of freedom of speech,” Sams said. “I think we’re all clear that we do believe in free speech but we’re not settled on the freedom to hurt others … So, if we find something that does that, we need to quickly respond that we don’t have to damage, or be provocative to others.”

According to Shaffer, the act of utilizing the terminology in question was in no way intended to be an appropriation of language specific to the queer community, pointing out times in the past in which they and other groups such as “Geek Coming Out Week” and SCCS have used the terminology without any admonishment.

“We had posted the “It’s OK to Come Out” signs to advertise our introductory event way back in November (The You Tube Debate Watching Party) and they were left alone. So our group did not did expect such a reaction that occurred this week," he said.

“Further, dozens of College Republican groups nationwide ranging from schools such as Brandeis, Wellesley and University of Michigan have all sponsored “Conservative Coming Out Days” or “Conservative Coming Out Weeks” as academia has trended to be increasingly liberal recently and the speech rights of conservative students appear to be impinged upon," he said.

The argument that Republicans, conservatives and moderates on campus share the same minority status as other cultural groups like the LGBT community is the impetus behind the language that was used on the College Republican posters in the first place.

Due to the predominantly liberal status of the college, many conservative students feel that they must go “one against all” when debating politics over a Sharples dinner, during a discussion in the classroom or even when constructing the argument for a paper.

“Do professors impose their viewpoints on students through lecture and classroom readings? Many students have mentioned that at Swarthmore they feel the need to alter their personal views in papers, because if they espouse conservative viewpoints they might receive a lower grade. Again, we ask fellow Swarthmore students: “When was the last time you allowed a Republican to defend their views at Sharples?,” Shaffer said.

According to Cozzarelli, the idea that Republicans on campus experience discrimination and silencing on campus to the same extent that individuals in the process of coming out is a parallel that is essentially flawed.

“I think that certainly the Republicans are a minority on campus and no one is saying that they are not. But what we are saying is that the very painful, difficult, lifelong experience of coming out is not comparable to the experience of feeling uncomfortable in a couple classes at Swarthmore because you are Republican – and queer people feel uncomfortable in classes here all the time as well. I think that’s a major difference,” she said.

“Last year, my queer safe space sign was burned off my door,” Duncan-Portuondo said. “Another time, Shane and I were sitting in front of Phi Psi and one of the boys there got up and he started to walk toward us [and] yelled ‘Maul them’ at us. We felt pretty gay and no matter what it was it felt like gender variance of nonconformity.”

“That’s like one of the things that’s been frustrating,” Breitenstein said. “People have accused us of being the PC Police and self-victimizing ourselves, trying to argue that at Swarthmore it is pretty much okay to be gay. It’s really naive to think that that’s how people live their lives … Whether it exists at Swat or not, the majority of the dominant culture is homophobic. I just wish that Swarthmore students sometimes think outside the bubble.”

Although their posters may have been interpreted as examples of injudicious appropriation of language, Shaffer argued that the fervor behind the anonymous posters’ reaction seems to be more attributed to an inherent bias towards the College Republicans and not so much an offense with the wording of the advertisements itself.

“It appears the culprit of this flyering seems to be possibly more motivated against Republicans in general rather than the supposed parallels of language,” Shaffer said. “The Phoenix reported in November when a generic College Republican poster was hung in Willets it was defaced and torn down. Given this, we wonder whether such actions of defacement and flyer removal were truly about the Swarthmore College Republicans appropriating language used by LGBT groups or simply fellow students resenting a Republican group on campus.”

“It was specifically about the Republicans using ‘Coming Out’. I don’t feel offended with the ‘Geek Coming Out’ week. I think it’s because those organizations don’t incorporate a homophobic policy,” Duncan-Portuondo said.

“Also, a lot of the Republicans have backed up their campaign saying that it’s part of the ‘Conservative Coming Out’ week … Conservative to me in this contemporary discourse very much implies anti-queer sentiment.”

Another issue the College Republicans group felt was unwarranted was the generalization of the group’s agenda to that of the homophobic tendencies of the national Republican party.

According to Rafael Rivero ‘09, a gay student and a member of the College Republicans, the group’s political beliefs have not been in conflict with his identity, despite the belief that the group is representative of the same issues that the national GOP supports.

“I have been to a few of the College Republican meetings, but I, myself, am a homosexual. I am openly gay at the College Republican meetings, and I’m friends with some of them. When I stay around they discuss deficits, they discuss fiscal policy, they discuss policy that is for the most part unrelated to social issue,” he said.

“The Swarthmore College Republicans takes great offense by being grouped into ‘homophobic organizations.’ In fact, we’ve had discussions at several meetings and learned that our membership has little interest in the social conservative platform of the National GOP,” he said.

Although the College Republicans group has essentially divorced themselves from the homophobic agenda of the national party, there is still the issue of the denial of homophobia on campus and whether one feels that homophobia is still a prevalent sentiment among the student body.

“We weren’t accusing individual Republicans on campus of being homophobic,” Forrest said. “We wanted to encourage people to think about the meanings of words specific to communities … The whole critique of ‘to not be anonymous is to be brave’ … Bravery is such a loaded issue. I’m just generalizing it a lot here … You just want to say something without worrying that your individuality will be attacked.”

“I think it does point to a broader problem at Swarthmore of appropriating terms and pretending that homophobia doesn’t occur on campus when it does,” Cozzarelli said. “At Swarthmore, we think that we’re so accepting and not homophobic that we think it’s okay for people to do that … and that we can joke about it because we’re post-homophobia and I think that that is not the case.”

The issue of anonymity and the idea that every individual has a varying level of privilege in terms of whether or not they have the advantage of being able to link their identities to their opinions without fear or apprehension is one that is great to the queer community, according to the response posters.

By encouraging further discussion on this subject, opportunities for making individuals of these privileged groups aware of their ability to be unrestrained from the issue of anonymity and building trust between polarized groups is a possibility.

“I hope we get to a point on this campus when every time that homosexuality is in the spotlight, we don’t go through the same exhaustive narrative,” Rivero said. “Queer people and our allies have to be vigilant and reactive to homophobia, but we shouldn’t let our conviction let us get carried away. It’s a matter of trust, and, at least on this campus, we’ve earned it. Now, let’s give some back.”

“Going forward, we have a responsibility to have, in this case, Republicans understand a broader sense of what that symbol means and why it would be offensive to members of our community, both “queer” and straight," Sams said.

“As we are committed to living in a multicultural society we are obliged to move beyond our immediate response … to a point to be able to talk about it and grow as a community and talk about our differences, he said

The College Republicans are openly expressing the desire to have more productive campus-wide discussions related to the issues surrounding this particular poster incident and expanding on the themes that will further explore what it is like to be a Republican on a predominantly liberal campus. The dates for such events are yet to be determined.

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