Once Again, Fraternities Threaten A.O. Staff Member
Blaine DeLancey
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • April-May 1992 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 5 (pp. 2,18) | ||
| • August 27, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
The caller identified himself as the “SU fraternity liaison”. He left a message that if Chris ever goes to a fraternity party, they’ll “walk all over his face.”
It was about 10 pm when Chris got the messages, having returned home after helping to present the AO budget request to the SGA Finance Board a few hours earlier. His roommate reported that there had been four rather strange phone messages left since 4 that afternoon.
The second call was from the same alleged human as the first: this time he simply warned Chris to “watch his back.”
The timing of the calls was interesting: until submitting the budget proposal to SGA, Chris had never been publicly identified with the AO: no one except some of his friends and our staff were aware that he works with the paper.
The third call, from a female, said to “tell him the tests were positive; he’ll know what that means.”
Comments about sexual preference seem to go hand in hand with the threats we receive. The limited sort of intelligence that imagines anonymous threats to be a productive form of communication, also assumes that those threatened share their homophobia; the caller also seemed to find humor in the suggestion that Chris had AIDS.
Finally Mr. “fraternity liaison” called again. His creativity spent by the first two calls, he simply said “Good” when told Chris wasn’t home. [Also, after a letter from Chris about this was printed in the Daily Orange, someone felt compelled to leave what we hope is their best imitation of a pig, snorting and all, on Chris' answering machine. Evidently, the use of language became too much for them. -Editor]
Frankly we’re tired of this bullshit. Every year we receive anonymous harassing messages, threats of harm, death or rape. It gets old fast. We rather thought that this year would be different, especially after Röt Feder wrote an article last semester which made some comments about the greek system, and we didn’t get any nasty responses. It seems we were celebrating too soon.
Since we began publishing four years ago, we have pretty much continually had to deal with threats and snide comments from gutless individuals who hide behind phone lines and refuse to sign their notes. Our second issue in 1988 included a news story about a “brawl” in Walnut Park involving members of Alpha Tau Omega and Sigma Chi. When we distributed that issue around campus we were followed by groups of fellows in greek-lettered shirts and hats who threw away the issues en masse. We retrieved them. We then received about a dozen threatening phone calls among us; and some less threatening than confusing, for example: “Ah, uh, your ad against the army was totally useless, eh, uh, you guys suck, your uh, eh, er, editors suck, yeah, uh, um, your writers suck, you bad DO comics suck, er, um, eh, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re all homo’s and you all pump each other, yeah, uh, eh, so why don’t you go to the gym and pump each other.”
Those calls led to an editorial called “Frat Brats.” Most of the callers that year, like this year’s version, identified themselves as greeks. Individuals (almost always male) calling themselves greeks constitute a plurality of those who have threatened physical harm against staff members. This does not necessarily mean that these folks were really members of frats, or that they represent the views of their respective houses. However, it is interesting that they feel no need for hesitation in so identifying themselves, and that the only thing about the threats that is not anonymous is the stated greek connection. And, to my memory, all of the personal confrontations involving physical threats or actual physical confrontations, have been with male greeks (these number maybe half a dozen). So, frankly, if a harasser identifies himself as greek I, at least, tend to take him at his word.
Threats take many forms: some people seem to feel it’s an insult to imply we might be gay (I don’t really know why), others get upset when “uppity” gays and women seem to go too far in our pages. Our repeated printing of photos of same-sex couples kissing above the motto, “Get used to it!” made some folks mad. That’s part of the reason we kept printing it: when someone tore it out of the paper and returned it with “Garbage Mouths, Filthy, Immoral” on it, we were encouraged. When we started getting veiled and not so veiled suggestions of what sort physical activity might “cure” us of our unhealthy viewpoint, we were not so encouraged. The therapeutic effects of sexual abuse and physical harm seem to be common themes for unattributed phone calls and correspondence, especially of course when that communication is directed at female staff members, especially those who don’t know their place. Kristin Huffmon had the temerity to write a piece entitled “Attention, Men” in 1989, in which she pointed out “I am not a piece”, “I don’t have... headlights...or jugs...or a rack” and that it was not appropriate to suggest “I’d like a piece of that!” upon seeing her. Some of our callers felt that she just hadn’t met the right man yet (nothing a good fuck wouldn’t cure, y’know); others felt that she was beyond help and offered their assistance in helping her end it now, usually suggesting rape as the means.
Last year swastika’s seemed to be the in thing: they adorned several of the unsigned death threats we received, which were usually addressed collectively (along the lines of you’re all gonna die). We ignored some, printed others until finally writing an editorial saying we wouldn’t print anything else that wasn’t signed.
Which pledge we’re sort of violating here by mentioning the threats against Chris. It is hard to know how to respond to these idiots. Security and the police have been contacted about the latest round of threats, but they have been far less than helpful (especially security).
Hopefully this piece will serve as an indication that such threats really don’t deter us from publishing, nor even from publishing what those of you out there of low IQ find to be “offensive” views. In fact, we like to think that your threats indicate that you know about us, and are at least reading our paper. So, we’d like to thank you for your support, and have only one request in future. If you haven’t got the guts to identify yourself, please feel free to shut up.
Blaine Delancey
Syracuse, N.Y.
