If you have been hitherto fortunate enough to remain ignorant of UC Berkeley’s most recent non-issue outrage, I shall now destroy your inner peace.
Recently, Sumayyah Din, an independent ASUC Senate candidate backed by the Middle Eastern Muslim Sikh and South Asian Coalition candidate, created a hashtag for herself comprising a play on words involving the term intifada, the Arabic word for “rebellion” or “uprising.” Being the stickler for exactness that I am, the hashtag was actually what we NPR-elitists call a portmanteau, combining the aforementioned term with her last name — the Arabic word for “faith” — resulting in the rather uninventive pun “dintifada.”
Now, for those of you yet unschooled in campus politics’ insatiable taste for invented controversy, let me outline what we might facetiously call the timeline of grievances.
On the first day after the initial use of the hashtag, the campus group Bears for Israel decried its use as “damaging and terrifying,” demanding an immediate apology. The group argued that the term intifada evoked a time of intense conflict between Israel and Palestine, reminding the candidate that the term has been commonly used as a symbol of violence within the Middle East.
On the second day of the intifada brouhaha, said candidate published an op-ed in The Daily Californian, insisting that it was “not my intention to hurt” and saying that she instead “meant to spread the authentic meaning” of the word that she finds “inspiring.” In what began as a half-apology for others’ “misunderstanding,” Din’s op-ed soon took to the offensive (pun unintended this time), arguing that anyone who found the word “triggering” was actually “delegitimizing” the Palestinian struggle.
You tell ‘em, Sumayyah Din.
As we all know, here at UC Berkeley, so long as your words and actions have the right intentions, you will never find yourself at fault for others’ — shall we say — “misunderstandings.”
That is, of course, so long as you move in the right circles.
Campus public opinion was not so gracious to Delta Chi in 2013, a campus fraternity that was condemned by the ASUC for hosting a party that appropriated Mexican culture. Though the theme was supposedly proposed by Mexican brothers within the house, and the chapter president insisted that the “intention was never to marginalize,” the justice was swift and brutal, even spurring an editorial from the Daily Cal lecturing that “intent doesn’t equal impact.”
Nor was Din’s insistence upon the primacy of intent heeded during Theta Delta Chi’s accidental triggering of marginalized students by its hanging of a zombie out a window for an October haunted house charity event. Another claim of not-our-intent, another unanimous condemnation from the student government.
Then, of course, there was a rather interesting piece of student legislation that passed last year with MEMSSA support, condemning what it called “inflammatory” speech hurtful to Muslim students and demanding that the university hold students to a “higher standard” in order to produce a “positive and inclusive” environment on campus.
How very ironic, a bill indicting the reckless use of words and their unintentional effects on certain communities.
Thus we are left with quite the inconvenient impasse. Shall we remain champions of intent versus impact and condemn anything that hurts, regardless of the culprits’ intentions? If so, the likes of Sumayyah Din and her supporters may have to take a good long look at what it means to exercise hypocrisy. For indeed, in the above cases, offenders were not afforded the luxury of exoneration by virtue of their well-meaning intents. If we’re going to hold our fellow students to such Herculean standards, we must certainly not discriminate.
But I hold no such vindictive opinions. Instead, we may yet choose the option to free ourselves from the absurdity of this insidious maxim of intent versus impact, at least as it relates to disciplinary action. Naturally, part of being a conscious, responsible and decent person is exercising forethought in our words and actions. In all these examples, there were opportunities for each person or group to stop and rethink their less-than-prudent decisions.
This recent hashtag controversy (what an absurd phrase) highlights just how complicating this intent versus impact standard can be. For all sides play this game at UC Berkeley: Just last month, the ASUC Senate passed an anti-Semitism bill urging students to be “conscious of unintended effects that their words and actions may have on others.” But who gets to decide what words are sufficiently hurtful to warrant condemnation? By the logic of this problematic standard, it would seem that this decision is made by the community that deems itself hurt. In which case, who is Sumayyah Din to dismiss those who cry offense? Not to be one-upped, she asserts that Jewish students’ complaints themselves offend her by silencing Palestinian voices. And so the impact arms race moves on.
Don’t mistake my own intent here, dearest Internet trolls. I come not to condemn cultural sensitivity. The ideal campus would be one where all students exercise cultural awareness and weigh the effects of their words and actions by the standard of intent versus impact. But if we must have a campus where individuals are regulated by student authorities who systematically favor impact over intent, such standards must be the same for all. I do not stand in a camp that advocates we ignore the potential impact of our speech. I am motivated merely by a distaste for hypocrisy. And so often among the most sanctimonious, it proves most prevalent.
But hey, in the spirit of intent versus impact, let me just say, I’m offended by all of you.
Brendan Pinder writes the Thursday blog on the gray area between political standpoints on issues. You can contact him at bpinder@dailycal.org.