Pointing fingers not the solution

By Editorial

By now, we've all heard the stories of last weekend's happenings -- senior John Bryant was stabbed near the Dunne parking lot after an altercation with non-Santa Clara students.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Bryant, and he is fortunately now recovering. No one should ever have to suffer such a trauma.

But in times like these, it is important that we not generalize and scapegoat those we deem unfamiliar.

In a campus-wide e-mail written by Matthew Duncan, associate dean of the Office of Student Life, and sent by Campus Safety Director Charlie Arolla, members of the community were told to be vigilant and aware of our surroundings.

We want to reiterate this point, and call attention to the mere fact of life that we are not exempt from danger on this campus.

However, at the same time, we must not quickly jump to any conclusions.

The Santa Clara Police Department has stated that no one has been taken into custody at this point. But it is all too often that any crime near our campus is eventually blamed on a San Jose State student.

And while a San Jose State student may or may not be the culprit in this particular case, it is important that we do not start pointing fingers unknowingly.

These students are often scapegoated for crime that happens on campus. This all-too-convenient excuse has been grossly overused and has even more damaging implications behind it.

Let us be clear that we are not exempting anyone from wrongdoing, but when students speculate who they think did wrong, most often they are unfairly profiling people because of where they come from.

As a community, we need to work together to clear the negative stigma that has made the term "non-affiliate" so distateful, although it is understandable why Campus Safety officers use that term.

It is, after all, an accurate, general description of someone separate from our Santa Clara community, and the only way to refer to somebody as such in a general sense.

However, in our community that boasts so much about inclusive excellence, this word and our perceptions of these non-affiliates have become too generalized.

We have pigeonholed non-affiliates as the wrongdoers who try to infiltrate our protected bubble of a community. While this may be the case in the most recent incident of violence on campus, crime is not exclusive to non-Santa Clara students.

We are not advocating a blind trust for everyone that is unfamiliar, and Duncan had it right in his statement to the community: "Travel with other people and be cautious of engaging in contact with individuals you do not know."

This is good common sense and advice that should be followed seriously. After all, outside of our campus lies a real, breathing city, with all the conditions of modern city life: crime, violence and theft.

We invite you to extend this common sense to the morning after those late-night walks, when perhaps we are all a little more clearheaded.

Just because it is good sense to be wary of those we don't know when walking from party to party, it doesn't mean that those non-affiliates are the cause of all our problems.