RPI College Republicans

On February 22, this blog published a post titled "The RPI Arts Department: A Terrorist Safehaven". That post has since been retitled. It was the decision of the author that the broad potential interpretations of that title, particularly the term "terrorist safehaven" warrant revision.

The term was used with the intent of demonstrating that the presentation represented the wrong message in the wrong venue at the wrong time by using the broadest interpretation of the label. There was no intent to suggest that the Arts Department was harboring terrorists or actively working in league with them, and any conclusions that have been drawn to that effect are regrettable.

According to Wafaa Bilal's biography, there were Turkish soldiers in Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War. Really. Read for yourself:

Wafaa was sent to a refugee camp on the Kuwaiti border. In the camp, people laughed when rather than accept life in a tent he began forming brick that he dried in the sun and fashioned into a home. The adobe served a practical purpose, for it provided relative safety from abduction by Kuwaiti soldiers who sneaked into tents in the middle of the night to kidnap young people for sale to Iraqi soldiers who tortured, raped and executed them or the Turkish soldiers themselves would rape and kill them. [emphasis added]

Actually, it looks like a typo, but it's important for two reasons. One, it means that Wafaa Bilal didn't proofread his own biography, which means he's pretty sloppy. Perhaps he's even sloppy enough to make a videogame with outrageous content and try to present it in the wrong venue. Second, it means that the hooligans who posted his biography elsewhere did so without verifying any of the facts contained therein. Were they perhaps so enamored with the idea of a videogame about killing the President (with al-Qaeda, to boot!) that they didn't care? For all they know, Bilal could have been claiming to be Eliot Spitzer's pimp. Whatever happened to that infallible peer review process that global warming believers are always raving about?

Traditionally, people who are rejected by RPI end up going to Clarkson. The artist who developed "Virtual Jihadi" has chosen to follow a different path, instead moving his exhibit to the Sanctuary for Independent Media. As most of you are already aware, the Sanctuary is a front group for the thugs who thought student radio station WRPI belonged to them and spent years pushing aside RPI students who wanted to participate in the organization. Their eagerness to embrace the ideas behind "Virtual Jihadi" is further vindication for the WRPI members who worked tirelessly to reclaim the club for students, and just goes to show how out of touch with the values of the RPI community--and reality--the people at the Sanctuary really are.

The letter below was one of several sent to President Shirley Ann Jackson, H&SS Dean John Harrington and Arts Department Chairwoman Kathy High.

As an alumni I am deeply disturbed by the Arts Department hosting of Wafaa Bilal later this week. I understand that Wafaa is a respected artist, and fully support the right of the Art's Department to host whomever they chose under the principal of academic freedom; however, so long as RPI sponsors these kinds of events, giving absolutely no consideration given to military alumnus, friends and family of the university, I will not contribute a dime to the school.

Insofar as the subject of Mr. Bilal's performance, "Showing the vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S.'s failed strategy in securing Iraq" is absurd. Any justification of terrorist behavior, even under the guise of promoting understanding, is disgusting. Millions of people deal with anguish, loss, and circumstances beyond their control everyday without murdering innocent civilians - some groups so extreme they are willing to strap explosives on mentally handicapped women and herd them into crowds. It does not take performance art to understand the base, human desire for revenge, to act out, and to harm.

At the very least, the Arts department should issue a public apology to all those who are offended by this affront to both reason and morality. I fully support energetic and vocal criticism of America's policy in Iraq, civilian casualties in Iraq, and the veracity of our purpose, but not efforts to sympathize with what is essentially terrorism, whether or not it is carried out by the young, hurt and confused.

If Mr. Bilal truly "seeks to imbue his audiences with a sense of empowerment that comes from hope in the enduring potential of humanity" he would not ask us to look into the heart of a killer, and try to understand what drove him to atrocity. Hope and humanity are not equatable with murder.

Just when it seemed like the RPI Art Department sponsoring of "Virtual Jihadi" couldn't get any more outrageous, it turns out that the program is being funded in part by New York State taxpayers.

Our tuition dollars are hard at work in the RPI arts department which is proudly hosting a video game debut that simultaneously embraces Islamic terrorism and advocates the killing of the American President.

In “The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi,” to be unveiled at RPI on March 5, Bilal casts himself as a suicide-bomber in the game. After learning of the real-life death of his brother in the war, he is recruited by Al Qaeda to join the hunt for Bush.

This is something RPI should be ashamed to have its name even mentioned with, let alone be sponsoring. Hopefully, the folks in the arts department will get enough phone calls from outraged alumni and come to their senses.

The RPI name carries a lot of weight. People associate it with cutting-edge research and well-educated scientists and engineers. So it's a real shame when people go and use the RPI name to promote a political agenda like the eco-maniacs did this spring. Last April, some bona fide crazies (which included some RPI professors) were running around saying that the imminent melting of the polar ice caps would submerge downtown Troy (elevation >200 feet). If they wanted to sound insane, they did a good job of it, and that's their right - we conservatives are all about individual freedom. But abusing the biology department's webspace to host their political material is another story, and when they slapped the RPI name on their material to make themselves look legitimate, they really crossed a line. Shame on them for using the credibility of our school to push their extremist views.

Just about everyone who attends or has graduated from RPI should be used to getting propaganda in the mail. Usually, it's promoting something like EMPAC or other deviations from the mission of the Institute. But the latest edition of the "Rensselaer Engineering News" magazine really stands out because the publication features a full-blown endorsement of leftwing gun control measures.

Citizens, for instance, cannot own firearms; as a result, "you can walk almost anywhere at night. Drive-by shootings are completely unheard of."

Not only is a political message like that inappropriate for an RPI publication, it's also bad science. The article conveniently omits the fact that with greater wealth and literacy (higher in Singapore than in much of the world) comes a decrease in crime, a more important correlation to be drawn than with private gun ownership by law-abiding citizens. Here's to hoping that our tuition dollars will go towards better things in the future than promoting the liberal views of Institute officials.