By
Nick Zeckets
Last week, Brenton House walked into the UA Poetry Center with a 9 mm handgun. The UA campus is a weapon-free zone and, moreover, concealed weapons are illegal unless House has a permit. House's reasoning for bringing the gun: to protect himself while wearing a Confederate flag in defense of "rednecks." Everyone deserves a degree of forgiveness, but pure stupidity can hardly be brushed aside.
House, 29, won the Spring 2000 Ruth Stephan Poetry Center Award and is a graduate student in creative writing and an employee at the Poetry Center. In early October, another student wrote an exposition labeling southerners as "rednecks."
To protest the content of the piece, House wore a Confederate flag around his waist while toting a gatt. Jeepers, does anyone else smell that? Hmm ... it sure does smell a lot like irony!
Nice work there, House. In order to show the rest of the world just how great the South is, you bring a gun to school while creating a garment out of a symbol of hatred, slavery and racism. Perhaps stringing some o' dem Negroes by der toes would dun be a good thang too, huh, Bubba?
Having myself grown up in Atlanta shed some light on what that sickening cloth stands for. Someone out in Arizona has nearly the same degree of understanding on the severity of race relations in the former Confederate South that a four year old has of quantum mechanics. Go there, House. Come back and tell us that wearing that flag makes you feel good.
Few strains of human behavior are so despicable as to be universally decried as evil - the work of some demon or force beyond comprehension. Taking the lives and souls of peaceful people and treating them like property, that is wrong. Not wrong like not flushing the toilet wrong. Not wrong like taking your roommate's last Rice Crispy Treat wrong. It's wrong in the sense that, when final judgment is cast, doom is imminent.
Beyond all this, though, is the fact that House has himself made a bad correlation between "rednecks" and evil. Wearing that flag in their defense only makes it seems as though they all feel the same desire to get back to their plantation roots that oppressed black slaves. In reality, some of the greatest champions for equal rights in the present day deep South are so-called "rednecks."
Grow up, House. Sure, making fun of "rednecks" isn't A-1 grandpa mature, but getting back at the student by wearing such an awful symbol is asinine.
Too often college students try to make scenes just for the sake of seeming "open-minded." Runaway ignorance has apparently affected Brenton to the point of delusion.
Jim Paul, director of the Poetry Center said, "We offer our sympathy to Brett and all others involved." Sympathy? Throw that kid out of here. House's disregard for the fundamental rules of modern society has no place at an institution like ours. What happens the next time some self-proclaimed paradigm shifter steps up with a statement and a gun? Unfortunately, Humanities Dean Dennis Evans wasn't immediately available to comment on House's future.
In this case, House's support of a symbol as hate-inspiring as the defamed Nazi swastika isn't the issue. Everyone has their rights under the First Amendment to say what they want to say. Packing heat, however, threatens the UA community's safety and well-being.
UA has affords us an open environment for dialogue and intellectual exchange and even a Speaker's Corner. When differences arise, diplomacy, cordial debate, discussion and peaceful interaction are effective and safe. No one has ever suffered mortal wounds due to an argument. Guns are a totally different story.
Shirts and bumper stickers abound that deal with what kills people: "Guns don't kill people...I kill people," "Honk if you wanna get shot" and "Ideas are deadly." Wielding a gun and acting without reason will get someone hurt. The most accurate bumper sticker, however, states that "Guns don't kill people ... People kill people." Here's one - "Words may be mightier than the sword, but they don't kill anybody."
