One of today’s Cornell Daily Sun articles, A Violent Identity by Gregory Ngai Hom, is the most ridiculous call to action I’ve heard in a long, long time. While it attempts to discuss the gay author’s perceptions of a culture of majority violence against certain minorities, it only insinuates what it aims to prove.

The first example of a culture of predominently white, male violence is when Gregory Ngai Hom played a game of dodgeball against a team that named itself “pansies,” “fairies,” or suchlike. Since the name of the team was potentially offensive to a homosexual, it somehow provoked “a fear that stayed with [him] for the next few days.”

The long known association between overly assertive heterosexuality and athetic prowess is well known and socially harmless. If anything, it’s juvenile rather than threatening. To feel physically threatened by nomenclature only shows a high level of paranoia.

Gregory’s second example features some immature clowning occuring in his dorm involving white males and banging on walls. He writes, “that absolutely reckless behavior that I associate with those white and jock-ish males is why I don’t feel safe in certain areas of campus.” This is fine–no one feels particularily great about reckless behaviors–except that he specifically targets white males who appear to be athetic.

At the end of reading his column, I don’t really feel that Cornell is unsafe. I just feel that I am his psychologist, to whom he has confessed extreme levels of insecurity and paranoia. He’s told us that he’s scared of white males and athletes. Is he the slim-built and studious type, with a secret desire to bulk up? Does he feel disassociated from the American cultural process to the point that he can only interact inside fixed cliques of non-whites?

If there’s actual violence or potential violence on campus, I want to hear about it. I don’t want to hear about perceived potential violence without a firm basis in reason, logic, or fact.