Katherine Timpf of National Review Online highlights the latest case of campus craziness.
A student at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse filed a report with the campus “Hate Response Team” claiming that a mural of a Harry Potter character on campus was transphobic, ableist, and a representation of “white power.”
According to Heat Street’s Jillian Melchior, the apparently controversial mural was painted by two students and shows one of the characters from the Harry Potter films, Neville Longbottom, transforming from a nerdy boy into a good-looking man — and another student had a huge, huge problem with that.
In fact, that student (whose name was redacted from the reports that Melchior received) actually went so far as to file a complaint stating that the painting “represents our ideal society and everything I am trying to fight against.”
It represents white power. Man power. Cis power. Able power. Class power. ECT [sic] etc. I am angry that I know the people who put this mural up, and I am anger [sic] because I know the people who let this mural be put up. Like I said earlier, maybe I am being a little sensitive, but it is how I feel. This represents, to me, our society, and I do not want it up on this wall. Why do we need a BEFORE and AFTER?
Listen, kid. If that’s how you “feel,” then fine. Well, at least kind of fine, because I’d say if you really are so “angry” about having to even “know” people who put up a Harry Potter painting, then you probably have some anger issues you need to address. It’s not like they’re ISIS, relax. But in any case, the biggest problem about all of this isn’t even the fact that this kid seems to “feel” a level of anger over a painting that seems like it would be more appropriate to feel over something like terrorism. It’s the fact that he or she goes right from “it is how I feel” into “I do not want it up on this wall” — right from “I feel like this” into “I am telling you I want you to take it down just because of the reasons I just outlined, those reasons being my feelings.”
