Campus Hate and the People Who Fake It

Oberlin College in Ohio has nothing on our very own Swarthmore College when it comes to concern about hate crimes on campus, real or imagined. My print column is up.

UPDATE: Michele Malkin is also on the story and has even bigger doubts about it than I do. She has good reason.

The truth is that Oberlin has been a hotbed of dubious hate crime claims, dating back to the late 1980s and 1990s, when I was a student on campus. In 1988, giant signs reading "White Supremacy Rules (Kill All Niggers)" and "White Supremacy Rules, (F**k (slashed out and replaced with 'Kill') All Minorities)" were hung anonymously at the Student Union building. It has long been suspected that minority students themselves were responsible.

In 1993, a memorial arch on campus dedicated to Oberlin missionaries who died in the Boxer Rebellion was defaced with anti-Asian graffiti. The venomous messages -- "Death to Chinks Memorial" and "Dead chinks, good chinks" -- led to a paroxysm of protests, administration self-flagellation and sanctimonious resolutions condemning bigotry. But the hate crime was concocted by an Asian-American Oberlin student engaged in the twisted pursuit of raising awareness about hate by faking it, Tawana Brawley-style.

And so it goes...