University of California, Berkeley administrators this week used the murder of one of their own students as an opportunity to lament the toll that the death of George Floyd and the coronavirus have taken on the campus community.
As if that were not bad enough already, Berkeley’s vice chancellor, Dan Mogulof, is indignant that anyone would question the wording of their exceptionally tone-deaf statement announcing the shooting death of 19-year-old Seth Smith.
“This is not a press release,” he said in a snippy email to Fox News’s Gregg Re, “only a copy of a message sent to the campus community. It seems to me that you are interpreting this message through a very specific ideological lens … which is your right … but doesn’t necessarily mean you are right.”
The email adds, “I’m sorry that our desire to acknowledge and empathize with what folks are feeling rubs you the wrong way, and didn’t realize that there is some sort of rule stating that only one tragedy should be acknowledged in a campus message.”
Smith, who was studying history and economics, was shot and killed on June 17 while en route to his off-campus apartment. Police are offering a reward of $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter.
“There will be a hole in my heart forever,” Smith’s mother said in a tearful interview with local media.
With this context in mind, let us now look at what UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said Monday in her original statement to the study body.
“We realize this is a difficult time for those of you who knew Seth,” it reads. “It is important to know that individuals may express their grief differently and we need to respect the different ways people react and support each other in the days and weeks ahead. Many of you may have had a close relationship with Seth and are feeling a sense of loss and disbelief.”
It adds, “Others, like many of us, are experiencing stress, grief and anxiety related to the coronavirus pandemic and the recent murders of George Floyd, Riah Milton, and other Black Americans.”
You can almost hear the wheels come off, shooting out in every direction as Christ’s statement disintegrates into a burning heap.
And as to Mogulof’s point: No, there is not “some sort of rule stating that only one tragedy should be acknowledged in a campus message.” There is, however, something unquestionably tacky about shoehorning even a serious political and race-relations crisis into a statement announcing one of your own student's deaths in the near vicinity of campus. Was the idea here to name-check George Floyd in order to receive approbation from someone, or to de-emphasize the local dangers that students face around your school?
Whatever the reason, Mogulof will never tell. He is apparently too indignant to answer the question.
