Word: homophobia
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...real scandal here lies not with the events at the Mather party but with their exploitation by members of the gay community and a number of Mather students--which quickly became divisive and hurtful. The problem is not so much the more general issue of homophobia but the persistent refusal to acknowledge that a mistake was made in linking Mather's exploding anti-homophobia campaign and the party incident...
...road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and Defeat Homophobia's zeal was misplaced. The group's eagerness to advance its cause led it to spotlight the Sunday incident, and to turn what should have been an important consciousnessraising session into the most bitter and divisive event I have seen in my three years at Mather House. If their intent was to educate students about homophobia and intolerance and to help the Mather community to become more open and understanding, the members of Defeat Homophobia were negligent in rallying around the Sunday incident...
...only thing clear about the whole affair is that by jumping rashly into the fray, Defeat Homophobia dealt its cause a worse blow than any vicious homophobe could have dared hope. Worse, what followed the incident seems to many to be a concerted effort by Defeat Homophobia and a prominent group of Mather students to obscure the issue, and to prevent discussion of the actual incident around which they had built their publicity machine...
Greatly assisted by three grossly misleading Crimson articles, which treated the incident as a straightforward occurrence of homophobic violence and implied that Mather House was thus divided only between enlightened citizens and petty bigots, Defeat Homophobia was able to turn a bizarre and unresolved charge of gay-on-straight harassment into a moral crusade, its alleged perpetrator into a martyr and the Mather debate into a purge of alleged homophobes: anyone who felt the incident to be an inappropriate cause celebre for even the most worthy cause...
...community's simultaneous exploitation of the Sunday incident and efforts to distract Mather discourse from any discussion of it raised serious questions about Defeat Homophobia's judgement, if not its true dedication to tolerance and education. In trying to raise our consciousness, it wounded and alienated a large group of Mather students, the friends of the visiting 17-year-old harassee. The tone of the debate at the ensuing Mather House meeting revealed a callous, mean-spirited side of what should be a caring, empathetic desire for tolerance and understanding in campus life. Their thoughtless handling of the situation...