Word: swastika
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nearly 80 first-year Harvard Law School students found a white sheet of paper with a swastika, profanities and anti-Semitic statements stuffed in their mailboxes yesterday morning...
...opposition to a dining-hall Christmas tree (News, “Tree Kindles Leverett Debate,” Dec. 4), Leverett Resident Tutor Stuart E. Schechter ignored a vital distinction between behaviors that are hateful toward other groups (putting a swastika up) and behaviors that simply make others feel their minority status (putting a Christmas tree up). The tree, unlike the swastika, is not an anti-Jewish symbol, and the message that came from all the disgruntled Leverittes, and the opinion piece by Shira D. Kieval ’04 (“Tree for Some, Thorn for Others...
...making the argument that everyone should enjoy Christmas trees, nor am I saying that only majority groups should be able to celebrate. Everyone should be able to celebrate in public as long as it is not hateful to another group, as displaying a swastika would be. Thankfully this is the standard our society abides by in allowing ethnic parades and cultural fairs in public spaces. All these rituals will make some people feel their outsider status. But part of life is sometimes being on the outside; let’s not allow that to push all celebrations of being human...
...things are hateful enough to compare to swastikas, and the Christmas tree in Leverett dining hall is not one of them. Schechter’s comparison fails logically: A swastika in Leverett dining hall would be disturbing because swastikas are disturbing, not because it’s wrong to put symbols in public places...
That said, take the trees down already. Inappropriate as it is, the swastika comparison shows that to some people, public endorsement of a Christmas tree might be the spiral arm of something dire. And if Christmas trees are so harmless and secular, why are we bent on erecting them? To prove that Our Fun can’t be spoiled by Some Whiny Minority? Let’s find a new way to decorate, one that generates festivity and spirit instead of bad analogies. I recommend bright fabric, big jars of pasta and squashes with wigs...