  THE WRONG SOLUTION FOR NO PROBLEM A Floridian racist with no apparent ties to Georgetown sent racist e-mails to the Black Student Alliance and the Georgetown N.A.A.C.P. chapter. After the e-mail was sent, but before the sender was identified, black students, liberal campus organizations, and others held a series of rallies on campus, protesting what they consider prevailing racism at Georgetown and demanding changes from the administration, including a more Afrocentric curriculum, racial sensitivity training for the Department of Public Safety (which is almost entirely black), and more mandatory sensitivity training for incoming freshmen. Even after the identity of the e-mailer that started it all was revealed, the administration has chosen to acquiesce to all the demands. The administration clearly feels that the prevailing racism alleged by the protesters indeed existed, and this is enough to justify virtually all changes desired.
After all, the protesters cited, anecdotally, many racist incidents which they say occurred on campus; they hold that the e-mail could have very well come from a Georgetown student, and, besides, there is plenty of other stuff to address. Here is what I think: if racism prevails at Georgetown like the protesters contend, if there is a problem, then it should be fixed, but not with sensitivity training that alienates, filling the curriculum with courses of questionable legitimacy, and attempting to indoctrinate freshmen with liberal multiculturalism.
If racist incidents occur, if black students are systematically or incidentally oppressed and made to real inferior by supremacist-minded whites, then crimes arising from such incidents ought to be dealt with severely and those responsible must be shamed and made to feel very lonely. However, such changes are only necessary if these racist incidents-- cited by the protesters-- actually occurred.
Let there be no doubt: those protesting represent organizations standing to gain resources, status, and the satisfaction of seeing their agendas-- which definitely include things like curriculum changes and more sensitivity training-- implemented. Anecdotes, therefore, are unacceptable proof for making fundamental changes to the institution. If what they are saying is true and serious, there can surely be corroborating witnesses, evidence, references to date, time, place, and all parties involved, as well as a full explanation of what action, if any, was taken at the time of the purported incident, as well as an explanation if nothing was done at the time.
If they are telling the truth and can actually supply sufficient evidence, then such claims ought to be made public to be evaluated by the community-at-large for their seriousness, not dealt with behind-the-scenes in secret by top officials in the administration. Anyone who seeks to implement changes without proof should be held accountable by the community and should be castigated for not doing their homework. To explain my skepticism about these purported incidents, I want to compare racism to love. Our culture-- through books, television, movies, casual conversation, and otherwise-- talks a great deal about love, so much so that young people strive for love, and think they are in love when they are really not (this is probably a meaningful and healthy aspect of the coming-of-age experience). Likewise, society talks so much about racism, for students from elementary school on, that we are made to see and feel racism when it does not exist (though, like love, it may, though rarely). We imagine racism like we imagine love, which is much more harmful because racism is pejorative, socially unacceptable, inherently wrong, and linked to historical travesty, and, therefore, saying racism exists when it does not is unfair to those accused and devalues the community-at-large.
Before Georgetown acts as if these racist incidents took place, we need to know that they took place, and for that to occur a thorough, public, and open examination is necessary, and then the community must have an opportunity to judge the evidence. After all, we young people have enough rich imagination and ambition to make up the entire thing for our own dubious, self-serving schemes. 
