I hate Mondays. Waking up is never easy and going to classes is even less easy. But this past Monday turned out to be an eventful one. Upon leaving my room and departing for class, I noticed that several parts of the campus were plastered with stickers with the phrase "Womyn are Everywhere" on them.
The obvious question here is what are "womyn?" Well, they are people who have decided that the correct spelling of "woman" (and its plural) is sexist because it contains the word "man" or "men." They are a portion of the "activists" on campus and represent a very small fraction of the women here at Dartmouth, or anywhere else.
So, how does one decide who is a woman and who is in this exclusive group of "womyn?" Well, if you are a woman and you believe in such things as true equality, or restrictions on abortion, or harmony between the sexes, then you are not welcomed in this elite clan of "womyn."
In fact, even if you normally agree with these "womyn" but you would not resort to vandalism or other childish means of getting a point across, then you are not good enough to be of the "womyn" tribe.
Now let's examine the actual incident. Several of these "womyn" (my guess is between three and five) decided to get together and get their all-important message out by vandalizing our campus. I would assume that their purpose in doing this was to let people know that "womyn" are truly everywhere and that they are going to make their mark wherever they are.
From the reaction I have seen, people are not amused by this display of childishness, to say the least. Furthermore, the prophetic statement by these "womyn" was perceived as stupid by many.
The stickers were not simply on walls or sidewalks but on cars as well. When several people tried to remove the stickers from their cars, they did not come off easily and in some cases, not at all. In fact, a few people registered formal complaints with the Hanover police.
Given this, let's consider what these "womyn" accomplished. They succeeded in making a great many people very angry. They turned away many (men and women alike) who might have sympathized with their point of view. But I suppose that the rest of the campus doesn't matter to these "womyn" just so long as they get what they want.
So what's the moral of this? Here, again, we have a few people who want something and use ridiculous measures to somehow obtain what they want , but in the process, alienate most of the campus and get the opposite of what they originally wanted!
More importantly, however, people should realize that when things like this occur, the people perpetrating it rarely (if ever) represent the mainstream here at Dartmouth. It is easy to be led to believe that an outspoken few hold the views of this campus but it's simply not true. As I have said many times before, the silent majority is alive, well, and more silent than ever. You may not see them in the paper everyday or giving speeches on the green, but they are there.
