What student body president Andy Bossie said in the Free Press of the campus hate crime also applies to the university’s censorship of Thomas Manning’s paintings: “This is a type of action that needs to be condemned.” This should be considered especially true at a university, an environment that should be the birthplace and environment of ideas.
The Free Press, a symbol of speech on campus, should be bustling with editorial, commentary and points and counterpoints regarding the censoring of Manning’s paintings. Instead, this paper’s editor rehashed the incident in her first editorial (to her credit mentioning more of Manning’s background than the articles about him), though she has remained ambiguous about an actual stance. The paper’s overall coverage of the incident was sloppy at best.
In the two articles featured in this paper about Manning and the hoopla surrounding the showing of his art, USM President Richard Pattenaude is quoted as having said, “Any reasoned discussion of ideas has been overshadowed completely by Mr. Manning’s and Mr. Levasseur’s criminal acts, and the pain and suffering they caused.” Students and faculty members I have spoken with have speculated that, “reasoned discussion of ideas have been overshadowed completely” by threats of the financial divestment in the
university organized by police groups. In an email response, Pattenaude claims quite the opposite: “The University was never threatened with divestment or loss of focus on the issues and their personal thoughts about it. In the aforementioned article, the President said, “at the end of the day, one makes a decision that one thinks is best.”
As for the Free Press, a headline on the front page of the first issue this semester refers to artist and prisoner Thomas Manning as a “cop killer” -a term belonging mostly to critics of his installation- before the article told the background behind Manning’s crimes. The article, the first in a series of two about Manning, discusses his involvement in bank robberies and “the slaying of a New Jersey state trooper in 1981.” However, gone unmentioned is his involvement in an anti-imperialism/anti-apartheid group similar to the SLA or Weather Underground. The articles also fail to note Manning’s status as a Vietnam Veteran, or the hostilities he harbored against the United States government as a result of his service.
The Free Press’ “cop killer” headline is a mistake on the part of this paper, as it stifles open discussion of both sides of
the issue. The university administration’s rhetoric aside, there is still plenty of room for debate regarding this particular incident. One of the forums at which this discussion will occur is at the symposium about political prisoners that will take place on campus this Wednesday.
At the symposium on Wednesday, I would like to see Nelson Mandela discussed. He became the president of South Africa after nearly 30 years of political imprisonment. Mandela,
often perceived as a non-violent man, was sentenced to jail in 1962 for coordinating a military campaign against the government
of South Africa. There, I would ask how people differentiate between “cop-killers,” those who intend to violently over-throw the state (as Mandela was considered at the time of his imprisonment) and world heroes (as Mandela is universally recognized today).
I hope attendees of the symposium will discuss the remarks of Raymond Luc Lavasseur, Manning’s former partner-in-revolution, who were featured in the second Free Press article, “Still can’t jail the spirit.” Here, it was noted that “some of
the media has indicated that there’s only one side to this story: a homicide conviction.” It is uncomfortably ironic that the very Free Press article including the quote, in a quite two-dimensional
manner, focuses primarily on Manning’s convictions and absolutely none of his motivations.
College campuses should be the site of discussion and debate. To have these things muffled as opposed to expressed and encouraged demonstrates a concerning atmosphere and echoes the borderline McCarthyism revival in the country. At
the university, both our leadership and our press have set bad examples for a free dialogue of thoughts. In their absence, we
must count on each other to keep a rational exchange of ideas alive.
I do not wish to undermine the value of the life lost by State Trooper Philip Lamonaco or the suffering of his wife, Donna
Lamonaco, and their family. This should not, however, distract from an exchange of ideas, nor does it excuse bad media coverage.
What must not be lost in any of this is that a haunted man living in a torturous time created this art. While this fact does
touch a lot of nerves-understandably-it is important that we are granted access by our elders to these paintings and critical
coverage of it by our media so that we can understand and discuss why crimes like Thomas Manning’s were ever perpetrated
in the first place. ?