Any person or institution will inevitably have some level of hypocrisy. After all, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Thus, one cannot fault an institution (especially a large one such as WashU) for small incongruities in actions or hypocrisies. However, hypocrisy is still a vice and causes one to appear unreliable, nay, deceitful. And as it is hard for an individual to regain trust, it is a lot harder for institutions to do so.
Recently, it was brought to my attention that WashU has closed off the South 40’s basketball and volleyball courts to the public. There are, of course, dozens of understandable reasons why WashU might have done this, especially with regard to liability. For example, a visitor who gets a concussion playing volleyball, breaks an arm playing basketball, or even trips on a rock while otherwise engaged in a sport could potentially sue WashU for making the facilities public without warning. Furthermore, from the publicly available facts1, the risk of such a lawsuit probably caused the prohibition on outside guests to be put in place in the first place. After all, the second bullet point on the sign explicitly states “This recreational and leisure area is used at your own risk. Washington University is not responsible for any injuries,” which suggests to me that the move was not caused by malevolence but by insurance. Furthermore, a university spokeswoman, Sheryl Mauricio, the policy change was due to the need for quiet hours at night2.
This being said, while it is clear that the university’s move is benign, it is bad optics. As pointed out by Noah Cohen, a WashU professor who specializes in the racial and class history of basketball, this move could be “perceived as an exclusive illusionary action on potentially racialized terms.” Thus, there are probably ways in which the abrupt announcement of the closing of the basketball courts to the public could be misinterpreted and could have been handled more diplomatically.
If WashU’s closure of the basketball courts to outsiders was fraught, the action compared with WashU’s treatment of outside protestors reeks of hypocrisy, even if unintentional. Recently, WashU was the site of a large anti-Israel protest (which the Danforth Dispatch reported on at the time), which was organized by a non-student, Ayah Hamdan. At the protest, another outside speaker accused Jews of re-writing the Torah and claimed that there was no conflict between Muslims and Jewish Arabs until “you go get all the Europe Jewish.” While these odious statements are covered by the 1st Amendment, WashU does not have a legal obligation to allow outside protestors on campus to chant such things, particularly when such antisemitic disinformation can form an angry mob to attempt a Pogrom, as happened recently in Dagestan.
Any juxtaposition between non-students utilizing the basketball courts and outside anti-Israel protestors organizing on campus makes the WashU’s closure of the courts to non-students look farcical. For instance, whereas the point of basketball is to have fun, the point of a protest is to be loud, and thus while basketball might be disruptive incidentally, a protest is always intrinsically so. Even when focusing solely on liability, one can see that the legal risks of WashU allowing an outside protestor to whip up a mob into a frenzy greatly outweigh those of someone tripping and falling.
Of course, there are good reasons why WashU may allow outside protestors on campus. A total ban on them might end up being more harmful than good, as outside speakers or guests may be falsely labeled as “protestors” by those who disagree with them. The point of this article is thus not to argue that WashU should change one or both policies, as they both make sense when analyzed individually. However, they are both inconsistent in their treatment of outside guests, and it can be argued that a more coherent policy is necessary to prevent WashU from appearing hypocritical.
- The signs on the basketball courts are still extant and I have seen them in person. The image at the top of this article also includes a picture of the signs and is borrowed from a StudLife article that utilizes the same picture. ↩︎
- As a resident of the South 40, I personally think that there is a large issue with noise at night, though usually it comes from Shepley Drive. ↩︎