Opinion | Is there really a problem at Chapman?

John Loftus

Senior philosophy and screenwriting major

The case of Dayton Kingery, the Bacardi-swigging bigot, exemplifies the social justice warrior and the proselytizing virtue signaler’s overestimation bias.

The Bacardi-swigging bigot is one of about 7,000 undergraduates, meaning there are approximately 7,000 undergraduates who, more or less, treat their peers with equality, respect and equanimity, who do not spew hatred and whose idea of a productive start to the semester does not involve the n-word, homophobic taunts, assault on the elderly and Bacardi.

Of the countless interactions that occur on campus, this incident is but one – and it is rather salient. However, there’s a plethora of interactions in which Chapman students, faculty members and employees – who represent a myriad of races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, etc. – amicably conduct themselves. Let us not forget: the absence of the evidence carries as much weight as the evidence itself.

Unfortunately, the social justice warrior and the virtue signaler are quick to condemn Chapman as being fundamentally flawed, in dire need of correction and, at worst, a racist institution. They wish to generalize, from a single instance, with descriptive and prescriptive certainty. And then President Struppa writes in his email addressing the incident, “We must be better than this.”

What do you mean “we?” Again, as far as I’m concerned, the Chapman community conducts itself with decency on a daily basis; were it not the case, we would hear far more stories similar to this one incident. It is this one person who must be better, not the thousands of other students, faculty members and employees.

When a jihadist detonates himself on a bus in Israel, do we assume all Palestinians wish to murder “infidels?” When a white police officer kills an unarmed black man, do we assume all white police officers in the United States are trigger-happy white supremacists? When a black Hebrew Israelite guns down innocent Jews at a kosher market, do we assume all black people are anti-Semitic? When an illegal alien rapes and murders a US citizen, do we assume all illegal aliens are rapists and murderers?

When a Bacardi-swigging bigot acts like a Bacardi-swigging bigot, when he’s arrested and is now no longer on campus and when the social justice warrior and virtue signaler fall victim to overestimation bias, it begs to ask: Is there really a systemic problem on our campus?