Queens College GSA Vandalized With Hate Messages
Posted By Eric Ethington (Author) on December 29, 2010
New York – The Queens College GSA was vandalized this month with hate messages and gay slurs. So far both campus police and city police are investingating the incident as a hate crime.
Very sad, the slurs fag, dike, dyke and tranny were written, painted, hole-punched into different works of art the club had completed. Club president Deborah Lolai has said she was devastated that someone could have done this.
From the Queens Courier:
Behind one of the larger paintings, the word “dyke” was fashioned with the club’s purple duct tape. Under another painting, the word “dike” was punched in with a pin, one hole at a time. Lolai speculated that the people who did this took their time to write the slurs in several media. The different spellings of the word “dyke” suggest that there were multiple individuals involved, Lolai said.
Lolai would not have been as disturbed if the words were out in the open. Instead, they were carefully crafted, hidden behind deeply personal pieces of art. On Lolai’s oil painting depicting strength through unity, “dike” was written on the reverse side of the canvas. The painting also represented the struggle that LGBT people face, Lolai said. In dealing with her identity, she said she was hospitalized for a year in high school, suffering from anorexia and bulimia.
“Those are the words – ‘fag,’ ‘dyke’ and ‘tranny’ – they’re the last words that people hear when they’re beaten to death,” said Lolai.
"Eric, trying to have this (civil rights) conversation with you is ultimately like trying to teach a pig to dance, it just annoys the pig. So Eric, sorry to annoy you."
-Paul Mero, The Sutherland Institute.
Something similar happened on UofU campus last year. Someone in the middle of the night spray-painted over our Pride Week banner so that it read “Sin Week”. Police were called, and nothing came of it. Let’s hope Queens gets a better result.