As I was writing my column on Tuesday, I took a break to check the opinion e-mail box. Now, opinion e-mail is a mysterious thing. Half of its contents are made up of product advertisements, attempts by King Leopold’s half brother to move millions of dollars worth of diamonds out of the Congo and press releases which I never read. The other half are made up of letters. I promise you I read every one. I only wish, sometimes, that we can run the ones we reject – if only because it would help to explain why I smoked, at one point, 60 cigarettes per day.
During this break I saw a letter that peaked my interest. Joseph Brown, English graduate student, was kind enough to send along news from the University of Georgia, news that is humorous on first glance, but with deeper inspection, rather maddening to me.
While the students at this University were on vacation, life went on at a majority of the institutes of higher education in this country. One of those places still functioning was the University of Georgia.
Centered in Athens, the university is the birthplace of R.E.M., a tree that is its own legal entity and apparently a Wesley Foundation that practices of pirates vs. ninjas. Now, our campus may well have its problems with the evil squirrel Lord Skewlthor and his minions, but apparently the Dawgs have church-sanctioned celebrations of vicious killers. Well, not so much, but, in the words of Matthew McConaughey’s “Dazed and Confused” character Wooderson, it’d be a whole lot cooler if they did.
One young man, a sophomore named Jeremiah Ransom, dressed as a ninja, was “peeping around the corner” and wearing two red bandannas, one covering the top of his head and the other covering the bottom, according to Vanessa McLemore, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm special agent in charge, who was quoted in UGA’s Red and Black newspaper.
Wait, yes, that’s right. ATF agents (or, as they are known in Louisiana, the three essentials of any good party) were on campus that day for a Project Safe Neighborhoods training.
Back to our story, according to the ATF account, the agents told Ransom to freeze. Ransom, thinking it was a joke, took off running. He was then “detained” when the agents announced that they were from the ATF. The photo of the incident, taken by a camera phone, is online and shows a burly agent with his knee on the young man’s neck. When the agent discovered that he was not a threat, he released Ransom.
The university police chief, Jimmy Williamson, said he had a “constructive talk” with the ATF supervisor, and Random, whose version of the story claims that the agents thought he had a gun, is considering a lawsuit.
There are two ways of looking at this story, and there has been quite a debate on the online feedback forum at the university newspaper. One is that this young man was foolish to dress up as a ninja and run from grown men who turned out to be armed federal agents. The other is that this amounts to a gross overreaction and a symptom of our increasingly paranoid and authoritarian state. As one could guess, I favor the latter interpretation.
I don’t worry about too much in my life, but something strikes me deep in my gut when federal agents chase down a college student dressed as a ninja in broad daylight on the mistaken assumption that he was armed.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know that Athens is a rather nice town and the University of Georgia isn’t exactly a collection of mud huts, but I sincerely doubt the spectre of terrorism will ever darken that university campus, or, more than likely, any other in this country outside of New York or L.A.
The real terror, and the terror I’d wager Ransom felt, is the thought of a citizenry acquiescing to what would have been, if only just a few years ago, a gross violation of their rights in the name of fighting an elusive enemy that may or may not ever reach our shore.
Still, I’m not surprised by this. Honestly, I’m not. Perhaps it is my pessimism speaking, but I believe this behavior will become more and more common as long as this war lasts. And as we fall back further and further into our barbaric instincts, the hope for a reversal toward liberty grows dimmer every day.
But, you know, keep sending letters complaining about University sports, and we’ll keep writing editorials no one cares about.
 
Ryan is a history senior. Contact him
at [email protected]