Brehm should take BSU proposals into consideration\nI am a junior on campus and a member of the Black Student Union. I personally do feel that Chancellor Sharon Brehm should strongly consider the suggestions that Black Student Union has made regarding the murals. I have seen the mural once. Last semester I had a final in the room. When I first walked in I didn't see it, but I like to sit in the front of classes and I just happened to glance to my left, and there it was. It can take you by surprise and have you staring at it for a second. Had I not been educated by Black Student Union on the fact that it was there, I probably would have been confused on that day. I think that any student who is a freshman and has a class there, would be confused (especially a Black student). There is no explanation for it being there and the average student might not know what those murals are supposed to mean.\nAlso, over spring break I was in Indianapolis, and I heard a Black radio talk show discussing the murals. So it is not just the Black students on campus who are concerned, but also parents, alumni and Black people in general in many different places who are very concerned about this issue.\nKandice Franklin\nJunior
Murals honor artist, spirit of artwork \nPlease honor the artist and the spirit in which he rendered the creation in question. It is but a small part of a larger gift. Please show respect for his sense of Indiana's place in history, and leave the work. It is a part of who we all are, where we have been and as we reflect upon it, may it shed light on where we go from here. Leave the work; educate the people. Life is short; art is long.\nBarbara Lucas\nStaff, IU Dept. of Labor Studies
Murals depict events in Indiana history\nPersonally, I think all this commotion about the Murals in Woodburn Hall 100 is just a misunderstanding. I understand what the Black Student Union is saying about it showing racism by depicting the Ku Klux Klan and in almost all contexts it would be wrong to show something like that. But the mural's purpose is not to promote racism, violence or hatred. If that were the case, it would not have been put in the hall in the first place. Its purpose is simply to depict many events in Indiana's history, and unfortunately, those practices once took place in our past. So I say to the opposers of the mural, look at it as a part of our history that was overcome and let the mural be there as a reminder of that, not as a reminder of racism.\nLuke Copeland\nSophomore
Murals should be moved to museum \nWould IU place in a classroom an artistic depiction of the World Trade Center bombing with Bin Laden sitting in the middle of it? I think not.\nI have been a librarian on the IU-Bloomington campus for twelve years and I have witnessed the periodic outcry of African American students against having a painting of a church and cross burning with the Ku Klux Klan depicted in it displayed in a lecture hall where they are forced to attend classes and take exams. It is my position that IU should take the best means available to remove the Thomas Hart Benton mural in Woodburn Hall, and place it in a museum. Images of the Ku Klux Klan, a symbol of hate, death and domestic terrorism that African Americans were subjected to for hundreds of years and a terrorism that it is still possible to encounter today, has historical value -- but has no place in a hall of learning where all students should feel completely free. \nGrace Jackson-Brown\nAfrican American Cultural Center
Indiana history includes Klansmen\nWhile removing or covering the murals is a fast and easy solution for any offensiveness the murals have caused, there are other considerations to take into account. \nAs an African-American student, I am partially disturbed by the image of the burning cross and Ku Klux Klan, but the image is no different from turning the pages in a history book and seeing the same deplorable scenes, sometimes to a higher degree. The murals' purpose should not be taken out of context, to display the history of Indiana, that is all. By attending IU or even as a citizen of Indiana, one should almost expect to encounter some part of Indiana history in one form or another, and part of Indiana's history happens to include the Ku Klux Klan. To turn a negative into a positive, gain diversity and learn from one another, it would be great to see African-American student artists organize a mural expressing our history, perhaps depicting major images from the Harlem Renaissance and the Protest/Black Aesthetics Movement.\nRemoving or covering the mural will not solve anything, the image will always be embedded in our minds.\nLindsay Cannon\nFreshman
Murals unjust and wrong in classroom\nI find it highly offensive that the mural in Woodburn Hall 100 occupies a space in a classroom.\nWith such high racial tensions and frequent racial incidents occurring on this campus I can't help but feel that IU endorses and allows these awful things to take place. To allow an illustration of the hatred we constantly experience in this country as well as on this campus to remain in a classroom where learning should take place is flat out unjust and wrong. The mural needs to be taken out of the classroom and placed somewhere else.\nCrystal N. Wise\nSenior
Removal blow to artistic expression\nHow out of touch am I to think that removing the murals from their present location is actually a blow against diversity, at least diversity in artistic expression? Exactly how out of context can a mural depicting a portion of Indiana history be in a classroom in the state's best university? Is this the\nbiggest ethnic issue confronting BSU, La Casa and the Asian Cultural group? Issues used to be so much bigger, used to have a real impact, like whether to establish a Black Studies curriculum or whether to even have Black faculty.\nAs for being distracting, I never found them to detract from any of the less than memorable courses I took in that classroom and the memorable courses made them disappear entirely. I do feel for the distracted marketing student.\nTuck these panels away and most people will never see them; most students will never think Indiana had a Klan or a lynching.\nOne last question: If these panels were huge displays by Mapplethorpe or some other artist many found disturbing, would these groups then be for displaying only in context, only with other works by the same artists, only where some people might not be upset? All censorship starts off meaning well, at least well meaning to those doing the censoring.\nJames R. Brantley\nWheaton, Md.
Students responsible for own education\nLike it or not, the Ku Klux Klan and the State of Indiana have a shared history and whether that history is pleasant or unpleasant, the story must be told. Imagine if the images of the holocaust were 'removed' from history.\nIn the 1920s and 1930s, Indiana had the largest number of Klan members of ANY state. Klan membership was so widespread that many state and local politicians were members.\nCurrently, the headquarters of the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is located in Butler, Ind. It boasts as having the largest number of Klan members. \nThe "solution" to the murals in Woodburn Hall is not removal, covering them up during class or presenting videos about them.\nThe solution is for each student to take personal responsibility to learn, understand and remember the history of Indiana. It is NOT the duty of someone else to provide each student with an in-depth education regarding all aspects of Indiana history. At some point a student must find it within himself or herself to explore the various aspects of Indiana history and then discuss how that history affects \nus all. Then, together we should take measured steps to ensure that our differences are valued and not despised.\nRobert L. Moore, Jr.\nGraduate Student
Distraction is part of education process\nThe madness with the murals continues. Those against the murals in Woodburn Hall 100 have some valid points, but can we please eliminate the "distraction" argument?\nSeveral students have said something similar to Levar Woods ("Fate of mural on hold", March 7), "I should not have wasted one second looking at a mural when I was supposed to be taking a marketing test."\nI'm sorry, perhaps we should also get rid of that coughing student who bothers everyone. We should also get rid of windows in classrooms since I gaze out at them occasionally instead of paying attention; of all the other students since I spend some time looking at them and not my tests; and any other "distractions."\nPart of a student's duty is to work through distractions, whether it's a loud noise or a friend bugging you to go out with them. We all know that the purpose of the mural was not to taunt anyone but to remind us of Indiana's past. For those of you who can't block out the mural, I suggest sitting underneath it so that it's harder to see, or try a little harder to listen to the professor.\nDominic Imgrund\nSenior
IU should keep murals, create forum\nThe controversial Thomas Hart Benton painting, "Social Victories," in Woodburn Lecture Hall is a memorial to Chancellor Wells' character and vision.\nThe painting is a moral allegory of free speech, social justice and conservation, and Wells' placing it there is an intentional testament for the future leaders who study there. It also relates to the personal fact that his Progressive father had resisted KKK extortions to the point of business failure, and Wells single-handedly desegregated IU a decade before the civil rights movement. Also, President Bryan had stopped the KKK from undermining IU, before Wells.\nBenton critics might recall that he was raised until age six by the same aunt Maria Watkins who raised George Washington Carver. He abandoned the New York art scene's "meaningless abstract art" in favor of depicting the historical drama of real events.\nRelocating the painting to a museum will make it an icon for physical attack like the Harold Washington painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Why can't the Black Student Union propose a Civil Rights mural on its own merit without ransoming the Benton painting, and why stipulate the race of the artist? Any such mural would be incomplete without depicting the burning cross as having been overcome.\nInalterable thinking subtracts from one's higher education. A lack of art knowledge is not the definition of diversity, and sensitivity elevated to demonology demands counseling.\nIU should develop a Web site to help "complainers" understand this painting, censorship and art; provide work-study psychology and art tutors for them; keep a stack of printed handouts (by art administrators) on the subject at Woodburn and the BSU; the painting's lighting should be focused on the lower foreground primary subject matter; and students could be forewarned before enrolling in Woodburn 100 courses.\nLee Nading\nAlumnus
