Spring is in the air. The weather is magnificent once more, and so much life is popping up with vigor on our campus.
This includes Brother Jed.
It’s with some hesitation that I choose to write about him. Attention is the resource on which individuals like Brother Jed and hate groups — ones that will go nameless for this precise reason — rely on.
In most circumstances, the best way to combat the self-righteous bigotry is to dismiss it entirely. It brings me incredible pride as a member of the IU family to see how promptly people will mobilize to paint over oppressive messages on the Jordan Avenue bridges or sacrifice water from their own bottles to blight out hateful icons.
It sends a clear message that despite the vile micro-minority, this is a student body that ?fundamentally cares.
But what is there to be done when the message is more active and in the flesh?
It is pretty hard for a student here to go more than a single semester without knowing about Brother Jed. He is very shrewd at what he does, placing himself in the centermost spot on campus and accosting passersby with pseudo-Christian drivel. It would be difficult for a unicycling elf juggling live ostriches to garner more attention.
It’s because this is a population that to its core reviles such overt hatred that many find it impossible to disregard such explicit expressions of intolerance when it’s coming from a real person.
Students gather in droves to shout, screech and sneer back at Jed, telling him how archaically wrong he is.
Brother Jed doesn’t wake up in the morning — still in full tweed — and ask himself, “I wonder if one of those bright and passionate students will finally change my mind today?”
People need to think beyond the reactionary and realize that what the Bible beating fanatic wants is attention, not a rhetorical discussion, not a persuasive ?argument. He isn’t a scholarship contest in human form.
If he were demanding your money, you wouldn’t give him your paycheck. This person screams with every 1950s cotton fiber of his being for attention, and it is exactly what he receives.
This past week, members of safe sex awareness student group RAISE were already on campus and decided to divvy out their free condoms at Brother Jed’s filth-spouting spot. That is so much closer to mirroring the sort of nullification that we use against chalking and bridge paintings.
It is diverting the attention Brother Jed so desperately covets and places it in an activity more productive than publicly sermonizing condemnation or actively listening and participating in such vitriol.
I’d like to challenge our most compassionate students to try a new tactic the next time this man graces our campus.
It’s another dazzling spring day in Bloomington. The red and white flowers couldn’t radiate more vibrantly. They tilt slightly to and fro in the gentle breeze. Brother Jed stands rooted in his usual spot.
What is unusual is that this time no one is stopping to engage with the nonconvertible. This monolith that has been harassing the campus for actual decades is blue in the face as he delivers his newest and most inflammatory material. The people of IU continue to walk by, disinterested and donating nothing more than maybe a quick glance.
I couldn’t think of a scene that makes this tragic, backward man look ?more disempowered.
A fire needs oxygen to survive. If we don’t want this incendiary man on this campus, then let’s not waste our breath.
gmleeds@indiana.edu
