[Home]CrossBurningIncident

On January 9, 2004 (near the end of winter break), four Claremont students (2 HMC, 1 Scripps, 1 CMC) were on campus for athletic reasons. One night, while down at Pomona, they decided that they wanted to burn something. A Pomona art student had reportedly spent most of the semester working on a piece of art, a cross about eleven feet high and six feet across. The idea, apparently, was to make it big enough for him to climb out of, going for a representation of Christ. This project was displayed for a while over the semester in an art gallery, and finally put on display at Oldenborg. This artwork was left up over the break, as it had been safe for a large part of the semester in the same place. However, the aforementioned students found this cross, and decided that it would make a good thing to burn. According to them, they did not know the implications^. They took the cross back to North and burned it. The remains were discovered the next morning by F&M. Even worse, it took a day or two for the students to find out about the implications and self-report. In the meantime, the burnt cross was taken as a serious threat. It's not a good idea to make the African-Americans on the five C's think someone is making a threat on their lives.

BadIdea, at the very least.

P.s. You do not prank public art, much less burn it!

^ If you don't know the implications, ever since the formation of the KKK, a burning cross has basically been a direct death threat to any blacks in the vincinity.


Probably NeedsRewriting.


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Last edited February 11, 2004 15:32 (diff)
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