LETTER: Flier meant to attract attention, not to provoke tearing it down
Some of you may have noticed our recent poster advertising the fact that our dinner, which was planned for Sat., Oct. 14, has been canceled. However, I suspect that most of you will probably not see this poster.
It seems that some individual has decided to systematically tear down our fliers because he/she found them offensive. The fliers used a famous picture from the Vietnam War, and this same picture was used just two weeks ago in a flier that was not as widely distributed.
The picture is shocking, disturbing and very famous. It shows a South Vietnamese officer killing a North Vietnamese spy at point-blank range.
The decision to use the picture was mine, and I stand behind it for a variety of reasons.
Veggie Club is one of the most publicity-hungry organizations on campus, and I would bet a fair deal of money that we also print the most fliers on a semi-weekly basis of any club on campus.
We try to be funny, shocking or obtuse in our fliers, and as a result, we generally get noticed. Except for the most bland fliers, we've managed to offend some people every single time we had a flier.
I suspect I will continue to offend some people as long I make the fliers that Veggie Club uses. I also assume that the concept of a veggie club offends some people, so I'm essentially damned no matter what I choose.
In fact, I know the concept of Veggie Club offends some people because, I've been told, not eating meat is against the will of God. So, as long as I stay a vegetarian, someone somewhere will be offended.
However, the systematic removal of fliers you don't agree with amounts to censorship, and that's an ugly thought.
After all, quite a few people have died (many in wars, not surprisingly) so that we could have the right of free expression, and I find it oddly ironic that a war picture so offends someone that they choose to censor it, especially since the person being executed in that picture worked for a regime that had no qualms about censoring its opponents or about killing intellectuals.
I don't wish to defend what that South Vietnamese officer did. It's a matter that's been discussed at length, and yes, it was brutal. However, it's probably not all that uncommon with spies, who are not quite soldiers in the Geneva Convention sense of the word.
This incident happened a long time ago in a faraway place, and whether anyone likes it or not, that spy is quite dead.
The issue becomes one of whether I should use that picture in a flier, and there are a variety of defenses that I could use for the inclusion of that picture.
* People should be aware of brutality. While the Veggie Club doesn't try to be dogmatic about the meat industry, let's face it -- the meat industry is pretty brutal.
However, this sort of activity is not only sanctioned by the government when the meat industry does it, but it's also supported both directly and indirectly by the government, which receives my taxes. I don't have to put up with it silently, and that's one of the reasons I'm involved with Veggie Club.
In short, if you gave me the option of living like a veal calf or a factory-farmed chicken versus taking a bullet to the head, I'd imagine I'd pick the latter and so would most people. To put it pithily, if you think the poster's bad (or offensive), you ain't seen nothing.
* I need to catch your attention. This was a correction poster for the Veggie Club, and just last week, we had a poster (which I'm sure was offensive to someone in CK) which advertised a dinner on the 14th. Many people assumed we were having a dinner every week, and since I made the mistake, I needed to make sure it got corrected.
* Veggie Club is often accused of being militant. Since we're accused of being militant, I wanted to go ahead and "play it up." I wasn't ashamed of the poster at all, and it was favorably received by some people (who even took copies to send to friends).
* Freedom of expression protects our poster, and if censorship is the best idea that comes to mind when someone encounters something they don't like, I have to hang my head in shame that this is a product of a Rice education.
I received my BSEE from Rice in '91, and the only poster-ripping that happened then was by drunk people coming back from the Pub.
Now it seems that poster-ripping is the standard way of shutting out thoughts that don't agree with your own.
Veggie Club typically has a 50 percent defacement/tear-down rate, and while I can live with that, a campaign to systematically tear down posters is disheartening, especially when I'm supposed to be surrounded by this country's best.
* Ripping down this poster is utter hyprocrisy. The United States has fought in many wars to preserve rights.
Granted, the United States hasn't had a perfect record in the world. I honestly feel that we're among the best countries with regard to maintaining freedom.
Whether or not you personally believe the Vietnam War was about maintaining freedom, a good number of veterans do, and unlike most of us, they did support those beliefs with actual work and risk to their lives.
The spy being executed in that photograph was surely not in favor of freedom of expression and would probably have cost the lives of a number of U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers.
Ripping down a Veggie Club poster, though not likely to cause instability in neighboring countries, is still a stab at the intellectual freedoms that many people (including the South Vietnamese officer in that poster) fought for.
Overall, it should be clear that I have no regrets about making those posters, and I would hope that those people who believe in minor ideas like free expression would support the right of Veggie Club to put up posters on campus just like other clubs do.
Unfortunately, rather than causing an intellectual debate on campus (or even informing people about the fact that Veggie Club won't have a dinner on Oct. 14), the posters have fallen victim to one person who believes that his/her ideas are the only right ones on campus.
That's a pity because I've been told a number of times (and often in very derogatory ways) that I shouldn't be a vegetarian.
If I (and people like me) had caved in at that point, there probably wouldn't be a decent meal on campus most Saturday nights.
In case anyone would like to see the "offending" poster, it's available on our Rice Veggie Club WWW home page. The direct link to the picture is "http://www-ece.rice.edu/~vijaypai/rvc/pic/veggie.gif."
Vivek Pai
Graduate Student
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jones '91
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the October 13, 1995 issue.
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