Students Spray Paint Goldwin Smith Hall with “I Can’t Breathe”

The photo above shows one of two columns in front of Goldwinsmith Hall on the Arts Quad that were each spray-painted with the words “I Can’t Breathe” eleven times. The photo was posted early Monday morning on the public Facebook group called “Overheard at Cornell,” in which anyone can post quotes or pictures of things heard or seen around campus.

Later, a photo was posted of Cornell maintenance workers scrubbing away at the graffiti.  

The red spray paint is in the same font and is the same color as the “Fight Back Kill Rapists” graffiti that sprang up across campus earlier this semester. (See here if you’re unfamiliar with this incident).

In their zeal to topple systems of institutionalized oppression, social justice warriors (SJWs) on campus and elsewhere always seem to conveniently ignore the fact that their childish acts are usually cleaned up by working class people who rarely have anything to do with their causes. Meanwhile, after a bit of vandalizing for the day, the SJWs retire to their cozy rooms to sip on lattes and check their Facebook feeds on their Mac laptops. They make pseudo-intellectual babble about obscure texts written by nobodies of disciplines no one cares about. At the same time, real men and women with real jobs, such as those in the picture above, are out contributing to the economy and to the community.

The reason why “I Can’t Breathe” was spray-painted on the columns, as explained in the picture above, is because Cornell and all Cornellians are complicit in the perpetuation of white supremacy (and all other forms of oppression, such as capitalism, heteropatriarchy, etc.).

An interesting point to note: Goldwin Smith, a professor of English and Constitutional History from 1868-1871, was an outspoken critic of imperialism and slavery.