10/02/2007
Georgetown Students Protest Response to Anti-gay Hate Crime
A group of students calling themselves "GU Pride" protested on the Georgetown campus yesterday to call attention to the anti-gay hate crime that occurred there on September 9, and the University's failure to notify the campus that it had occurred.
Georgetown student Philip Anderton Cooney, the son of George Bush's former chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, has been charged in connection with the attack in which a fellow student says he was assaulted after being followed and taunted with homophobic slurs.
Georgetown students held a rally on campus at which they hung a banner that said "Why can't you just be normal?" They then symbolically pelted the banner with paintballs. The students, who say they first learned about the attack from local station NBC4, then marched to the president's office.
According to the Georgetown Voice, "Though many students heard about the crime through media outlets on Thursday night, the Georgetown community was officially notified last Friday via e-mail by Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson."
Cooney's attorney has said that "an arrest made 'three weeks after the fact' based on identification though Facebook and without an independent police investigation did not establish his client’s guilt" according to the Voice. However, the paper reports that the police used what Alberto Jova, the commanding officer of the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit for the Metropolitan Police Department, called "a very strong investigatory [method]" of double verification. The victim was also able to pick Cooney out of a line-up photo of nine Georgetown students. Jova said that "the independent identifications, along with the victim’s injuries, constituted probable cause to arrest Cooney."
Cooney's lawyer still claims they arrested the wrong man.
Cooney's father, Philip A. Cooney, resigned from his White House position in 2005 and took a job as an oil lobbyist with ExxonMobil. In March, Cooney admitted during 2007 Congressional hearings that he had altered environmental reports in order to downplay the effects that man-made greenhouse gases were having on global warming.
Campus Rallies Against Prejudice [georgetown hoya]
Hate crime suspect identified in two line-ups [georgetown voice]
Georgetown Students Protest In Response To Alleged Hate Crime [nbc4]
(video)
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Son of Former Bush Aide Accused in Georgetown Anti-Gay Attack [tr]
Posted 8:38 AM EST by Andy in College, Crime, News, Washington DC | Permalink
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I know this is a very serious topic but, I'm sorry, the dude in the baseball cap and blue Polo shirt at point 1:04 - 1:02 in the NBC video (http://video.nbc4.com/player/?id=162431) reinforces the stereotype of gays and sports. (Watch where his paintball landed on that huge target.)
Posted by: PC | Oct 2, 2007 9:14:02 AM
the cooneys sound like a class act.
Posted by: gwyneth cornrow | Oct 2, 2007 9:59:24 AM
I'm not a violent person, I'm really not.
But I'll be honest about my desire to smack the f*ck out of that shit-eating grin on Tucker Carlson-wannabe's face.
Posted by: Wes | Oct 2, 2007 11:14:02 AM
I went to Georgetown U, and there's tons of homophobes.
But after that whole lacrosse player thing, we should only let ourselves be guided by the evidence on this one.
Posted by: Zlexar | Oct 2, 2007 11:26:40 AM
I too went to Georgetown, and believe me, 20 years ago it was not an easy place to be an 18-year-old confused and questioning of his sexual identity. The University was in the midst of a prolonged court battle to deny student gay groups "official University recognition" and with it the right to receive student activities funding like any other legitimate student organization.
I teach there now as an adjunct, and the place has come a VERY long way. When I was a student 20 years ago, the idea of a couple hundred gays and their supporters meeting in public would have been unthinkable. There were literally four or five openly and visibly gay students there in my entire four years. Hell, they couldn't even get enough people to man the gay group's booth at the student activities fair.
Sadly, there will always be haters among us, and when they show their ugly faces they should be condemned and punished. But one incident does not mean there's been no progress.
Posted by: DCPaddler | Oct 2, 2007 11:37:08 AM
I share ZLEXAR's concerns about the accused attacker and a rush to judgment. The identification by the victim is not ironclad proof of the kid's guilt because eyewitness and victim identifications are notoriously unreliable, and the ID was made in a very unorthodox way. It is very likely to get thrown out in court. If the kid is guilty I hope he gets the worst the law can throw at him, but we shouldn't treat that as a foregone conclusion.
Posted by: HermesDC | Oct 2, 2007 11:41:50 AM