This year, the theme of the RPI art department’s iEAR Presents is “Art and Islam.” I would guess that the RPI College Republicans didn’t know that. More significantly, I would wager that they don’t care. As a Ph.D. student in the School of Architecture, I certainly appreciate that we have an art department. I also appreciate the uniqueness of the department with its emphasis on technology. I appreciate it because I understand the value of art as fodder for creative thinking and problem solving, among other things. However, the College Republicans clearly do not share my sentiment. For example, despite the engineering feats in acoustics, civil engineering, and other fields that have informed the design of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, despite the current involvement and future promise of outstanding architects, engineers, and yes, artists, the College Republicans have the audacity to suggest on their blog that EMPAC is among “deviations from the mission of the Institute.” It is in the context of this fundamental failure to understand how initiatives like EMPAC enrich RPI that the College Republicans attempt to censure our art department.

It’s not that I can’t understand how the planned exhibit of Wafaa Bilal raised eyebrows. I understand the concern of the alumnus who writes a letter to President Shirley Ann Jackson posted on the blog of the College Republicans in which he points out that terrorism is never justified, even by those who may be impressionable because of difficult circumstances such as instability in Iraq. But who said that the artist was conveying that impressionable young people were justified in committing violent acts? The purpose of Bilal’s exhibit was to shed light on a situation of particular relevance that he is uniquely suited to comment on. Why shed light? One argument could be that in order to effectively root out terrorism, we need to know as much as we can about the people who are becoming involved. We need to know the difference between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, between insurgents that are recruited from groups that have tension related more to power struggles than to religion, and so on. If Bilal was a reporter writing on these issues, surely there would have been a better reception. However, this artist wants us to experience the harsh reality of terrorist recruiting methods and propaganda in a more direct and personal way. A news report is just not the same.

There is no mystery about the timeliness of iEAR’s theme this year. Too often we see the words Middle East and muslim to be homogeneous in the same way that some see the words Western and Christian as homogeneous. I am proud of our art department for recognizing that there has likely never been a time when it was more important for us to peer into the vicissitudes of existence of our neighbors in the Islamic world. I am ashamed that the RPI College Republicans prevented this from happening simply on account of artistic ignorance.

<b>Bobby Gibbs

GRAD</b>