by Leigh Wingfeld
Ever since the installation of the John Marshall Harlan (JMH) Statue, I’ve been noticing some disturbing patterns developing on this campus. Everything just seems to be going wrong! Murphy’s law has been putting in some work; truly anything that can go wrong has gone wrong. We’ve had crazy weather, losses, and other disasters back-to-back since the installation of the statue. I think the spirit of JMH is haunting our campus!
As everyone on campus knows, the statue is controversial at best. Has anyone considered that maybe JMH doesn’t like his statue there either? If JMH’s spirit is truly upon us, he may have two issues with Centre. First, JMH is probably upset about all the non-white people on campus: you know how he feels about the Chinese. He probably never imagined his proud white college would be home to a large diversity of students across gender and race. In his mind, this has to just be absolutely unacceptable.
This is interesting as I’ve always thought Centre was a place to come learn more about our world and be the best version of ourselves; I don’t think this includes JMH’s racism. Second, his statue is mediocre at best. It’s not thought-provoking or beautiful, it’s just there. I think he might be offended by being portrayed in such a bland light.
One solution to save us from this curse could be making the old racist politician a new, more beautiful statue, and adjusting the values of our campus to match his. Another solution to lift this curse is to remove the statue altogether, so we are no longer struck with the blight of JMH’s curse. Of course, I doubt the Centre admin will take either of these routes. They don’t seem to want to do anything but build useless things and increase tuition.