University moves 70-ton rock off campus after student backlash | Hacker News Reader

University moves 70-ton rock off campus after student backlash

nbc15.com

45 pointshncurious38 comments

>It was referred to as a derogatory name in a Wisconsin State Journal story in the 1920s

>In a statement released Thursday, the university explained, “[r]emoving the rock as a monument in a prominent location prevents further harm to our community

>Chamberlin Rock, which is believed to be over two billion years old, was described by the university as a large pre-Cambrian-era glacial erratic. It was named for Thomas Chamberlin, a geologist who served as university president from 1887 to 1892

So, a 2 billion year old glacial erratic was removed because some time 100 years ago someone referred to it using a racial slur...and its existence was causing harm.

I can see why people get upset about things like Confederate statues and such...but this, I mean really...come on...it's not like it was officially named after a racial slur, the article doesn't seem to imply there was problems with people today referring to the rock by the racial slur. This just seems so ridiculous at this point.

They are claiming a giant rock causes harm because someone 100 years ago used a terrible word to describe it in a journal article.

If you choose to be offended and upset because someone used a word 100 years ago to describe a rock, that's probably on you at that point.

It’s called a name, and names have real meaning, because they’re created with social agreements. Paper money, too, is valuable only because we agree to do so.

Ergo,

Saying “all this hullabaloo over a bunch of green paper” about money is… both true in a physical sense and misses the mark in a sociopolitical sense.

Saying “a giant rock causes harm” is both true in the physical sense and misses the mark in a sociopolitical sense.

It's name is Chamberlin Rock. It wasn't given the other name, it was called it one time in a journal article in 1920.

Capitulating to the lowest common denominator is a recipe for disaster. The self-anointed who feign outrage over an inanimate object are just chasing power.

>The self-anointed who feign outrage over an inanimate object are just chasing power.

What power do you believe the Wisconsin Black Student Union, campus planning committee and Wisconsin Involvement Network (Wunk Sheek) are chasing, and why do you believe it was necessary for them to conspire to pretend to be upset about this inanimate object?

What do you believe this cabal's true end goal is, now that the rock has been moved and nothing stands in their way?

It's pretty simple. Demonstrate that their voices are heard and action taken as a result, and move on to something else. Yesterday, a rock; today, a portrait; tomorrow, a person.

But don't you find it odd that an Indigenous student group would be involved in an elaborate, multi-stage plot to "remove" people? It seems like the sort of thing they would be against, on principle.

There will always be people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre

waiting in the wings for the right opportunities to ratchet themselves up to positions of real authority, given the current population size. Even if everyone in the entire state of Wisconsin is perfectly well intentioned, which I highly doubt, not everyone on Earth is.

Or.... maybe the story is exactly as it appears: a student coalition petitioned to have the rock removed because it reminded them of a racist element of the school's past, and were successful. Maybe there is no Robespierre secretly gathering power and sharpening the guillotine, and no slippery slope towards the cultural Marxist dystopia Hacker News always seems to believe the world is tumbling headlong into.

So either the rock is meaningless, in which case... "more" power to them?

...or it's removal is meaningful, in which case they were right?

Either way: they have some not entirely implausible story of it being a symbol of something universally abhorred.

You are getting emotional in your indignation over their emotion. But then... that's it, isn't it? So you're grasping at straws trying to find some sinister motive in their actions, and base your argument on the absolute meaninglessness of the McMuffin at the center of it, and how you couldn't care less about it's whereabouts. But in the end, your argument comes back to "this doesn't matter".

So they kinda win by default, overwhelmingly, even if one were to agree that it's meaningless?

The rock isn’t _meaningless_, it’s inanimate. (Nice try at reframing though). As a 2 billion year old inanimate object, any racist qualities are obviously extrinsic. So those that find offense sufficient to want to remove the rock are themselves, assigning meaning to the words of an obscure article written over 100 years ago.

What is not meaningless is the time and resources redirected towards the rocks removal. Those are taxpayer funds btw, as this is a state university.

It’s perfectly congruent to feel indignation about the wasteful spending of public funds, without legitimizing the frivolous ‘outrage’ at the center of it.

So, if someone calls twitter by a racial slur once in the 1920s someone will come and take it away?

You don't say...

People want to get attention for helping society. This looks like a good option because no one is going to say they really need the rock to stay.

I dunno, geologists might. They can be real passionate about their rocks. Trust me, once you get one of them on the subject of glacial errata, good luck getting them to stop before the next glacier comes.

Geologists can still study the rock. They moved it somewhere else.

I think things like that add character to places. I do agree that if I was in the university that's not a hill I would like to die on, especially if people on the opposite side have social justice on their side. I'm glad they didn't destroy it at least.

It's insane. And it's insane that the school officials caved to such nonsense and actually removed the rock.

I really hope that school officials budgeted $X for student activities, and then let the students vote in some way how they wanted their activity funds to be spent, and this is what the student body chose.

It never really was about statues. If it was, then every thing - from the Pyramids, Great wall of China, Harvard law school, Yale University, Apple, Temples, Mosques, Churches, Mecca, the Taj Mahal, the state of New York, the NYTimes, everything should be destroyed. They even destroyed the statue of Frederick Douglass last year and tore down the statue of Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln.

It's about erasure of history, destruction and gaining power over others. It's much easy to repeat history if no one remember history. Same way ISIS destroyed statues and ancient monuments. And people who let it happen because "who cares for such small things" don't realize that this is how they let the overton window shift by giving away an inch while they are really taking a mile.

It is apparently impossible to google search for the actual nickname of the rock. In duckduckgo you can find it easily, which suggests that google forcefully removed the search results that mention that word in many natural searches for it. I'm a bit proficient at google-fu and pages containing the stupid word just do not appear.

I'm not from the USA and I feel ignorant to say anything about the racial issues there. But the technical depth of this thing is, to say the least, curious.

When I was at (a different) university, I know it was common for the geology 101 courses to have labs that used rock formations on campus to learn about [whatever it is geologists use to identify and classify rock, not pretending to know about the field]. This rock seems a lot cooler geologically than whatever we had on our campus. "Canceling" this rock could have a material impact on the education students receive.

The rock wasn't destroyed. It was moved to other university property that, according to the reports, is close enough to still be used in classes.

What if someone pointed to the university and called it the slur?

Call in the wrecking crew....

It is difficult to make one's mind up on the matter without knowing what racial slur it was named after. The topic is so heated the article didn't dare mention it.

"n****r head". Also a commonly used term in early 20th century America for any large black rock

Although I’m color blind, black is one of the few colors I can confidently identify—based on the pictures, this is boulder isn’t black?

Nope. It’s pretty light in color, basically a light gray.

Basically ‘N-word-________’ was used to describe anything that was a shade of black well into the mid 90s. ‘N-word paper’ was used to refer to the tar paper that goes on roofs; ‘n-word toes’ was used to describe a darker toned edible nut. People were (and many still are) pretty ignorant and hateful.

> Basically ‘N-word-________’ was used to describe anything that was a shade of black well into the mid 90s.

If you mean 1890s. I never heard what you are describing.

Bad typo - I meant mid-1900s but I was sleepy. The 9s threw my brain for a loop.

Edit: spelling

Racists are so uncreative and unintelligent. Non-white students paying good money for an education should ask for this garbage to be removed. Anything that is racist and still celebrated is fair game. Locals and staff that got comfortable with this nonsense obviously need to learn the lessons that they missed.

>It is difficult to make one's mind up on the matter without knowing what racial slur it was named after

Why would that matter? A racial slur is a racial slur.

Is there more to this story, or is this as dumb as the surface reading of it implies?

Now rocks are offensive to people?

I wouldn't expect anything less from UW Madison. Overpriced school riding on the coattails of previous generations who actually gave a damn about science.

Speaking as a blue collar guy, they missed an excellent opportunity to make 70 tons of racist gravel for backfill or rainwater control

Reply on news.ycombinator.com