By Michelle Kroes
Daily Bruin Contributor
By addressing the gender disparities that persist in the arts,
three theater students became the target of sexism last
quarter.
While publicizing “T.houghts I.’m T.hinking,”
an upcoming play on gender inequality, Paola Mendoza, Julia
Faussone and Leilani Copper had their posters defaced.
“Many of the posters that hung upon the walls of the
theater department were defamed,” Mendoza said. “Words
such as “˜Fact: Women suck,’ “˜Don’t you need
men to make more angry feminists,’ and “˜Vag’ for
vagina marred the posters.”
The posters displayed statistics on the differences between men
and women in the entertainment industry.
Additionally, a poster was hung in the department ridiculing
their efforts, Mendoza said. It stated “Kill Men … all of
them. Sound extreme? Or maybe you’re just chicken
shit.”
“I was really saddened by what happened,” Faussone
said. “We were just trying to use the play as an educational
tool and bring some issues up.”
According to Undergraduate Students Association Council Internal
Vice President Elias Enciso, this incident is ultimately, a hate
crime.
“Under current policy it could be considered a hate
related incident but under my consciousness it is a hate
crime,” Enciso said. “The defacing of the posters is a
manifestation, a promotion, a perpetuation of misogyny and
ignorance, which has real consequences.”
UCLA passed a hate crime policy last quarter.
Mendoza, Faussone and Copper were not only affected by the
defacement but the response ““ or lack thereof ““ it
elicited from others.
“We learned that one person involved with writing on our
posters was bragging and laughing about it to a group of
people,” Mendoza said. “And nobody said
anything.”
Last spring, a white man yelling racial slurs kicked an African
American woman on the stairs of Campbell Hall. Also that spring,
perpetrators vandalized offices in Kerckhoff Hall, marking some
with swastikas.
Such incidents, however, incite more serious responses from the
public than gender-based crimes, said Tina Oakland, director of the
Center for Women and Men.
“There is often an underlying and unspoken assumption that
prejudice against gender is somehow less real and impactful than
with ethnicity or sexual orientation or physical disability,”
Oakland said. “This is clearly not true. Prejudice is
prejudice, and it hurts.”
“T.houghts I.’m T.hinking,” to be performed
later this month, was a vehicle for Mendoza and Faussone, who came
up with the play, to express themselves while educating an
audience.
“It is the responsibility of the artist toward society to
make people think,” said William Ward, chair of the theater
department. “I encourage our students to do this.”
But Ward said he does believe that a line must be drawn,
especially when someone is impinging on another’s right of
expression. Defacing the student’s posters is a negative and
threatening response, he said.
“The very foundation of the university is the free
expression of ideas, and it is very regrettable when some are
unwilling to partake in this,” Ward said.
To report a hate crime, please call university police at (310)
825-1491.
POSTERS DEFACED A series of posters displayed
in the theater department containing statistical information was
defaced. SOURCE: Guerrilla Giirls and Kunda Productions Original
graphic by ADAM BROWN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by ROBERT
LIU/Daily Bruin Senior Staff