Non Tasarmi, Fratello!

“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!” Hillaire Belloc

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

The Rest of the Story is Even MORE Depressing

At Providence College, a Catholic college operated by the Dominican Order of Preachers, a resident assistant has come under fire from the student community afte



Michael Smalanskas, a senior at Providence and an RA in the St. Joseph’s Hall dormitory, put up a display on his hall bulletin board on March 1 that read, “Marriage: The Way God Intended It . . . One Man, One Woman,” with several images and a quote from the Bible.
Smalanskas tells National Review that the bulletin board wasn’t intended to target his residents or any students for their beliefs or their sexuality. In fact, he says it had nothing to do with Providence students at all. “It was basically to expose a double standard on campus that certain positions — mainly conservative and Catholic positions — are not welcome here and are treated with hatred,” he says to me in a phone interview.
When students returned from a week of spring break, they discovered the board and immediately became incensed. The board itself was completely torn down within a few hours, and groups of students began congregating in the hallway just outside Smalanskas’s room. That night, campus security approached Smalanskas and asked to bring him to another building to spend the night because they were concerned about his safety.
In addition, a drawing was placed in a dormitory restroom depicting Smalanskas being raped. He received harassing text messages from other RAs and fellow students, accusing him of creating a hostile and unsafe environment on campus. Students attacked him on social media, calling the board an act of homophobia. Another RA let himself into Smalanskas’s building and put up his own sign reading, “Providence College Welcomes Everybody.”
Shortly thereafter, students took their complaints to the Providence College administration, demanding that Smalanskas be removed from his RA position and be punished in some way. They also asked the school to create a policy governing bulletin boards so that what they consider harmful material can no longer be posted; currently, there are no rules dictating what can appear on the boards.
“Essentially what they’ve been asking for is a safe space from Catholicism,” Smalanskas tells me of the students’ demands.

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