By now, the controversy over the Ohio University “Blood Bucket Challenge” video is relatively old news: About a month ago, Megan Marzec, president of the OU student senate, was challenged by the university president to dump a bucket of ice water over her head in support of ALS research. She responded by making a video of herself accusing Israel of genocide, pouring a bucket of red-dyed water over her head, and advocating for OU to divest from Israel. According to people on the scene, “a circus” of protest, threats, support, official distancing, and talking points ensued. Many called for Marzec to step down or at least to apologize, she has done neither.
The controversy reached its tipping point on September 11 during a meeting of the student senate, when four pro-Israel students launched a filibuster to get her to resign. According to the student paper, the Post Athens, after about four minutes, Marzec called on the speaker, Rebecca Sabo, to stop so that other students could speak. Sabo and others continued to speak. As they filibustered on, Marzec yelled for them to stop and threatened to have them arrested. By this point, others were making noise and calling the filibusters “fascists” to get them to stop. Eventually, the police did arrest the filibustering students. After they left, Marzec said she will “not apologize for the people of Palestine” and called the arrested students “fascists.”
Performers of juvenile stunts versus filibusterers–thus is the state of “dialogue” about the The Conflict on campus in 2014, I thought. Then, a ray of hope came in the actions of former OU Student Senate Treasurer Carter Phillips. You should read the full report in the Cleveland Jewish News here, but in short, on September 17, Phillips read a lengthy speech to the Senate, where he, among other things, denounced Marzec for alienating a large swath of students by abusing “her current position to promote her own political agenda,” and said,
Now, it becomes our turn to listen to our constituency, and what do we do? We disrupt them when they’re speaking, we chant when they sit down and we have them arrested for speaking out. All legitimacy we had as the student government of this university went out of the door in handcuffs last Wednesday….This is no longer a government, it is a circus, and it breaks my heart to see an organization that has the ability to help every student on this campus destroy itself.
Phillips deserves all the credit in the world for doing what Marzec should have done—taking responsibility for turning the campus you are supposed to serve into a platform for your own politics.
You could argue this was a misguided move; Phillips is probably among the least responsible for the situation getting so out of hand, and the senate would probably be better for having his voice in it. Could his continued voice be a bucket of ice water over the senate’s hot head?
Unlikely. From everything I’ve seen, that circus is in town to stay. To remain in it would be a needless headache for someone wishing to stay sane. This is something I’ve noticed more broadly, too—once things get inflamed, the moderates are always the first to leave.
But I think this whole incident is most significant for its status as one of the most extreme examples of what’s happening in diverse communities everywhere, from book clubs, to Facebook comment threads, to national parliaments. We’ve all found ourselves in situations where we come together to do one thing, someone makes it about another thing, controversy and chaos ensue. As this is the time of year for introspection, instead of shaking our heads at OU, let’s instead use this opportunity to see some of ourselves and our own lives in these events to learn how we can prevent, or at least mitigate, similar situations. Here are the lessons I took away:
- Take responsibility for your actions. If your brilliant plan to shock your community into enlightenment fails, step down. The organization will be able to help more people without you around as a distraction, and, as a bonus, you’ll now have more time to agitate for your cause through more appropriate fora. The story of Dr. Richard Horton of Haifa is a great example: Over the summer, he published an open letter in The Lancet criticizing Israel’s “massacre” in Gaza over the summer. In the wake of the circus that followed, he issued an apology for the “completely unnecessary polarization” it caused.
- If you don’t take responsibility, it’s very likely that someone much less responsible for the bad situation will ultimately have to.
- Admit failure. OU has not divested. Although people are rightly sympathetic towards Marzec personally due to all the threats she received, it’s unlikely anyone’s been newly turned on to her cause after seeing her stunt. The lives of Palestinians under occupation hasn’t changed one iota. While Americans were busy dumping ice buckets, or matzah balls, or red-dyed water over their heads, Israeli doctors were curing someone of ALS for the first time in history. By any measure, any greater goal Marzec may have had for her video hasn’t come to pass. Recognize that showing the world how unfit for leadership you are doesn’t help the your cause, admit failure, and see the first lesson.
- Leadership comes with additional responsibilities and limitations. Marzec has every right to believe whatever she wants and to express those beliefs in any way that doesn’t harm others. The issue here is with her expressing those beliefs as student senate president. Any representative position contains tensions over whether your constituents elected you to represent their views, or whether they elected you because your views already represent theirs. But when you’re the president of a body so diverse as a student senate of a large university, you must lean towards the former position in order to truly represent the student body you were elected to lead. In this episode, Phillips understands this, and Marzec doesn’t, and this makes the second lesson all the more unfortunate.
- Don’t go down with the ship. If the cause is hopeless, don’t wear yourself out trying to be the savior. Let it be known why you’re stepping down, then find better ways to serve your cause.
- Conversing with people or groups more interested in winning than learning is a waste of time. If you want to create positive change, or even get people to see your point of view, the only way to do it is through open, productive dialogue with those who disagree. Becoming an unstoppable force only creates more immovable objects.
- And seriously, don’t arrest student activists for filibustering.
Here’s to a new year of learning from mistakes (ours and other people’s), wise activism, productive dialogue, and true peace.
Derek M. Kwait graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and is editor in chief of New Voices.
