On March 26, a campus sorority, Phi Mu, sponsored a fundraiser entitled "Jail N Bail." The concept was simple enough: participants were placed in a makeshift cage in the quad and students donated "bail money" to eventually release them.
The fundraiser was obviously supposed to be a fun concept, and it seems like many enjoyed themselves in the quad today. However, it seems that Phi Mu overlooked a more serious aspect of choosing to put on such an event: for more than one in every 100 people living in the United States, jail is not a joke -- it is reality. Such a fundraiser makes light of the prison system, a tangible human rights atrocity that destroys families and lives. Would a game making light of war or global starvation have gotten an OK to be held on the quad this week? I would think not. For some reason or another, jail can still be a joke, however.
As someone who has had to deal first-hand with the reality of loved ones being mistreated and abused within the prison system, I can tell you that neither jail nor raising bail is fun. They are matters of life and death at times, and I am sure that there are others within the American University community that can attest to this far better than myself. So as fun as it can be to make a game of prison or other serious situations in a highly privileged environment, all campus organizations need to consider critically the messages their events can send to the broader populous.
Tim Salemme Freshman, College of Arts and Sciences
