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Volume LXVIII, No. C
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Editorial:
By Damon Hickey
What does the "Bryan Inci
dent" really mean? The par
ticipants and onlooker will have
their own answers, which may
change over time. As a member
of the Judicial Board that heard
the cases growing out of this inci
dent I have reached some
answers too.
First I am terrified by the
rapid escalation of violence and
by the assumptions that brought
it about. A pair of strangers
(black students from another
school) show up in a dorm at four
in the morning. Words are ex
changed with a group of (white)
Guilford students. They feel
threatened, and one of the
strangers is shoved or kicked.
The strangers now feel threaten
ed, and one pulls a gun. A
bystander then goes after his own
gun. Racial slurs fly. A car win
dow in smashed and the first fun
is destroyed. A fight insues in
which miraculously no one is
seriously injured. The second gun
is put away. Security and the
police arrive.
Why did it happen? Racial
feeling undoubtedly played a part
on both sides. But I am struck by
the degree to which violence ex
ploded because no one was will
ing to back down and simply walk
What is Biofeedback
By Barbara Ruby
Are you sitting there asking
yourself, "What in the world is
biofeedback?" According to
Robert M. Stern and William J.
Ray, authors of Biofeedback:
Potential and Limits,
"Biofeedback can be defined as
the use of monitoring in
struments (usually electrical) to
detect and amplify internal
physiological processes within
the body, in order to make this or
dinarily unavailable information
available to the individual and
literally to feed it back to him in
some form." (P. 5).
What this means is that it is
possible to register body func-
Insight into Bryan Incident
away from a confrontation,
racial or not. Each successive
escalation was justified
automatically as a defensive
response to a perceived greater
threat. It takes very little im
agination to see frightening
parallels in the arena of interna
tional relations.
The parallels are even more
frightening when it comes to
guns. As someone who has never
handled, fired, or owned a gun, I
am terrified by the quick
recourse to deadly weapons,
loaded or not. (An unloaded gun
is just as frightening as a loaded
one if the target does not know it
is unloaded. And an unloaded gun
is just as likely to be countered by
another gun that is loaded.) We
can be very thankful that no one
was seriously injured or killed.
On the positive side, I am
heartened by the quick and
strong response from students,
college officials, and faculty to
the racial discomfort, hurt, and
fear that followed the incident.
Some students have been accused
of overemphasizing the racial
character of the incident. On the
contrary they should be thanked
for their sensitivity to the racial
disunity, justified or not, which
the incident produced, and for
trying to overcome it.
I am also thankful that with
some exceptions, Guilford
tions through the use of feedback
(which in our case is usually
audio feedback).
Next semester, the biofeed
back clinic will be staffed by six
students. Claire Morse, a
psychology professor, is the
faculty advisor. The clinic will be
a professional service that is free
and open to all Guilford College
students and residents in the sur
rounding community. Confiden
tiality is maintained.
There are three pieces of
biofeedback equipment that are
used in the clinic. The EMG
(electromyogram) is used in
order to monitor muscle tension.
The EEG
(electroencephlagram) is used to
Guilford College, Greensboro, N.C. 27410
students seem to have acted to
restrain violence and restore
order. One gun was smashed, not
fired, and the other was put away
at the insistence of Guilford
students. A jack handle was used
as a restraint, not as a club. When
one student lost his control, his
friends held him back. The
stranger who had pulled a gun
was released, not beaten, by
those whom he had threatened.
Most of the participants in the
Judicial Board hearings would
probably agree that the accused
students have been treated fairly,
and that both they and the com
munity have received justice.
Despite premature protests
about negative pretrial publicity,
most of us know not to believe
everything we read in the
newspaper, and are able to
render relatively open, unbiased
judgemets.
I was particularly struck dur
ing the proceedings, and in
reading letters to the paper, by
the different ways Euro and
Afroamericans view racial name
calling. A white students may use
a racial epithet in the heat of in
tense confrontation and see it as
directed only at the immediate
adversary. But a black bystander
immediately identifies with the
person at whom it is directed
because it is based on race, and
feels dehumanized and threaten-
measure the frequency and
amplitude of brain wave activity.
And the third piece of equipment
measures temperature and
allows learning to change
temperature of the extremities.
In the past, clients have come
to the clinic to learn how to con
trol teeth grinding, tension
headaches, cold hands and to
achieve overall relaxation. Of
course just plain curiosity has
also brought people on to try out
the equipment.
The clinic will be opening on
January 29th and the hours will
be posted on the door of King 224.
If you would like more informa
tion, you can contact Steve
Saltzgiver at Box 17466, or Claire
Morse at ext. 208. Hope to see you
next semester!
Ed by it. And, like it or not, fair or
unfair, racial epithets are not all
equal.
We whites have always held
the balance of real power in this
society and our resort to those
words conveys a threat that
"white trash" and "honkie" can
never match. Nor is my use of an
epithet aimed at blacks the same
as a black person's use of the
same epithet toward another
black. That is why this incident
was so widely perceived as racial
and racist. I hope that white
Guilfordians will cease to use or
tolerate those words in fun, in
anger, or in any other context.
But beyond all these lessons I
have seen something that is real
ly wonderful. It is the miracle of
unity and reconciliation, of love,
emerging from hatred and con
frontation. At the interracial
meeting following the incident,
one of the Guilford students in
volved in the violence was shock
ed to discover that his actions had
produced fear and alienation
among his black friends.
His courage and caring in
coming to the meeting then led
him to approach one of the black
students who had witnessed the
incident. He began to learn from
her how racial epithets hurt all
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December 12, 1984
black people, not just the ones at
whom they are directed. And she
began to realize that he had not
meant to hurt her.
Although she signed the com
plaint against him, she also spoke
on his behalf at the hearing.
These two students are excep
tional people who reached out to
each other across a chasm of
fear, anger, and hurt. But their
action helped to release the same
potential in others, helping to
transform an experience of com
munity division into one of heal
ing and growth.
We have far yet to go, and
should not rush to congratulate
ourselves on having reached a
happy ending. Racism is real on
our campus. Black students still
fear being forced to live in a men
tal world of blacks versus whites.
Old wounds have been opened
that are not yet closed. But we
have had an example here in our
midst of liow we can bring about
positive change, through frank,
open, deep, sharing discussion, in
the courage to labor with those
who seem to be our enemies in
order to transform them and
ourselves into friends. I hope that
is what in the end the "Bryan In
cident" really means.