Posted on 04/30/2004 1:03:04 PM PDT by Happy Valley Dude
UMass student hiding after death threats Friday, April 30, 2004 By JENNIFER PICARD jpicard@repub.com
AMHERST - A University of Massachusetts student is in hiding after reportedly receiving death threats stemming from a column he wrote in Wednesday's Daily Collegian.
Rene L. Gonzalez's column in the campus newspaper portrayed former National Football League player Pat Tillman, killed in battle last week, as "an idiot" for leaving football to join the Army Rangers.
Gonzalez's column said Tillman was not a hero but a fool for joining the elite Rangers and, consequently, getting shot and killed April 22 in Afghanistan.
The column has sparked a national outcry and triggered sharp criticism, including from the Massachusetts Senate, the university's president and the campus community.
Yesterday, in a brief e-mail to a television reporter from CBS affiliate WBZ-TV in Boston, Gonzalez, 25, apologized to Tillman's family, but declined to be interviewed. Gonzalez has also not responded to The Republican's requests for comment.
"I felt that his celebrity had been a factor in American society calling him a 'hero,' and I felt American society had arrived at that conclusion without much thinking, but rather as some sort of patriotic 'knee-jerk' into hero worship," Gonzalez wrote in the e-mail. "That was my point. I did it (admittedly) in such an insensitive way, that the article was not worth publishing."
Dan Lamothe, the Collegian's managing editor, said yesterday that Gonzalez told the paper's staff that he had received death threats Wednesday night. The staff has not heard from Gonzalez since.
Amherst Police Lt. Scott P. Livingstone said a member of Gonzalez's family talked to officers yesterday about the threats, but did not file a formal complaint.
The state Senate yesterday approved a resolution of condemnation, with one member, Sen. Robert Hedlund, R-Weymouth, calling Gonzalez a "nitwit."
University President Jack M. Wilson called Gonzalez's opinion column "a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack on a human being who died in service to his country."
"We are fortunate that so many people like Pat Tillman have made the sacrifices necessary to protect the free speech rights of Mr. Gonzalez, myself and our fellow citizens," said Wilson yesterday in his prepared statement.
The University's Student Government Association President, Jared Nokes, has also called for the resignation of Gonzalez from his position in the Office of African, Latino, Asian, and Native American Affairs at the Amherst campus. That office is funded primarily by the association.
Safety Pat Tillman turned down a $3.6 million contract playing with the Arizona Cardinals in 2002 to enlist with the Army. Tillman was promoted posthumously from specialist to corporal.
Gonzalez, a graduate student studying for a doctorate in political science, denounced Tillman in his column, which ran next to another student-written column praising Tillman as a hero.
Gonzalez's piece likened Tillman to a romantic Rambo.
"They should call Pat Tillman's army life "Rambo 4: Rambo Attempts to Strike Back at his former Rambo 3 Taliban Friends, and Gets Killed," wrote Gonzalez.
Americans, he wrote, can't admit the "stupidity of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars."
"This was a "G.I. Joe" guy who got what was coming to him. That was not heroism, it was prophetic idiocy," Gonzalez wrote.
Gonzalez's small family home at The Hollow in Amherst was silent yesterday, with duct tape covering the house number in an apparent effort to deter the media. No one was home.
Gonzalez's next-door neighbor, Mary Rives, characterized him as a liberal and active student politician, with "politically progressive" views. He had been active in the campaign to stop bomb testing on Vieques Island in the family's native Puerto Rico, she said.
Gonzalez is also a musician whose at-home jam sessions with his father and brother often caught her attention, Rives said.
"I can't defend the lack of consideration he gave (the Tillman family). I would have preferred (Gonzalez) deliver his message in a more sensitive way," said Rives.
But the right to free speech is paramount, she said. The national furor over Gonzalez's column is really a reflection of the often blindly pro-military attitude adopted by Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks, she noted.
The Collegian newsroom was flooded with calls and Internet postings yesterday. So many people were accessing the server that it shut down, said Lamothe and Sports Editor Andrew S. Merritt.
"We've been getting hate mail in the sports (e-mail) account," he said.
Merritt and the paper's editorial board wrote a response to the brouhaha in yesterday's edition.
While the paper, which is financially independent of the university system, may not endorse Gonzalez's views, its pages remain a place for students to express their constitutional right to free speech, said the editorial.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
Copyright 2004 MassLive.com. All Rights Reserved.
And so is the responsinility that comes with that freedom...
And so is the responsibility that comes with that freedom...
In more ways than one.
In other words, a scumbag.
Friggin idiot.
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