The two homophobic incidents that took place on Sept. 14 and 17 are together officially called “the bias incident,” but many students are referring to them as “the Bryan incident.”

For students, faculty, and staff who have been at Guilford since the spring 2007 semester, the alternate name is problematic. To them, “the Bryan incident” refers to a separate event that took place on Jan. 23, 2007, and that to this day represents a pivotal event in the community’s history. On that evening, a fight broke out in Bryan Hall between three Palestinian students and six football players. While all charges against the football players were ultimately dropped, the event gained national notoriety for alleged assault and ethnic intimidation.

Just as the administration officially named the Sept. 14 and 17 incidents “the bias incident,” the official name for what took place on Jan. 23, 2007 was “the Bryan incident.” Conflating the two detracts from the significance of each.

The Bryan incident evoked reactions from students that exacerbated previously existing divisions within the community. Tensions between athletes and non-athletes reached an all-time high, with each side feeling increasingly attacked.

In the case of the bias incident, students and the administration were able to come together over one clear description of events. Their dual intervention enabled community members to create a sense of unity that was not as present in the wake of the Bryan incident.

We cannot call the bias incident “the Bryan incident.” The contexts of the two events, in terms of the challenges that they posed to the administration and to the students, differ so radically that to use the two terms interchangeably implies a misunderstanding of the deeper significance of the events and the ensuing reactions of the community.

Allowing the Bryan incident to fade from the student lexicon suggests that the challenges that the 2007 incident posed to the community have been largely overcome, and this is not true. If we forget the continuous nature of the issues uncovered by the Bryan incident, we are destined to be a reactive community rather than a proactive community.

Incidents like these will undoubtedly occur in the future and we will, in part, remember them by how the community reacted in their wake. We cannot, however, not depend on the next incident to bolster yet another rebuilding of the community; rather, we should be constantly proactive in our efforts to heal the previously existing rifts that the incidents exposed.