Ryan Chartrand“It’s like a nightmare, I just want to go to sleep and have this to not have happened,” said Steve, an anguished look on his face.
Steve, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, lives at the crop house, the house that ignited a storm of controversy and protest Thursday when The New Times reported that a noose and Confederate flag were displayed on the outside of the residence, along with a table painted with the Confederate flag.
He, along with three of his housemates, disagree with the way the incident was portrayed in The New Times. The four allowed two Mustang Daily reporters to hear their side of the story in order “to come clean.”
So under the cover of darkness, several of the residents met with the reporters in a desolate shed off Mt. Bishop Road under the condition of anonymity. For the sake of clarifying the different speakers, the sources have been given fictitious names.
“I want to get it across that no one in the house is racist,” said a resident we’ll call Jack. “We know it was stupid and immature and ignorant that it got put up; we’re not trying to downplay it, but it does not represent who we are.”
The noose, the group said, was simply a prop that came from the corn maze, an activity they all helped to put on. They claimed they didn’t know the identity of the flag owner.
“Someone without our knowledge came to the house with the props and put them up,” Steve said.
“It was up less than 24 hours,” Jack added, though he later said the props were displayed from Saturday night to Monday morning. They said they didn’t know who put up the props nor who took them down.
When asked why it took nearly a day for the props to be removed, a student we’ll call Andrew said the Confederate flag’s meaning didn’t immediately hit him.
“I mean, the thing is, none of us are from the South. What it meant to me is rebel youthism,” he said. He said the first time he saw the flag was in the television show “The Dukes of Hazzard” when he was younger.
They said they had borrowed the table painted with the flag from a friend for a party they had Saturday night.
“We asked to borrow one from a friend and he brought it over, picked it up and took it away,” Jack said.
The New Times also stated that the house had previously displayed a sign with racist and homophobic slurs, but the residents say this isn’t true.
“We did not put it up, we didn’t make it, we didn’t ask anyone to make it, we never saw it, we know nothing about that sign; if someone else put it up and took it down, we don’t know,” Jack said.
They said the only sign was one they displayed more than a month ago that read, “no drugs, no hippies, no liberals, no Obama.”
Industrial technology senior Tom Sullivan, who says he attended that party and saw the sign, confirmed the wording.
“It wasn’t racist whatsoever . it simply had a political point of view, which everyone has, whether we agree or not,” he said.
Not wanting to “get tangled up in this,” Sullivan said, “I’m not trying to cover up for these guys; I’m not a racist. I just feel that people are reacting to this too quickly without getting the facts, based from irresponsible reporting.”
Even so, he acknowledges that the flags “looked bad.”
The residents insist that they do not hold racist views.
“We have friends that are black, Hispanic, one of the guys here even dates a girl that is Hispanic. We are not like some neo-Nazi group,” Jack said.
They also mentioned that despite some rumors, women and minorities have lived in the house.
“We’ve had multiple minorities in the last few years, we’ve had women in the last few years,” Andrew said.
They ask Cal Poly students to wait for more information before they judge.
“Whoever did this is screwing up somebody’s actual family life,” said another resident.
“It’s messing up our college,” Steve added. “It feels out of our control.”
Cassandra J. Carlson contributed to this story.