Cutting Class: Counterinfo for the Ungovernable Generation
In April 2017, a wave of vandalism broke out at the University of Texas in Austin. Over the course of 3 nights, various fraternities were vandalized with the words “racist” and “rapist,” among other slogans. One of the frats targeted on two of the nights held a controversial “border patrol” themed party in 2015, and was otherwise notorious for homophobic & racist pledge rules and rumors of a secret “rape room.” A study published in March of 2017 found that 15% of undergraduate women on UT campus reported being raped. Actual statistics are believed to be much higher.
The following anonymous communique claiming credit for the action was originally sent to It’s Going Down, and quickly became notorious across the country. The vandalism came at the end of a school year marked by controversy around fascist activity on campus, the University’s failure to address racism, and other A few weeks later, a stabbing occurred at UT Austin on May 1st –and instantly, both the local fraternities and the national alt-right were claiming that the incident was a targeted attack by the left and pointed to this piece as evidence. While these claims were bogus, the extra attention brought on top of the initial reception the piece had found made the article one of the most read pieces on IGD—back when their page still tracked the most viewed articles.
We at Cutting Class, who were students when this shit went down and found ourselves inspired by the impact of this piece, have turned this into a zine to preserve the memory of these actions and their effects. This was not the first nor the last spurt of insurgent action against Greek Life. But it’s bombastic, insurrectionary fervor and the localized effects of the action—which polarized students, but were in many ways well received by those who saw reflected in the communique their own perspectives of Greek Life—made this piece stand out for student insurrectionaries of our generation. We hope this can inform and incite future, more developed forms of attack.
You can find the zine here. There is one formatted for digital reading, and another for printing.
