Aw, a bright pink construction paper valentine! With a red lollipop taped inside! And a picture of Adolf Hitler on the outside with the legend: “my love 4 u burns like 6,000 jews”! In Comic Sans!

(Also, 6,000 Jews? This person’s sense of historicity and/or math — um, how many zeroes in six million? — is as unimpressive as their anti-Semitism is top-notch.)

The card was put into Valentine’s Day gift bags handed out on Wednesday by the College Republicans at Central Michigan University. Central Michigan Life, the campus newspaper that broke the story, talked to Mackenzie Flynn, president of the School’s College Republicans. She told the paper that the gift bags were meant for club members only (oh, OK then) and that the card was made by only one person, not the whole group. “While still not appropriate, I want to clear up that they did not create it themselves,” Flynn said. Awesome! Flynn said that a College Republican who  “doesn’t like candy” (and did not know about the hate-y card accompanying his candy) gave his bag to some other students in Anspach Hall, and those students reported the valentine.

The College Republicans posted an apology of sorts to Facebook, while at the same time deleting the names of their leaders and board from Facebook. Not a good way to accept responsibility, College Republicans. Also, for unknown reasons, they quickly took down the apology as well, along with the many comments criticizing them for removing their leadership’s names and/or distributing hate-candy. Here’s an early screen grab of the first apology.

FB commenters pointed out that the actions of the College Republicans were not so clever. (Noted one: “Yo CMU has a good PR program, I happen to be a grad of that program. Here’s a PR tip, DONT DELETE STUFF, IT MAKES YOU LOOK GUILTY! WORK WITH US NOT AGAINST US!”) The College Republicans then put the apology back up. (It’s the same as before. You can look yourself here, or take my word for it, in case they yank it again for reasons yet to be discovered.) The list of board members was not, however, reinstated.

But this is SorryWatch, and we’re here for the apology, right? Right! So let’s analyze why this is a crap apology!

1. There are no names associated with this post. What with the whole “taking down the names of the heads of the organization” business, it is clear that individuals decline to take responsibility or be held accountable. (I thought personal responsibility was a central tenet of the GOP?)
2. The passive voice is used. A card was placed! A bag was given away! Ownership of the incident was not taken! The passive voice does not belong in apologies. Again, it indicates a failure to step up and own the offense.
3. The card was not “inappropriate.” Poor word choice. Wearing black tie before six is inappropriate. The card was “anti-Semitic.” Or “prejudiced.” Or “hateful.” Pick one.
4. Three mentions of “we didn’t do it” in only 8.5 lines! We get it. YOU HAD NO KNOWLEDGE. Yet you fostered the climate in which it happened. You did not make clear that hate speech was not acceptable. (And if none of you did it, who did? This apology obfuscates more than it reveals.)
5. “We apologize for any offense”? The “any” implies that there is a possibility no offense was taken, or given. And oh, it was definitely offensive. Apologize for what you did, not what other people maybe felt or did not feel. Of course, since you seem to be apologizing for a failure to have armed guards protecting the gift bags from creeping anonymous stealth anti-Semites with a fondness for Comic Sans, the “any” seems pretty contextual.

The statement by the school’s president, George E. Ross, condemning the action, was also not all it could have been. Courtesy of CMU News, the school’s public relations arm, it begins:

We are deeply disappointed by last night’s situation with a Valentine card containing an inappropriate sentiment that was produced during a student organization meeting. This is not who we are as a campus community.

Such hurtful, offensive language, while protected by the First Amendment, is unacceptable and is not consistent with our values and standards.

No. Please stop calling the card inappropriate. Say what it was. And “situation”? Really?Say what happened. Say which “student organization” this was.

And we’ve talked before about how “this is not who we are” does not belong in apologies.  It is who you are. This phrase is a tried-and-true statement by people who have done a bad thing but wish to distance themselves from their own behavior. It’s a way of insisting — to others and perhaps to oneself — that the hateful act was not, in fact, representative of one’s true self. It is the equivalent of KellyAnne Conway’s defense of Donald Trump, after he insisted he did not mock a reporter with a disability, after we all saw him mock a reporter with a disability: “You [the press] always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth rather than what’s in his heart!” In other words, this is not who he is. But words and actions are all we have. We can’t see into anyone’s heart without special medical tools.

The rest of the CMU president’s statement is decent  (you can read it here) as is his addendum: “With heavy hearts and great embarrassment, we apologize. To those of Jewish descent, rest assured that we stand with you and vow to continue the effort to educate others.” Apologizing to everyone, not just to Jewish students, is right and proper. Everyone is hurt by prejudice. It is bad for everyone. Saying afterward that the school wants to support Jewish students and will work on eliminating anti-Semitism is also as it should be. You gotta mention the Jews when you talk about the anti-Semitism.

On February 10th, the press office released a statement that the administration had investigated and concluded that the valentine was the “misguided action of one individual,” who admitted it. That individual “is not a student at CMU student and has left Mount Pleasant,” where the campus is located .

So many unanswered questions! Questions that feel especially strange given that a student with the first name “Courtney” — the name signed to the valentine — was formerly listed as the College Republicans’ Representative to the Student Government Association, and is still listed as “College Republicans at CMU SGA Representative” on other web sites! The carefully phrased statement from CMU definitively tells us that Courtney is not currently a student at CMU…but it does not note whether she was at the time of the “incident.” She is not in Mount Pleasant now…but it is unclear from the statement whether she was at the time of the “incident.” But it doesn’t matter anyway, because “CMU police have consulted with the county prosecutor, who said this matter is not a criminal act.” So hey, all’s well that ends well, move along, nothing to see here!

In the last line of that February 10 press release, the president of the school stated proudly to the PR office that “the actions of our students, faculty and staff through this — coming together against hate and ignorance — can give us all hope. With varied political opinions and life views, we stand today in solidarity. In that, we embrace our future.” I wipe away a tear. And note that parents of Jewish high school students may wish to look hard at whether CMU is the kind of school that respects truth, accepts difference, and cares more about making Jews feel welcome than it does about its own image.

happy valentine’s day!