What's fit for the NCSU 4?

Even after we'd talked for about 30 minutes, the Rev. William J. Barber and I still had different ideas about what should happen to the four students ... ahem ... artists at N.C. State University who on election night scrawled their sadistic wish list on the free-expression tunnel at the university. Although most of the graffiti was painted over before it could be widely beheld, it's safe to say the four expressionists expressed no support for President-elect Barack Obama.

Asked what he wants to happen to these Van Goghs of vitriol, the Rev. Barber, head of the state's NAACP, said, "We believe there ought to be expulsion, at the least."

Me, I say leave 'em alone and let 'em stew in the broth of their own hatred. If they truly believe what they wrote -- and there's no reason to think they don't -- it'll consume and destroy them soon enough. It can't be easy being them and possessing 19th century minds on a 21st-century university campus that fosters inclusion. That, and realizing that their hate-filled hieroglyphics actually unified the campus, should be punishment enough.

I want these prejudiced Picassos in school for another reason. There, at least, they might actually have their hearts, minds and eyes opened. Remember, reverend, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Barber is right about one thing, though: The university should identify them, but only so other students will know not to wear their "I love Obama" or "I've got a brain" T-shirts around them. Then, perhaps the school could give them community service -- although what community they could serve that doesn't include the KKK is beyond me.

How about making them watch "Roots" 100 times and write a research paper on it? Nah, that probably wouldn't work: They'd just watch the movie backward so it would have, for them, a happy ending.

I respect the Rev. Barber and the NAACP. Without it, I'd probably be on somebody's veranda asking, "Y'all want some mo' mint in dis heah julep, suh?" or on a boat grunting, "Lift that barge, tote that bale ... ."

That doesn't mean that Barber shouldn't be castigated for comparing, as he did during our conversation, the caveman-like drawings and ravings of the NCSU 4 to the murderers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy and voting rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and Viola Liuzzo. "They were all shot in the head, and that's what [the NCSU students] wrote they wanted to do to Obama," Barber said.

Oy. How does Barber respond, I asked, to people who contend that the organization has lost its way; that it, too, is fighting yesterday's battles while ignoring the ones that need to be fought? For instance, I'm guessing the parents of 16-year-old Adarius Monquell Fowler, gunned down on Raleigh's Tarboro Street on Nov. 21, couldn't care less about what those guys write.

Shouldn't the NAACP be confronting the so-common-it's-hardly-news-anymore violent death of yet another black boy?

"We do," Barber said, citing the NAACP's work with N.C. Central University's School of Social Work and Goldsboro police to "redeem" gangbangers. "We take on a lot of issues that don't get the front-page treatment. We're a multifaceted organization. ... We're under the radar screen for a lot of people."

Dealing with issues of more relevance -- and there are many that are more relevant than the cave writings of Neanderthals -- would put the organization back on the radar screen.