Equal Time for Groesbeck

by Brian Cook

There were no candlelight vigils for Chris Groesbeck. There was no outpouring of support. There was no righteous indignation from a community that, for the second straight year, had endured an outburst of domestic violence that claimed two lives.

In case you’ve forgotten, U-M student Christopher Groesbeck was murdered by Natasha Quereshi a few weeks back. Quereshi then proceeded to take her own life. Ann Arbor has been curiously quiet about it since.

I am sure we all remember last year’s version of this tragedy, when Tamara Williams was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend, who was then shot to death by a DPS officer responding to the scene. We also remember the long, drawn out process SAPAC and the other powers that be in the realm of sexually charged pseudo-science pressed upon the University community. The festivities were complete with repeated candlelight vigils, haranguing about the ultimate evil of domestic violence and other assorted portrayals of Williams as the innocent victim (which she was) and the man as insanely murderous (which he was).

And if we remember last year’s events, then I am sure we can recall this year’s. Or, rather, this year’s paucity of events. The news. And then a few letters to the Daily regarding the memories of the two killed. And then, nothing. No outpourings of public grief. No calls for radical social change.

Just a quiet determination to sweep it all under the rug. Some of those letters to the Daily even had the audacity to claim that we shouldn’t “just remember Quereshi because of this tragedy,” to paraphrase. Wrong. So very wrong. She’s now a killer, and should remain so in our memories. Attempting to rationalize or marginalize that is contrary to all sense. She was insane. She killed an innocent man, but because the tables are turned, this killer is not demonized and held up as an example. Her “memory is honored.” Yet there is no public memory of Williams’s killer. I could not even find his name. She deserves nothing better, and yet a number of fools refuse to accept the fact that the person they “knew” was actually a murderer.

I am angry because the blatant dual standard that exists in this oh-so-politically-correct community has been brought to light in a disgusting manner. I do not deny that the vast majority of domestic assault cases involve a woman on the receiving end of the punishment. I do not believe that old perceptions have been wholly worn away. A lot of people believe a lot of stupid things. But the shocking indifference shown by a community that was so concerned, so distraught merely a year ago, over a nearly-identical incident is repulsive. What can be the cause of this discrepancy? Why doesn’t anyone care?

The only tangible difference here is the gender of the killer and the gender of the killed. Because these two roles do not fit the delicate worldviews of the brittle, unrealistic “wimmin’s” movement, they ignore the entire thing. Even as they fight against stereotypes of women they are fully willing to stereotype men. So, I want all of you who got out there and held vigils and harangued and marched for Tamara but did nothing for Christopher Groesbeck to repeat after me:

I am unwilling to see what I do not agree with.
I cannot hear the arguments brought against me.
I cannot speak with credibility.
I am a hypocrite.

And then never say anything again. Because you have flagrantly disregarded the taking of a life based on the very thing you despise — sexism.

Hey hey, ho ho, this ovary party has got to go. MR

This article was published in the 31 March 1999 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 17, Number 9).
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