Iowa State University is faced with quite a dilemma this week, and for many weeks to come.

What do we do about Deantrious Mitchell and the general state of social affairs in our community?

Ever since I have stepped on this fair campus I have been witness to testimonials of racial conflicts at ISU. Ugly incidents, altercations that were reaching a point of critical mass, warnings of a dire injustice that was to come… all of these things ISU has endured, no one ever dreaming something as horrible as a violent racial assault could occur here. And then it did.

And the beating of Deantrious Mitchell was the harbinger of more tension, more racial conflict, misunderstandings, and possibly, more violent conflicts.

How sad, we all said, that it took such a tragedy to awaken us to the plight of minorities at ISU and the vicious reality of our environment. Our troubles were obviously of a more serious nature than any had ever imagined. Our image as a melting pot community of brotherhood and understanding through education was revealed as a lie as truth reared its ugly head.

“I’ll have grounds more relative than this…”

And now that truth that revealed the horrible underbelly of social interaction in Ames has also been revealed as a lie.

Deantrious Mitchell, it seems, fabricated his story of being assaulted by eight white men who beat him, cut him and called him a “nigger.”

The story that set off a firestorm of controversy and “opened the eyes” of the many who had been blind was fiction.

“Yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me.”

A week ago I met with a few students who were concerned with my “Hate is spawned on campus” column. They were particularly concerned that Isaid I wasn’t convinced the beating of Mitchell was racially motivated.

They told me with no uncertainty that the assault was of a racial nature, and that there were details that hadn’t been released yet that would prove the racial motivation of the assault. I had spoken too hastily, they implied, and didn’t have all of the facts yet.

A week later, it turns out nobody had any of the facts straight, because we had been lied to. As I walked on campus yesterday, one of the students with whom I had discussed my column told me that Ihad been “vindicated” by the news of the false report.

Funny, I don’t feel vindicated.

I don’t feel vindicated because there is a strong possibility that the awareness to racial strife in our community that the fictional beating raised could be shattered.

Eventually, people got tired of the boy crying wolf. And everybody believed in wolves. How long do you think it will take people to grow tired of a situation nobody wanted to believe was occurring in the first place?

The attention that racial issues on this campus require could very well be brushed off by certain members of the community in the wake of the false report:”See, there was no beating. Probably half that other crap you read about isn’t true either.”

I don’t feel vindicated because this situation has caused a lot of people a lot of pain, and it doesn’t end with the revelation of the real truth. It just gets more complex.

I don’t feel vindicated because I don’t understand what prompted Deantrious Mitchell to fabricate a serious charge of racial violence in a community that needed such an incident like Travis Bickle needed a shiny new gun.

But mostly, I don’t feel vindicated because Ino longer trust what I am told. “There is no longer belief,” to quote Jim Morrison.

For the past few months America has been inundated with political advertisements that make more charges than Imelda Marcos in shoe heaven, all claiming to be telling “the real truth.”

High profile judicial trials are held with people no longer caring about seeking out the truth and justice, but with “sending a message” to America.

The CIA possibly allowed drug dealers to flood our inner cities with crack. Carrie Chapman Catt voiced racist propaganda. But she didn’t mean it. Or maybe she did. Or maybe she didn’t say it at all.

Truth is no longer a comprehensible entity; there is only perception. We don’t have seekers of the truth; we have spin doctors.

And when universal truths are no longer valid and can no longer be trusted, what are we left with?

No wonder we are a nation that more and more fends for itself, a nation where the welfare of the individual supercedes the needs of the whole. We can’t trust anybody else.

“To thine own self be true…” and screw everybody else.

In light of this, Idon’t know if I can even do my job. How can I sit here, in my little office, rummaging through newspapers and magazines, seeking to make sense of society, when the information I am receiving could be falsified?

How can I invite my opinions into the minds of readers, promulgating for justice and equality and truth of being when my opinions, and yours as well, could very well be based on lies?

Theory and abstract thought may still prevail, but applying it to reality no longer seems viable when the truth is hidden and twisted. In the age of electronic media, where we have more information at our fingertips, is selectivity being sacrificed in the name of quantity? How can we act when truth may be fiction?

“And thus, the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action.”

Can Iin good conscience comment on any issue when facts, however honorably attained, are illegitimate? No.

“But, break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue…”

There’s no longer belief, and I’m at a loss.

“The rest is silence…”

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Tim Davis is a senior in theatre studies from Carlisle. He is the Opinion Page editor.