On Thursday, October 15, many members of the Dartmouth community participated in a vigil in memory of victims of hate crimes throughout the country, particularly Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, both of whom were killed because someone decided that their lives as a gay and black man, respectively, were not valuable. While it is disheartening that such acts of hatred still occur in this country in 1998, the factors that lead up to such horrifying episodes occur daily in our lives and in this community. Whether a result of ignorance or fear, hatred and supremacy lead to casual random acts that kill parts of people's spirits every day. This was the case this past weekend as we celebrated Homecoming. Several members of the community showed their "school spirit" by wearing t-shirts depicting a bull dog performing oral sex on an Indian with the words "Yale Sucks." While that image may have been intended to encourage some spirits, its affect on others was tremendously painful. How would you feel if the Indian on that shirt was replaced by a caricature of your father or grandfather, in the name of "tradition?" The offense and disgust that that image brings you may be similar to the feelings of many Native American students and others who empathize with and understand their experiences when they saw the shirt. How does it feel to see that caricature in a place that you are encouraged to call home -- a community that people have ensured you is safe, welcoming and respecting of you and your culture?
This column is not intended to scold or reprimand, but to start a discussion -- an honest, sincere discussion about the causes and effects of our decisions and behaviors and the effects that they have on the whole community. We, the members of Paleopitus, want to encourage you as a member of the Dartmouth community to pause and look past yourself and the group(s) that you are affiliated with (formally and informally). Consider the whole, shared community. Recognize your actual and potential impact on that community. Dartmouth students are among the most privileged and intelligent people in the world. When will we be among the most responsible and respectful? Our responsibility as Dartmouth students is to build a Dartmouth community that encompasses the diversity of class, geography, race, ability, sexuality, nationality, religion, gender and interest that we represent. We fail in this responsibility when we attempt to assign a value to the aspects that make our contribution to Dartmouth unique. We undermine our potential as individuals and as a group when we invalidate the experiences and opinions of our peers, and when we ignore voices that call for an end to the pain they must endure on a regular basis. When this happens, we become a fragmented, factioned, disjointed community, with little concept of how to repair the mess that we are in. How does this happen?
How can a community of intelligent people be so hurtful to one another, intentionally or unintentionally? Often, it is, as we have all claimed at some point in our lives, because we are not thinking. We take for granted that other people see the world through the same lens that we do. We assume that our own emotions are, or should be, the standard measure for what is hurtful or offensive. Sometimes, we are so wrapped up in the excitement of our own ideas that we do not ever consider the effect on people other than ourselves. Even when we realize that people may be or have been hurt or offended, we somehow rationalize that some pain is necessary to toughen people up or that their offense is not our problem. We are all guilty of this, on an individual and a group level. We often make assumptions and operate on stereotypes that lead us to use misrepresentative images of a culture that we know very little about. In doing so, we undermine attempts to educate the community and increase awareness because we "know enough." We think only of ourselves and the community that is narrowly defined by the people whose names we know, faces we recognize and lives that we personally care about. How do we broaden that realm of consideration? How do we learn to empathize but not pity? How can we learn from each other's experiences, validate them and create change?
Many people and organizations are currently trying to do this by co-sponsoring events around campus. Collaborating with other groups, beyond the simple pooling of funds encourages the mutual exchange of experiences and ideas. Cultural exchange gives birth to compromise and collaboration from which some concept of a Dartmouth culture emerges. One Dartmouth, an organization intended to help us become and work together as one, is providing an opportunity to get to know one another this weekend at the progressive party. Students from various parts of campus are cooperating to plan and coordinate some of the most amazing projects that this place has ever seen. While the process of appreciating diversity often seems like chaos, chaos breeds creativity, and creativity reveals genius. When are we going to reveal our collective genius?
We, the 20 seniors of Paleopitus, do not have the answers. Instead, we wanted to challenge the community with the questions. Pieces of people's souls died when they saw those shirts last week, just as pieces of people's souls die when they feel that they or their organization has been misrepresented, falsely accused or disrespected. When are we going to take responsibility for destroying one another? How are we going to stop the institutional destruction?
Paleopitus is a senior society whose purpose is to advise the administration on the decisions that it makes regarding the future of the College. While that is an honor and a privilege, we also have the responsibility to encourage another constituency who also has a profound affect on the future of the college, our peers. Please take responsibility for the culture of this campus and the behaviors that we accept, and the pain that people endure. In your way, with your group of friends, campus organization(s), fraternity, sorority, coed or undergraduate society, take responsibility by taking action. Hold members of the community, including yourself, accountable not only for our actions, but our level of awareness. Dartmouth has the potential to move into the twenty-first century distinguished by a community of people who do more than simply claim to care about each other. Challenge yourself to be a part of this.
