Author: Evan Carter
Everyone received Dean Avery’s email about the recent hate-crimes at Oxy, but most deleted it. It outlined Occidental College’s stance on intolerance and the penalties students face when perpetuating hateful activity, discrimination or acting to the detriment of another member of the Occidental community. So why is there no buzz? No uproar? No action? No rally?
Some have reacted, some have even spoken out, but the idea that writing directed hate speech on the door of the bedroom where an Occidental student sleeps does not generate significant outcry among every student is unbelievable and thoroughly disheartening. No one should bash gays in our community, and we should not be tolerant of those who are intolerant of our peers. People in our community have been singled out and attacked on the basis of sexual preference. Whether those attacked are friends, fellow students or even adversaries, it is not acceptable to stand by and passively observe as they are unjustly treated, othered by bigotry.
We have reached a point in our society where it is no longer acceptable to be publicly racist. It is no longer excusable to physically harm someone on the basis of race, and it is punishable by law to deface surfaces with racist remarks or imagery. Racists must cloak their feelings in order to be accepted in our communities and racial slurs, words that were once everyday descriptors of race, are no longer acceptable terms in public American conversation. Why then do we tolerate the worst of what language has to offer in the description of gays and lesbians?
It is all too common that homophobic language creeps into everyday conversation. Americans have not learned that homophobic language should be rejected. Even worse than this, it seems that Occidental students have not yet reached a point at which they reject outright homophobic attacks either. There is no reason that a community as progressive as Occidental’s should not be leading the charge on direct, active and vocal support of the LGBTQ community. An attack on anyone in our community based on sexual preference is an attack on everyone.
Dean Avery’s e-mail, and subsequent pleas sent via campus wide e-mail lists have been dismissed by the students who only read them as nothing more than a vague curiosity. Dean Avery suggests that “students are mobilizing to bring awareness of these incidents,” and she makes clear that the administration will be, “joining in these efforts.” I am aware some students have mobilized and I applaud anyone who has mobilized alongside them, but the greater student body’s apathetic response is regrettable.
In times of hatred, the community’s collective response must be great in magnitude. The government did not bring about integration, the people did. The administration will not bring about acceptance, we must. Laws are written and re-written following public action. An e-mail from our Dean should not be the first public response, it should be the last. Students should be at the forefront of transforming our society after hate crimes. Silence and apathy are the only non-options. We must make the intolerant outcasts, so our administration can write them out of our community.
Rise to the occasion and make it clear that the students of Occidental College will not tolerate the intolerant. Contradict them loudly when they speak. Make it clear that our community will be a more tolerant one than the one we inherited, and not a community of apathetic enablers . Shun hatred so that we may embrace, learn from and marvel at the beautiful difference every human has to offer.
Evan Carter is an undeclared junior. He can be reached at carter@oxy.edu.
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