If Wesleyan conservatives are particularly good at one thing, it’s riling people up. You always seem willing to do things to “troll” the community and provoke a response out of an unshakable belief in the correctness of your principles. However, you also are part of this community (which is a very small one, by the way) and are socially engaged with the very people (students of color etc.) who you are willing to openly imply are less deserving of being here than you. Thus your public statements are not merely political acts, but social acts that cause real discomfort to real people who are your classmates and could potentially be your friends. This “affirmative action bake sale” was a clever idea in the abstract, but on a small campus it is polarizing and abusive to those whom it implies do not belong here.
Conservatives at Wes need to learn civility and how to be constructive members of the community, rather than attacking the values and the people who constitute it. Professor Potter’s email was sent in her capacity as an intelligent citizen of the Wesleyan community whose education and work has educated her well on problems of socioeconomic and racial disparity in our society. I hope that Wesleyan will maintain its conscience and sense of goodwill toward all members of the community, and not sacrifice the relative comfort and safety that Wes has provided for generations of students who may not have fit into the America (or the ivory tower) that some conservatives imagine or would advocate.
The kind of political grandstanding that the “affirmative action bake sale” represents simply divides the community further by creating an adversarial relationship between conservatives and other student identity groups. Whatever the left and liberal activist groups on campus may say or do, they have never implied that you did not deserve to be here.
Sincerely,
Drew Flanagan
Flanagan is a member of the class of 2010.