I don’t think many of us need another retelling of the misandrist saga of last semester, nor do most of us want to read another article about it. Apologies in advance. But as last semester’s happenings have marinated in my head since October, I’ve been left with a degree of disappointment for the way in which we, as a college community, dealt with this now infamous moment.

If you aren’t up to date on the lore, allow me to briefly summarize. In November of last semester, a former member of the class of 2027, Michael Haybron, published a letter to the editor in The Argus complaining about a widespread “misandry problem” at the University. He then almost immediately faced intense opposition from many rationally-thinking students who were eager to tear apart his naive article, even going as far as filling his Instagram comments with unruly retorts. He quickly became known as “the misandry guy,” and eventually withdrew from the University.

“There’s a hostile atmosphere towards me that I’m not convinced will ever fully go away, and I just don’t really see a future for me here,” Haybron said for a Substack article about his experience at Wesleyan.

I don’t mean to beat the dead horse that is “The Misandry Problem,” but as conversations regarding freedom of speech and differences of opinion become more and more prevalent on campus, I believe this incident can tell us much about the University’s climate and culture. 

Whether you agree with their choice or not, Haybron’s peers essentially ostracized him from Wesleyan, unable to tolerate his controversial stance. And while I will be the first to say that his article was misinformed, inaccurate, and relatively problematic, I will also be the first to condemn our behavior as students that compelled him to withdraw.

To me, this boils down to collective intolerance of both difference and failure. Wesleyan is, whether we like it or not, a very homogenous place, culturally and ideologically. Since I have been here, the student body has represented multiple perspectives on very few political issues, and agreement with the Wesleyan status quo is generally assumed of all.

This homogeneity has made us, as a community, supremely uncomfortable with disagreement. Because we are not used to differing viewpoints, when one does arise, we have no practice engaging in healthy conversation or dispute surrounding it. Instead, we pounce, or at least we pounced on Haybron as soon as he published his article. What could have been simply a series of civil conversations or published responses turned into an all-out attack on Haybron, his politics, and his character. He not only had a divergent political view, but became known as a divergent person, too different to warrant kindness or friendship in such a homogenous environment. I disagree with his article as much as you do. I was offended by it too. But do we need to be so afraid of difference that we render students like Haybron pariahs?

I also believe we are intolerant of failure. To me, the saddest part of this incident is that we collectively gave Haybron no room to grow or learn from his shortcomings, ridiculing him with a passion and level of saturation that rendered his redemption practically impossible. It’s understandable for his friends to potentially want some distance from him after he publicly dragged them in order to argue that misandry is an issue at Wesleyan. I do, however, want to question our immediate jump from reading his article to labeling him a bad, unintelligent, or  bigoted person. Perhaps he just was misinformed, felt hurt and undervalued by some interactions, and did not quite understand the future impact of some decisions made in a fit of emotion.

But speculating on his motives is beside the point. Haybron’s case makes it abundantly clear, at least in my eyes, that we struggle to deal with perspectives that differ from ours at this institution. We are trapped in the Wesleyan bubble and cannot fathom realities, ideas, or perspectives that exist outside of it. Or at least, we really don’t want our bubble to be popped. Our elitism prevents our peers from doing what college is about: learning and growing. Our knee-jerk reaction when faced with uninformed perspectives is to pounce, rather than to question with kindness. We guard our progressivism, unwilling to let anything in our vicinity question it.

But what’s the use of a vibrant, highly intellectual community if all we do is agree? Why travel across the country to college to be surrounded by people who all think the exact same things? Why use your voice at an institution where everyone is saying the same thing?

I challenge us to rethink our habits,  discomfort, and ability to approach disagreement with kindness. We can, and should, pop the Wesleyan bubble together and make way for a host of new intellectual and cultural possibilities for ourselves and our campus.

Akhil Joondeph is a member of the class of 2026 and can be reached at ajoondeph@wesleyan.edu.