Productive debate, not drunken debate

I know this much: my friends aren’t bad people, and neither are your friends.

Two particularly unfortunate things happened Saturday night. Despite these events, which I will go into below, I hope that the productive dialogue that precedes them will not be forgotten in the inevitable fallout of the night’s climax. I attended a party at Intown.

Before my arrival, a number of the party’s guests and residents and friends of the neighboring house became involved in a discussion of the Wespeaks pertaining to a Hawaiian-themed party at DKE and the Wespeak written by Mr. Wilson in response to it. In short, this discussion ran beyond three hours and involved—in my opinion—productive dialogue, harmful failed communication, and most tragically, explicit threats of physical violence against parties on both sides.

In my eyes this serious discussion was first brought towards its tragic end when a friend’s girlfriend who does not attend Wesleyan arrived at this Halloween costume party wearing a grass skirt, flower necklace and a t-shirt with “Maui” printed on front. My friend did not know that in the previous month, a serious and heated debate about the commodification of Hawaiian culture by tropical themed parties had occurred on our campus. Further, she was not aware that some people feel that such parties commodify Hawaiian culture and marginalize the history of the American colonization and annexation of Hawaii.

Before a Wespeak was written about the offense such parties can cause, I did not know that drunk kids trying to find temporary love while wearing hibiscus-covered shirts would offend anyone. Since the aforementioned Wespeak was published, I’ve become aware that this is, in fact, a poignant issue that some people feel needs to be addressed both on the Wesleyan campus and by America as a whole.

Yet, how did a fruitful and informative dialogue culminate on Saturday night? My friend, who arrived at a party where her costume was cited as a tool of mental and physical oppression for over three hours, had enough of being accused of ignorance without any of her accusers offering her an education free of judgment. Tragically, her response was to throw a full cup of beer on someone she deemed overly aggressive in criticizing of her costume and called the same person a bitch. My friend did not then stand there and prolong a fight; she ran into the Intown parking lot in tears caused by the accusations she (perhaps wrongly) felt as personal and for her aggressive response to them. Equally tragic was the response of those people who had accused her of racism, bigotry, and oppression: “Come to X House and we’ll see what happens to you,” which accompanied graphic threats of violence.

Throughout this letter I’ve repeatedly used the word tragic to describe Saturday night’s events. I believe that this is an appropriate adjective for the night because after over three hours of productive, educational, and intelligent discourse between two conflicting viewpoints, the civility and dialogue was tainted by two truly base responses. In my mind, the thing that makes Wesleyan great is that we have created a socio-political environment where differing views can be presented to others. Yet all too often our campus does not want a dialogue; people want agreement, first and foremost. Students confuse what they believe is right with the realities of a political world with varied viewpoints and because of this, never come down from their moral high ground. The result: nothing changes. People get angry about Wespeaks instead of considering them as valid opportunities to educate each other.

In my opinion, Saturday night epitomized both the promise and failure of Wesleyan’s ideological atmosphere. We’re all intelligent people here who are capable of listening, understanding, and empathizing with each other. When we do this we are a powerful force. Yet more often than not, we don’t listen. We shout. We rant. And we get angry for people doing exactly what we’ve just done to them (that is, shouting and ranting).

I know that there are many perspectives on this campus that I have never considered, but I would never confound ignorance of someone’s beliefs with a prior denial of the possibility that people other than myself may be right on any given issue. I know we all think we’re right, but when we deny our potentiality to listen understandingly, we miss our greatest strength as a community of many powerful minds. In closing I’ll offer a plea through a simple analogy: as a community, we do not hold fifteen-year olds responsible for not knowing how to drive a car, as they have not been taught yet. Yet once they are taught we expect drivers to act in a certain way towards other drivers. In my mind, politico-ideological education is no different; we should not hold those who are unexposed to our own beliefs responsible for their ignorance—we should educate them ourselves.