Minority voices

I’ve been pretty blessed in my life. I never really had to see myself as anything but a typical all-American girl. I felt white. My family seemed decently endowed with material success. I had a labrador retriever and a goldfish. I went to school, played some sports, and bothered my little sister.

It wasn’t until I came to SMU that I was harassed and was denied based on little pieces of me that I always called “part of the American patchwork” – but other people like to call “aberration” or “sin.”

I figure that it is okay if my life is not your style. I don’t ask others to be me – heck, some days even I don’t want to be me. But I was raised to demand respect and dignity and honesty. And I was also raised to use my voice.

I remember touring campus before coming here: SMU’s ambassadors kept saying that if SMU didn’t have an organization for me, I was encouraged to just “go ahead and start my own.”

I wish someone had told me then that it’s not quite as easy as that.

There are hoops. There are votes. There are political games. There are meetings and councils and closed doors. There are people here who would pat you on the back and tell you that you’re almost done, and then stand by as your proposal is utterly crushed on the floor. Did I mention that there are closed doors?

What really gets me, though, is not the work it takes to make an organization a reality, but the fact that even if you do the work – it still isn’t a done deal. The tour guide ought to be saying, “If you don’t see a group here that is for you, you are welcome to try your luck with the system… and if there’s no preconceived biases against you, you’ll get SMU’s support.”

The tour guide might as well be saying, “This is SMU, folks: take it or leave it. Because the small minority of students who aren’t apathetic, already have what they want – and if you want something different you’d just upset the majority rule.”

In my book, I believe that this campus belongs to me. SMU is an institution made to serve the community – and, like it or not, I was invited to be a part of that community. Like it or not, I brought along with me all those pieces of “American diversity” that some people like to call “sin.”

And we need to learn to share this community space, because I’m not one of the apathetic ones.