Sustaining a Real, If Difficult, Dialogue
在你读我的信之前 请读一下—
I write this letter on a Monday morning in February. In a couple of hours I will be joining about a dozen faculty and staff colleagues in a weekly conversation in which we will try very hard to have a candid and authentic conversation about how we experience and manage the intersections of race, 权力, 以及不同的特权. This conversation is part of a larger initiative we have adopted at 贝洛伊特 called Sustained Dialogue. Our group comes together on Mondays to learn, reflect, and develop as members of the same community. Other groups of students, faculty, and staff meet at other times during the week.
我很喜欢学习, 反映, and developing in most circumstances, but these Monday conversations 是真实的ly hard and deeply uncomfortable. There is little that we talk about that does not make me cringe in one way or another. 和, I believe that when I cringe (and I don’t think I am good about hiding this) I am pretty sure that my cringing makes other people in our group cringe. 和, their cringing at my cringing makes me cringe again. 更让我难受的是, I interpret nearly everything anyone in our group says as, “So why haven’t you fixed that yet, 斯科特? What are you doing with your presidency anyway?”
I think it is pretty rare (if ever) that anyone means to convey that, but I know I become defensive in a heartbeat. 和, I worry, how are my friends and colleagues interpreting the things I say? No doubt, they are parsing my words very carefully. What are the chances that what I meant is what was heard?
Hold on to this thought for a moment.
The campus was buffeted a few weeks ago when a picture of Angela Davis—a black, female political activist—was anonymously defaced. We don’t know who did it, nor, despite aggressive efforts, are we likely to find out. 骇人的. 无法忍受的. 不值得上大学. 这违反了学校的规定. 所有真正的. 但它发生了. 在这里.
It is easy for me to be angry about this. 但, it is also easy for me to go about my day pretty normally while still being angry. That is not the case if you are black, 或者黑人和女性, or identify yourself with any group in which being threatened has real meaning because those threats, 太频繁, 是真实的. 你是如何穿越校园的, how you look at other students or faculty or staff when they pass you on the sidewalk, how you interact in classes and the library and on athletic teams, 是不同的和减少的, 而且往往更难.
更难了. 和, lest you think the Angela Davis incident is a rare event, nearly any non-majority student can tell you story after story of how they experience small, 不太明显, deface-Angela-Davis-like wounds on an agonizingly regular basis. 贝洛伊特 is a lot harder for some than for others. (和 this, I admit, is just a local example. Think of how national incidents—like Trayvon Martin’s death—might also affect members of this community.)
Back to the college’s emphasis on Sustained Dialogue.
So far, I have avoided using the word “diversity” in this letter. 我这样做是因为上帝的话, 在这一点上，高等教育, has become so vastly overused that it is now barely heard; barely read. Diversity and programming that celebrates it can be (or at least can be seen as) façade or stagecraft—a distraction from deeper understanding and dialogue. It is easy to dismiss programs like Sustained Dialogue in the same way that we dismiss sentences with the word “diversity.”
但, 在伯洛伊特学院, we are newly recommitted to making ours a school where programs like Sustained Dialogue are at the center of what it means to be liberally educated. 它并不孤单. 例如, we have recast the First-Year Initiatives courses to feature the essential qualities of social identity in navigating the world toward a life of purposeful consequence.
First-year student or facilities staff member, professor or president: All are beginning to be engaged in this important—if sometimes uncomfortable—dialogue. 如果我们要完成我们的使命, 如果我们要改善我们的大学, 我们的社区, 还有我们的国家, if we are to fully deliver on the promise of a 贝洛伊特 education (and higher education in general), 我们必须这样做. 尽管这可能很难.
From here at Chapin’s desk, on the cusp of even greater days to be a 贝洛伊特er,
——斯科特·比尔曼总统
