Trinity Campus Culture Encourages Intolerance

Campus culture has at least three interlocking circles. The first, the one with which I am most familiar, is the culture of the classroom. Dominated by faculty, classroom culture is governed by the curriculum and the faculty's relationship to changes in the various disciplines of knowledge. The second is the culture of the College, the rituals, ceremonies, and traditions that one meets at matriculation, at graduation, at dinners with the President and so on. The College's history of liberal arts education defines this cultural world.

The third circle is yours, dear students: it is your social life, where the faculty is largely absent and the administration, while holding a regulatory role, treads gently. I've been at Trinity for over 10 years, and not a year has gone by when I have not heard the horror stories of homophobia, racism, and grave, grave misogyny in the fabric of student social life. Perhaps it is rumor, perhaps paranoia, perhaps the resentful murmurings of those who do not fit into the cool scene. Whatever.

Last week, I saw a series of pictures from a campus Halloween party thrown by a fraternity. Here, white male students wore black-face and red-face -- playing stereotypes of socially suppressed communities. I hear of a game called Beirut, where students line up to kill Arabs/Muslims with ping-pong balls as a prelude to being bombed by beer.

There are the routine stories of date rape drugs and of sexual harassment, and of derogatory comments toward gays and lesbians. Casual anti-Semitic statements are legion. The sheer confidence, even bravado, of these gestures requires a detailed sociological analysis. But, short of that, here's a thought: it is a truism of social science that on a social field when one entity is organized and others are disorganized, that one entity will bear disproportionate social power over the entire field.

Our campus social life has one set of entities that are organized and powerful. I mean, of course, the fraternities. The co-ed facade aside, the fraternities dominate social life despite the best intentions of the very weak cultural houses and of the new political groups (VOID, The Fred). Given the alumni support, both by check and by pressure on the Trustees, the fraternities operate with impunity. It is this unchecked social power, perhaps, that breeds a cultural arrogance among some of our students. It would be a mistake to see one student or another as the perpetuator of this or that incident. Rather, the social life of our campus is in grave need of social change and collective therapy.

There is a view that such acts are a kind of free speech. Perhaps, but this kind of speech is not free. It simply externalizes its pain. Someone picks up the tab for these kinds of actions.

Over the years, I've counseled many students of color, young women, and gay and lesbian students who feel alienated, if not threatened, by this kind of social life. They pay the costs for this kind of speech. Many of them suffer in silence, some protest, quite a few transfer. Such speech may be legal, even constitutionally protected, but it is certainly socially harmful.

I look forward to the day when the students who oppose this kind of casual intolerance will be confident and powerful enough to politically shut down these sorts of hurtful gestures. Rather than a vigil or a protest, I would like to see the day when the majority of our student body abjure these fraternity events and march across campus on Saturday night in fidelity to joy and to acceptance rather than to hate. Until then, these vigils are necessary, a whisper against the silence.

For those who disdain the moral arguments, and who are untouched by the lack of political will to move against them, I offer a straight-up neo-classical conceit. Such acts and such a campus culture is against your enlightened self-interest.

This social cesspool is well-known on the national campus circuit. It certainly hurts our reputation and our standing in the popularity lists. If you are part of the dynamic that wants to lift the profile of the College, your shenanigans don't help any.