TASOAE: 016
« First ‹ Previous ∞ Random ∞ Next › Last » Around February (I suppose) of my freshman year, an e-mail was sent to all students from the RAs. It was a letter urging for the tolerance and embracing of diversity. It was one of those deliberately vague e-mails that is clearly in response to a specific event, but where the senders don’t want to actually talk about an embarrassing incident, and don’t want to make it seem like they only care about diversity when things go wrong, even though that’s the only time they do care.
I don’t remember if I knew what the instigating incident was. I don’t think I did; it wasn’t public knowledge. If I had to bet, I’d say it was in response to homophobic slurs being written on some student’s dorm room whiteboard or something. But the RA letter was so vague and tentative so as to be pointless. “Hey, everyone! We’re all different, and that’s great!” All it did was increase the amount of social isolation on those people who were different, because everyone around them was wondering and whispering about whether they were the ones who tattled to the RAs.
Wow, I remember that event. I even remember the details (it was homophobic slurs), but it’s probably best to leave that hatchet buried. All the email did for me was send me on a hunt to figure out who’d done what to whom.
Because the person (or people) who wrote (or would write) slurs would care about a letter talking about diversity..