Rally should not be seen as a failure

Yesterday's rally organized by the Bias Intervention Program's Peer Educator Group drew a small crowd that disappointed organizers. Obviously during the winter months, and March is a winter month in Massachusetts, not many students eat lunch outside. But thousands of students pass by the campus center patio every day, and the format of the rally was, either by plan or accident, ideal for a student to stop and listen for a couple of minutes.

At a time when media and social commentators link the concern over homophobic bias with the national debate on the legality of gay and lesbian marriage, it is unfortunate that the organizers were so disappointed. Rather, it should be seen as an effective method to engage an audience and encourage them to question instinctive judgments, which may well be wrong and unreasonably biased.

Last November the Bias Intervention Program published an incident report because it was concerned about the large number of bias incidents that took place during the first two months of the school year. Half of the reported incidents through November of last year were targeted against the gay community. This month, as every individual in America must question him or herself about the propriety of gay marriage, we at Tufts should also think about confronting gay bias, both in ourselves and in society.

So far this semester, no bias incidents have been severe enough that the Bias Intervention Program felt pressed to publicly report it.

Half of the incidents reported last November took place in Tilton Hall. The program should pick up on the trend and realize that bias incidents at Tufts often are committed by first-semester freshman. Whether they are immature, uncomfortable with the diversity of Tufts, or simply biased against others, it seems that the time to be proactive is at the beginning of the school year, and that the target should be freshman.

The Tufts experience socializes norms of tolerance and acceptance, greatly reducing the need for anti-bias education later in the school year.

If there is a substantial decrease in bias incidents as students become older, as is indicated, then this dynamic would be interesting to examine. The Tufts experience could be applied to the greater society. The Peer Educator Group could use its lessons and techniques to foster acceptance and consideration far beyond Tufts, starting with the greater Boston community.