Walking around campus is no easy task for a Texan (yes, I am a Texan, and no, that does not automatically mean I voted for Bush). Before transferring from the University of Texas, I enjoyed leisurely walks to class accompanied by frequent yet unexpected encounters with random acquaintances. I would even talk to them for a minute or two - especially the weird Austin types. It was good medicine for a closet moderate like me.
Here, however, it is a completely different experience. I feel like I have just been thrown straight in the middle of I-95 with a prayer and a JanSport full of condoms I nervously accepted from health services. It has become clear to me that identity and purpose to most students on campus has become so rigidly clear that the desire to stop and exchange some friendly words with near-strangers and outsiders has all but vanished.
You say this might just be an outgrowth of sweet, homegrown New England culture? (Keep in mind 66 percent of undergraduates originate from outside New England.) Then riddle me this Batman: why does the same mentality translate into something culturally unexpected - a complete dearth of commonplace, open political dialogue on campus between members of opposing ideologies? Granted, the liberal to conservative ratio at Tufts is about as huge as the female sex organ I saw last weekend at the campus center, but this inequality should not presuppose the utter absence of a genuine political dialectic in Medford, Somerville, or wherever the hell Tufts actually is.
The best excuse for honest discussion that I've seen here has been - you guessed it - complaining. I have read the gamut: the Daily, the Observer, the Primary Source - hell, I have even read last year's ill-fated issue of Radix. I've been to Tufts Republicans meetings, and although I have not yet attended a Tufts Democrats meeting, I have become good friends with two of their officers. As an outsider, it is absolutely stunning to see such a quagmire of intellectual exchange in a university that prides itself on ideological openness and honesty.
As a native Texan, I am no stranger to stunted intellectual and political discourse. Enter my hometown: Kingwood, Texas. It has affectionately been coined "the bubble" by its more daring residents, primarily because of its sheer absence of blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Arabs, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, dwarves, Catholics, French or any of "those we don't speak of."
Kingwood has become the Sparta of our time, mostly for its practices of throwing undesirable children over rail bridges and of lifelong enlistment of firstborn males into the great right-wing crusade. Political dissenters, much like those here at Tufts, are shunned into submission. That, my newfound Yankee (et al.) friends, is what scares me to death. In terms of ideological environments, Tufts is just as shut off to certain alternative thought as the prison of Kingwood that I escaped from.
I do applaud the student body's efforts, one-dimensional though they might have been, to include particular voices in the general social community that might have otherwise been overlooked. Because of these experimental ventures, I can freely talk to most minorities on campus without fearing the opinions of those belonging to my own ethnicity, sexuality, and culture.
However, while these endeavors have created a relative sense of social stability at Tufts, they have failed to create an appreciation of the wonderful diversity of political thought that exists on campus. We have everything from Anarchists to Zionists and from communist San Francisco hippie tree-huggers to plutocratic Texas oil-guzzling bastards. To me, that is a beautiful thing. However, I am concerned that many here see it as something to be feared. I have seen the anger, the resentment, and the fury that a pro-lifer exhibits and evokes in the classroom. I recognize this because the same negative emotions were induced by pro-choicers in my hometown. It is this exact fear that is crippling relations between students in this campus and between citizens in this country. Get over yourself and be a friend to someone who pisses you off. That is, in a political context of course.
Sure, I might be rough around the edges. I might not be the most politically correct dude you meet on campus. But this Texan is damn willing to have a frank and open discussion with you about it without empty rhetoric or false fronts. That is, after all, why all of us are here: to learn not just about what we believe, but also to learn about that which we do not.
Travis Brackin is a freshman who has not declared a major.
