I have always lived by the motto that every day should have a little bit of a vacation in it. Instead of saving up to go all-out on a week-long bender in Cancun, I'd much rather spend what little extra money I have going out to eat or to a jazz club.
When I'm feeling like sand and a lack of sobriety, a $1.99 draft of Killian's at Uno's and a walk on Duxbury Beach will suffice. Why cram all the fun in life into one week when just a spoonful of vacation helps each school day go down? That said, my complexion is the whiter shade of pale and I spent my spring break at home, working.
Any time I spend in my hometown, which is less than an hour south of here on Route 3, reminds me of my high school experiences and how different they are from college. First of all, I get a heck of a lot more sleep here. In four years at Tufts, I think I've made up for the all-nighters I pulled back in 9th grade when they really didn't count. Secondly, I marvel at the level of diversity and cultural interchange we can create with just a few thousand students. Most of the time, it's an improvement from the school from whence I came. Every so often, however, I'm reminded of a past I'd prefer to move beyond.
The South Shore of Massachusetts experienced its greatest population boom shortly after Judge Arthur Garrity ordered the desegregation of Boston school districts in 1974. The town where I grew up is overwhelmingly white and Christian. Even though the Catholic school I attended was extremely tolerant and encouraging of differences in religion, culture and sexuality, the student body was overwhelmingly white, Catholic and straight. Diversity was a matter of being Irish or Italian. We made the rest of the Boston suburbs look like Disney's "It's a Small World" attraction, minus the music, the costumes and the little boats on rollers.
It was in this incubator that students' attitudes towards race, religion and sexuality formed. Sadly, no matter how many times we were told to celebrate and respect diversity, many students and even some teachers never learned. Even though most students didn't hold blatantly bigoted views, a lack of exposure to the "other" made a respect for the "other" an abstract notion. Hence, words like "gay," "black," "woman," and "Jewish" became disconnected from their original descriptive targets and used as all-purpose insults.
I will never forget the English and Drama teacher who had the "I Have a Dream" speech posted on his wall, but who repeatedly told more than one student to "stop being such a fag." A lot of these people, if asked, would say they had no ill will towards any of those groups. To them, "gay" was just a synonym for "idiot." However, their words betrayed their true feelings.
With these experiences in mind, and because I wasn't on vacation and still around to read Thursday's paper before break, I read about the recent bias incident that resulted in Level II Probation for a student. During that incident, according to an eyewitness quoted in the Daily, "At some point, the word faggot was tossed around, but I can't remember who was saying it."
Tossed around! As if it didn't have any meaning. Now, I don't know the exact circumstances of the incident, but there were two ways the word could've been used. First, it could've been a direct homophobic slur against someone who was or was perceived to be a homosexual. That's bad enough. Worse, however, would be if "faggot" were simply substituted for another insult. That's derogatory not only to the target of the insult, but it also drags down gays and lesbians everywhere. It not only says, "I hate you," but also, "You are as bad as the members of another group I hate."
According to another eyewitness, the student now on probation reacted against an accusation of being "a fag." He was apparently "defending his honor," as if there's no worse thing in the world than to be gay. What does that say about our attitudes towards gays? Or, looking at another more common insult, what does taking offense to "don't be such a girl" say about male attitudes towards women?
Take offense to being called a liar, a cheat, or a thief. Take offense when someone insults you for something of which you are proud. Taking offense when being likened to a member of a group of which you are not a part is not only saying, "I hate that group," but also, "I am proud not to be a part of that group."
Maybe some of you think that calling a testosterone-fueled tussle a "bias incident" is too harsh a penalty. "It was just a fight," you might be thinking. "It was just trash talk." Unfortunately, sometimes in our most raw moments we give the most exposure to our true feelings. There is no such thing as innocuous hate speech, and that's a belief from which I'll never take a vacation.
Keith Barry is a senior majoring in Psychology and Community Health. He can be reached at keith.barry
