Yesterday's remembrance ceremony for Professor Gerald Gill could have been a repetition of this summer's memorial service, a time during which Professor Gill's family, friends, colleagues and students gathered on short notice to mourn the loss of a beloved member of the Tufts community.
On that sweltering day in August, we were all too much in shock from the recent news of Gill's death to do anything but treat the fresh emotional wound with kind words of remembrance, trying to process our grief and surprise, anticipating how much we would miss the great man's kindness, wisdom, scholarship and spirit.
I cried myself sick that day, devastated and reeling from the loss of my advisor, teacher, mentor and dear friend. Yesterday, I dreaded a duplicate service, partly because I feared revisiting that feeling of absence which fond remembrances tend to invoke, but also because I felt the previous ceremony hadn't done Gerry Gill, a remarkably complex "colossus" of a man (as Joel Laure Smith of the music department called him yesterday), justice.
I decided to attend, though, and how glad I am that I did. Only moments into Professor Howard Malchow's tribute, it became clear that today's ceremony would take a very different shape from the first.
Never during my three years at Tufts have I experienced the type of unease, intellectual ignition and communal excitement that Professor Malchow's words sparked. Cohen Auditorium was absolutely silent with everyone perched on the edge of their seats. Malchow set out to speak about "the sharper edges" of Professor Gill: the anger, the frustration, the perseverance and ultimate exhaustion.
In short, by highlighting Gill's diversity, dedication and passion in his pursuit of a just, egalitarian society, Professor Malchow reprimanded Tufts for its lip service to diversity and equality and, in Gill's name, called for real social change at the university. He received a standing ovation from many in the crowd. Some, however, sat silent. Perhaps they agreed with Professor Malchow's words, but felt that using a remembrance ceremony as a podium was inappropriate.
Some, I believe, truly disagreed with Malchow's claim that Tufts is failing at pursuing a truly diverse, integrated and accepting institution. However, I was not one of them.
As I stood to applaud his oration, I imagine that all of those with whom I stood shared my enormous sense of relief, alliance, pride and satisfaction in Malchow's words.
Professor Gill taught, yes, and took the time for all of us with patience, kindness and wisdom, but above all, he fought by serving. He was a true activist until the day he died.
I applaud Professor Malchow's decision to give the speech he did. After all, what better way to truly honor Professor Gill than with an admonishment of Tufts' failure to "walk the walk" of their supposed pursuit of a better, more equal community?
Walking through the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, South Africa this past February during my first week of my semester abroad there, Professor Gill's absence in my semester became conspicuous. The images of the Youth Uprising of 1976 against the oppressive Afrikkaner education system, the words of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Robert Sobukwe and others associated with the anti-apartheid movement were all reminiscent of my last class with Professor Gill: "Research Topics in the Civil Rights Movement."
I furiously scribbled notes, wishing Gill could be there with me to aid the synthesis between the research I had done under his mentorship and my new surroundings on the other side of the world. I e-mailed him later that day to tell him about the intensity of my experience.
I heard back from him, apologetically, two months later. He was thrilled that I had felt so overwhelmed and compelled by the intellectual and social connections I was making between racial issues in the United States and South Africa.
Upon returning to the United States in May, I realized that my anger when faced with such deep-seated racism had dramatically deepened my convictions towards the need for activism and social justice.
An idealist before I left for my time abroad, I had flourished intellectually under Professor Gill's tutelage, but hadn't acted upon his impassioned teachings, despite their deep effect on me. In contrast, when I stepped into East Hall for the first time on the very first day of classes this semester, I was overwhelmed by nostalgia and absence - without Professor Gill, who would help me weld the passion with which I had been infected during my time in South Africa with my work at Tufts?
Three weeks later, I am still struggling with that sense of disconnect. On an institutional level, Tufts doesn't foster the kind of active citizenship and service that Professor Gill so firmly exemplified and encouraged. Nor does Tufts seem to be actively addressing the deep racial divisions that mar this campus by attracting and retaining a socio-economically, racially, religiously and intellectually diverse faculty and student body.
With graduation on the horizon, as I grapple with questions of "What next?" Professor Gill's teachings - those from his classroom, our innumerable conversations, his work and his example - serve as a gentle yet firm push to take my evolving ideals and translate them into action.
Professor Malchow was right to do what he did today. We all need a wake-up call to think, to serve, to pursue equality and justice - not just in principle, but in action.
We must step outside of the artificial comfort to which so many of us have become accustomed at this all-too homogenous campus. If we as individuals and a community ever succeed, Professor Gill, it will be in your beloved memory.
Sara Franklin is a senior majoring in history.
