Oksana Polhuy, ’14
COURTEST OF LARRY LIGGET
I have been observing campus climate tension at DePauw University as a student and now as a 2014 alumna and would like to propose the next step in solving the issue with tension in solidarity with other students. To solve a problem, we first need to acknowledge that it exists instead of covering it up with good examples.
To explain the power and necessity of acknowledgment, I would like to share a personal story. I am from Ukraine. My grandfather was captured by German Nazis and forced to work at a concentration camp in Poland during World War II because he was Slavic, and thus, sub-human according to the Nazi racial ideology and fit only to serve a fully human Aryan race. He ran away from the camp on his second attempt. Many Ukrainians had similar experiences leading to almost national hatred towards Germans as a nation. So you can imagine my confused state before visiting Germany as a 12-year old girl. I was to stay with a German family for a week and was wondering how I should behave, what attitude they would have towards me and where the whole memory of my grandfather’s experience would be situated.
What I found out upon arriving to Germany may be a key to moving forward from awareness of problems at DePauw campus to hopefully solving them. Germany spent a lot of resources to teach its people after the end of World War II that what the Nazi regime did was unacceptable, shameful and that everyone in the nation should acknowledge it, apologize for it and never do it again. When the war sentiment was brought up in my host German family, they told me, “We are very sorry about what happened to your grandfather. We are not proud of it and regret that it happened.” That’s all it took for me to feel at ease with them and forget about any tension between our nationalities. It was the acknowledgement that some treatments of people let us enjoy ourselves as humans, not historical enemies.
Instead of acknowledging that some students and faculty experience problems at DePauw due to their look, cultural background or sexuality, some DePauw community members sidetrack from these issues by showing good examples. For example, Fletcher Greer, ’14, who identifies with QUILTBAG community, points out in his recent opinion article in The DePauw that he had a great inclusive safe experience at DePauw. I am very happy to hear about it, but it does not help me understand how DePauw Latino students could have avoided a comment from Bon Appetit's server who jokingly said that the Latino guys were in the Hub to ask for money. It does not help me understand how DePauw faculty who sometimes feel marginalized within academia can learn from Greer's example. It does not help me understand why I had a great experience as an international student, while some of my international friends experienced issues due to their specific backgrounds.
We need to acknowledge that our experiences are and will be unique. We cannot just simply extrapolate our personal experience to the experiences of all other DePauw community members and claim, “DePauw is a great environment for everyone” or “DePauw is a bad environment for everyone.” We need to move past generalizations, acknowledge that different issues exist and address them. Just as our community is diverse, our approaches to solving issues should be diverse too.