Generation

Today is the second day of Telescope weekend at Tufts. Telescope is officially described as a "program for students of color, first generation college students, students from rural or low income areas, and other students interested in diversity." In practice, it's where high school seniors who have already been admitted to Tufts get to come to the University to visit and have the time of their lives going apeshit as college freshmen are wont to do. I didn't have the luxury of going on Telescope, but friends of mine tell stories of both incredible fun and incredible stupidity, as if they were thrust into college at a time when they really weren't ready for it yet. Bah, who is, really?

I was having lunch in the campus center when someone who looked to me like a middle-aged dad approached me and stuck his hand out. "Excuse me, could I have a few minutes of your time?" said the man. From yesterday I've had random people going up to me and congratulating me on the rally and it's just been awesome to have so many people supporting us. I thought he was another one of them, but to my surprise, he was in fact Bruce, a middle-aged father of a girl going on Telescope. Since he mentioned later in our conversation was Jewish and from Philly, I'm guessing his daughter was one of the "other students interested in diversity."

Bruce had picked up a copy of the Tufts Daily and read about our rally. He asked me if there really were a lot of hate crimes going on at Tufts. I hesitated at first, thinking that I was just about to paint a picture of my school to someone who had no impression of it. He told me once again that his daughter had already decided to come, so I could be honest. I breathed a sigh of relief.

What I appreciated from this conversation was that despite Tufts' efforts to bury what happened in terms like "bias incident", even a complete outsider like Bruce realized that the details of the incident pointed to it possibly being a hate crime. Just let me know that people even outside the university are concerned with how we are doing.

After he left, though, I thought about why I assumed he was a dad off the bat, but yet I wondered why, of the around twenty people in Hotung Cafe at the time, he approached me. He had no knowing that I was one of the rally organizers. He in all likelihood assumed that since the rally was in response to an incident involving Asian Americans, an Asian must know about the true situation involving hate crimes on campus. Not calling him racist, but at least even he realized that the best person to ask about racism is someone who belongs to the targeted group. Some people don't get even that.

Also, been reading a lot of Allan Johnson's stuff recently - I know you're reading this Kip, would highly recommend him for debaters (If you still coach high schoolers that is :) ). He's a good intro to talking about sociology in a scholarly manner. If you can't find his books, his site collects many of his essays.