Words can convey love, sadness, hope, regret and joy. They can also be an insidious weapon, especially when written, because the written word is the clearest voice, and indelible. On Tuesday, Feb. 17, words were used to damage, to hurt, to demean and to display hate. The morbific message, "Death to you," was written alongside a Star of David on the door to the residence of four female students, three of whom are Jewish. At Dartmouth College. At our school. These hateful, hate-filled words do not become us.
On the following Monday night at the Roth Center for Jewish Life, at a conference to discuss the campus's course of action in response to this act of vandalism and animus, one person thought the inscription of loathsome words on the students' door was not perpetrated by a stupid person; that, in fact, it was most probably a Dartmouth student, an educated individual. This concept is flawed because it suggests that someone of considerable education cannot be stupid, that colossal ignorance and a college degree are mutually exclusive. In short, the malicious chalker, the anonymous author of the graffito, is slack-witted.
When I came to Dartmouth, I carried with me my mind's luggage, the memories of a past life's preconceptions about people and human nature and society. Each day I live in this community, my conceptions embrace new experiences and new friends. One young man at the Roth Center gathering agreed with me, but only in part. He said that our personalities are formed before we go to college, that we learn our predilections from our parents. But he was of the opinion that our attitudes are intractable. He believes it would be futile and a waste of energy to try to change people or their minds.
Yet, another student thought if you dance, eat, sing and rejoice with people who are foreign to you, they will not long be your detractors, nor you theirs. They will become your friends; they will disfellow bias. They will feel the resonance of the personality, the human being, rather than the stereotype, the formulaic image. Dartmouth's Jew-baiter, then, has shunned our company and locked out camaraderie.
It has been said that students attend college to become as different from their parents as possible. We enter as creatures of our filiation, and we exit as individuals who own a fullness of being, a confluence of our past and our present. Every person we meet breaks and remakes the mold of our thoughts on cultures, ethnicities, races and religions. We become (at least most of us do) diversity-mongers in the marketplace of Dartmouth.
I met a student this year named Daniel. When I see him, we talk about things Jewish -- the former rabbi, the interim rabbi, the prospective rabbis. And holidays and rituals. He makes me feel my Judaic roots. I met a student this year named Candace. When she speaks, her emotional fervor spreads through crowds, counteracting shallowness and promoting action. She is definitely not male, nor white, and she may not be Jewish, but her voice reaches me nonetheless. The backgrounds of my two new friends are quite different. Their heritages are distinctly different. Yet, though life is not colorblind or gender foolish, it bequeaths us the power of diversity. We see people as Jewish or black, no question, but we choose our own negative or positive perspective.
To view Dartmouth as a melting pot of homogeneity in which each minority is lost in the broth of a majority stew would be incorrect. Rather, it is a cuisine that has a variety of meats and vegetables which, while retaining their own form, contribute to the overall flavor, quality and nutritional value of the feast. Diversity is jambalaya or chowder, miso, mulligatawny, vichyssoise, gazpacho ... or matzo ball.
Jewishness was the focus of the hate, but Jewishness should not be the boundary of the reaction; it should be broader. Have a meal. It is a natural thing. Hold a conversation. Share an experience. Protest outside Parkhurst. Relate a story. Raise a candle. Have a community. What better way to banish the darkness.
