Dear Community:
Within our community of trust, there exists a marginalized minority of queer-identified students. The queer student body is by no means united. Some queers work aimlessly to de-queer themselves and pass as heterosexual. Others utilize silence as a mechanism through which to avoid violence, persecution and dejection. A majority seeks out queer community for the sake of establishing friendships and overcoming the routine hostilities that are commonplace in masculine spaces. A select few are vocal and undeterred by the hostilities that they could encounter from the majority. One of the most vocal proponents of our community was assaulted on November 15, 2012 for refusing silence and second-class citizenship. This incident highlights an undercurrent of anxieties that all queers express, which is that any non-heterosexual, at any time, can be physically or verbally brutalized.
Verbal assault is the least visible and the most common form of psychological warfare. Verbal assault destroys the attacked person’s sense of self. Queer folks experience this at every home football game. “The Good Ol’ Song” was written in 1895 by Edward Craighill. Singing the song is a student tradition. As a part of this tradition, queer students of the University experience degrading and humiliating verbal assault. Some students yell that the University is a space where all is bright but “not gay!” In doing so, they are not only expelling queers from the community of trust, but also insisting that some students reject their own sense of identity, suffering in silent complacency. This assault produces feelings of self-deprecation and destruction and can lead to depression, anxiety or suicide in an attempt to eliminate the presence of a disowned self from an unwaveringly normative community.
The community of trust is most explicitly disbanded by the onslaught of physical violence motivated by hatred. As many of you may know, a queer-identified student was verbally and physically assaulted at the University. In his refusal to accept second-class citizenship and slouch in silence, the survivor of the attack was punched in the face. The survivor wears the scars of his protest, but by no means is he a victim or a repressed, self-deprecating mess. His spirit of resilience is much appreciated and highly applauded.
One day, we hope that the community of trust will be revived. One day, we hope that the menacing face of oppression will be forever buried.
Jared Brown, Shane Dutta, Robert Kell
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