I try to write my posts about how political events directly affect my family. In my opinion if we don’t show folks who vote contrary to their values and economic status what their votes cause, we will never move our country towards a better state. I think in the next four years we must speak not to power so much as to the common folks who continue to cede power to the aristocrats and conservative extremists in the Republican Party. So, I have ponied up a subscription and I will write more often.
My daughter attends Wellesley College. She is a senior studying biochemistry. She is the treasurer and a keeper on the Quidditch club (they even play the coed teams in the Southern New England Quidditch League). She is a part of the film society and every now and then projects movies for her fellow students (she is an Iron Man nerd). She works in one of the mess halls to make some spending cash, pay early on her student loans, and buy the textbooks she cannot download off the net. She has a radio show on the campus radio station (WZLY 91.5) every Friday night from 8pm to 10pm Eastern time where she plays music and makes occassional observations of life and tells whoever listens about events on campus. In other words, she is doing what a college student should do: study hard, explore your interests and have some fun while you can before you take on the responsibilities of full adulthood. Yeah, your damn right I’m proud of her, a public school educated kid from south Texas who worked her butt off to attend a prestigious college like Wellesley.
Of course, it has been a hard week at Wellesley. Imagine (I certainly was) having one of your alums become the first female president of the United States. The tension on the campus was high. My daughter said former students were covering the campus on Monday and Tuesday trying to get into Hillary’s old dorm room even (sorry to the young women living there). There were several watch parties on Tuesday night in high expectations of the predicted victory. And then they had to watch the slow train wreck most of us watched Tuesday night. It took an emotional toll.
However, when Wednesday morning came they went back to class. My daughter reports that they are in the middle of some of the heaviest work of the semester. None of her classes were cancelled. She had 8 pages to write for one class on Wednesday and multiple assignments in others including a presentation on a lab assignment on Friday. They were learning an important life lesson: bad things happen, and you must carry that burden and move on. I texted her Wednesday. I apologized to her. I told her I was ashamed of what had happened (especially as a white male). I warned her to be even more wary of men especially because many of them would be emboldened by this result. They would view this as a return to an old order where men could treat women like sexual objects without repercussion. I told her that even though it would be hard to carry on she needed to complete her education so that she would never be reliant on a man for economic or physical security. I have been in plenty of locker rooms. I live in red state territory. I know what many men are capable of.
She responded with a “Thanks, I love you dad” and I was thankful that she was up and walking. Then, I saw her post on social media reports of young men on campus with Trump flags harassing Wellesley students going to class. I immediately got on Twitter and Facebook to see what I could see. What I found was that two male students from Babson College had come over in the truck pictured above and had gone around campus confronting students. Pictures show clearly that the two young men got out of their truck at a building that serves as a gathering spot for students of African descent specifically to taunt students. Unfortunately, pictures and a Snap Chat post also show that after being escorted off campus by police, they were not arrested (even though there were reports that they spat at women), but allowed to leave with a warning that they were banned from Wellesley College. That Snap Chat post showed that they were immensely proud of their banning.
Being a dad, I was extremely upset of course (good thing I was over 1000 miles away). I called Wellesley to register my concern about safety. I then called Babson (and I encourage you to do if you are in any way outraged by this story) to see what actions were going to take place. While Babson has issued a statement of concern and a pledge to investigate, I still do not know what is going to happen to these two young men. Surely, I told Babson officials, they have violated the student code of conduct. Surely, they will be suspended or expelled even to send a message that such behavior will not be tolerated. Oh wait, though. We elected Trump. This incident will probably just fade away. And those two young men (and I know their names) will sit in a bar and laugh about the prank they pulled.
“No big deal,” a coworker told me. “You shouldn’t be so upset. It was just a prank.” Just locker room talk. Maybe he is right. He said, “You’re just mad because it’s personal.” I know one thing: I am mad.
My mother’s father left her when she was very young. Left her and her brother in the fifties alone with their school teacher mother. She even had to tell her own father to stop sending Christmas gifts to her and her younger brother because it was just making things worse (at the age of twelve). She herself got in a bad marriage and had to fight through a divorce. She fought her whole life fighting for the ERA, glass ceilings in her industry, and dealing with the inherent misogyny of this country. Are things better for my daughter? I hope so, but this election would indicate no.
In the end, I know this. As Gregg Popovich said (God bless the NBA coaches who have spoken out: Van Gundy and Kerr as well), right now, “We are Rome.” As Joy Reid said this morning to the 60 million who voted for Trump and the 100 million who did not vote: this is what you are going to get. The misogynists and racists have been emboldened. And if you voted for Trump and you are suddenly on the receiving end of some of this abuse, I’m not too sympathetic.