The Infamous Centerspread

Last semester I walked into a classroom to see a white man talking in an Indian accent. Three blonde-haired blue-eyed women laughed openly as he continued to talk in his mocking tone. I stopped in my tracks. I was more surprised than offended as the man continued. He turned and saw me staring directly at him. He stopped immediately. I continued to stare. He attempted to meet my stare but gave up after a few seconds. I went to my seat while my mind was racing furiously. I started thinking about other minorities on campus and whether they felt the same way. I was angered for a reason I couldn’t understand.

I talked to a couple of other minorities. They told me about how they had been treated on campus. Even a staff member shared a story about something that had happened to them.

In situations like these, I respond with one thing: I write.

And so I walked into the Clause meeting on a Tuesday night and asked to write this article. Nenji Yilpet, the senior staff writer decided to help me and we started working on it together. It didn’t even print. All hope was lost until this semester when the editor-in-chief wanted to print it again.

This was an emotional piece for Nenji and I. We were trying to do our journalistic duty while still recognizing the fact that as minorities these issues were important to us. It finally got printed this past Friday. You can find it here (WARNING: pdf file).

Happily, nothing was chopped and both Nenji and me were pleased with the final product.

I had good conversations with a large number of people with this article and came away with the conclusion that APU, as a Christian university, has a long way to go.

Something that didn’t make it into the article but was important was Woody Morwood’s comment to me during a hour long conversation. Woody is the campus pastor and is an all around nice guy. Woody said that it was difficult to get to a point where we had little problems simply because of the new students that come in every year. The university has to reteach an entirely new generation of students. That is an important fact to think about and I hope can be addressed somehow.

I recognize that racism will always be a problem. I just don’t get why ignorance still is.