I'm eating lunch in the campus center, trying to do some work. But I can't. I'm too distracted by the spectacle going on right outside: The "Speak-Out Open Mic Session," which kicks off Bias Awareness Week.
First off, I don't judge others based on their race, religion or nationality. I make jokes with my close friends, but, I also take them (as a chubby, Canadian Jew). Second, I don't want this article to be considered an attack on liberals. I used to be one before coming to Tufts. If anything, this article could be beneficial to liberals. Maybe one will read this and realize that most moderate, rational people think hardcore liberals are just as crazy, if not crazier, than neo-cons. Having said all that, I would like to apologize in advance to anyone I offend by writing this, because here at Tufts, people's feeling get hurt quite easily.
Bias Awareness Week, as well as most other forms of "activism" at Tufts, is like masturbation: something that someone does so he or she can feel good without really accomplishing anything. The "Speak-Out Open Mic Session" did not try to attract outsiders or change viewpoints.
It wasn't even advertised on campus until a girl came into the campus center asking people to eat their lunches in the sub-40 degree, windy weather during the middle of the session.
Little is ever accomplished by Tufts' self-righteous "activists." They simply don't get the whole picture. They believe that all the wrong in the world - the hate, the violence, the intolerance - can be remedied with round-table discussions and open-mic sessions. They think that if they pat one another on the back enough for being so righteous, so accepting and so progressive, that everyone else will be too.
Darfur is an example of the power of the "campus activist." Half of the students on this campus own a "Stop the Genocide" T-shirt or a dozen pins with pseudo-witty catchphrases about the genocide. But does that raise awareness for a problem?
No. Everyone at Tufts already knows about the genocide. Or does it just give the T-shirt, pin-reppin' owner a smug sense of self-satisfaction for being so compassionate and in-tune with world tragedies? Actually that might be taking it a little far. I am sure many Tufts students buy the shirts and pins because they look cool too.
Perhaps I am judging everything too harshly. After all, campus activists like the Bias Education Awareness Team don't fight for Darfur. They fight for on-campus rights. But wait. What rights? Does a campus like Tufts really need a group like this?
There was the Primary Source jingle last semester, but that was nothing more than a writer not knowing where the current line in the sand between free speech and liberal outrage was. It was worthy of quick reprimand and maybe an apology, but not a wave of outrage and tears. So, where at Tufts is all the racism and intolerance that Bias Awareness Week is so courageously fighting? Could this article just be another chapter in the ongoing conspiracy aimed at concealing and hiding racist incidents at Tufts? That would certainly make activism at Tufts a lot more exciting and purposeful, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
If anything, the over-emphasis on "bias awareness" bolsters more racial tension. For example, I witnessed a fight between a black student and a white student last year. The police and Bias Intervention Team tried to add a hate-crime spin. The fight was actually over a girl. Typical.
It's almost 1 p.m. and the last speaker just finished. The crowd has dwindled, with only a few people toughing out the wind and cold to support "the cause." I think to myself, was anything accomplished from this congregation of the devout? I'm not sure. In my two years here, I haven't seen much campus activism that has changed the world, the local community or even Tufts. If this meeting is the exception, then I will retract this Viewpoint and the claims I made in it.
But, if I'm correct and nothing happens, then I wrote an 800-word Viewpoint and completed half a problem set while these brave, sagacious activists, who believed they were doing something, were actually just jerking off.
