SLC Reacts

A senior’s perspective on the campus’ Katrina response

by Sarah Kaufmann

Sunday November 13, 2005

I witnessed something on this campus on the evening of Sept. 8, that, as a senior I can say, has yet to be paralleled.

Not that we have been stagnant and inactive- quite the opposite is true. The history of activism on this campus is a long and cherished one, from sit-ins in Westlands, to raising FLIK worker wages in 2004 and our ongoing efforts to stop this Presidency’s war on the American people, our campus has never been silent.

However, the battles that we have fought have, at times, seemed impossible to win. In 2002 we marched in what felt like a hundred marches against the war to be met with police brutality and the shipment of our brothers and sisters to Iraq. In 2004 we screamed “Shut up, FOX!” We declared that New York, for many of us a temporary home, would not stand for the Republican Invasion. And what were we met with this time? Students were arrested and we were disappointed with not one, but two, administrations.

Yet we rallied again. Armed with school vans, $25 for food and sturdy walking shoes we headed to Ohio. A fight many of us were too young to take part in four years before was all we had left to cling to. We went door-to-door in the Columbus area, often greeted with: “I haven’t made up my mind yet, I’m just going to keep watching television.” But we never gave up. We filled information packets, we kept banging on doors, desperately trying in those last few moments to change even one persons’ mind.

We returned to this campus, a place where many of us have never felt more at home, and we waited. Together we watched the map across the wall in Reisinger turn from white to blue and more often to red. We went to bed that night with a collective hope that the American people could not stand by and watch their people become disenfranchised. We believed that we all had a voice in this election and that we could reclaim our country. The news that greeted us upon waking rocked our entire campus into depression.

We had fought so hard, and now what were we supposed to do?
For many of us the time between the election and Hurricane Katrina has been one of recovery. We turned to our school work, looking to the past to guide what looked like a bleak future for America. Gathering strength and knowledge to fight again, we waited for our moment, and sadly it came in the form of a tragedy.

This hurricane has blown our government’s cover. The general American public was shocked that the people of New Orleans could not afford to leave their homes—homes that their families had spent generations securing— and that their cries for help and aid had been ignored by our government for days. Perhaps these realizations of inequality have begun to introduce people to terms like “institutional racism” and “extreme poverty.”

The poor and the predominantly black people of New Orleans have been treated in virtually the same manner as they were when we ripped them from the shores of Africa: no food, no water, no space. The dehumanization of America’s poor, minorities and immigrants has been going on for so long that we seem to have forgotten that the fight was never won. Yet we saw a sea of desperate black faces and we were surprised, and without noticing, we were asked to think of our brothers and sisters as criminals.

Words like “locked and loaded,” “shoot to kill,” and “zero tolerance,” create a vocabulary of ignorance and hate, and yet our leaders toss them around as if they are fighting a war.
Perhaps we are. Even on this campus we have been fighting. We have been fighting over alcohol, we have been fighting over racism, but maybe what we have really been fighting for is a chance to have our voices heard.

On Thursday evening two first year students gave a voice that resonated far beyond the concrete walls of Reisinger. After teach-ins, panels and lectures we finally had a community, one that was full of different colors and sizes, students, guests, faculty and administrators. We ate together, sang together, cheered together, spent money together, but the most important thing that we did as a community was listen.

We heard stories of strength and perseverance, stories of struggle, identity, politics, sex, and poverty, the things that make up the lives of our people. We applauded because as a community, as a college and as a people, each of us has a part in this story.

Our story is one of pain and suffering, but it is also one of celebration, beauty and life. In the New York Times Anne Rice wrote that we have failed New Orleans— and we have. We have failed to recognize the people standing on rooftops and huddled in the corners of the Astrodome as our brothers and sisters. We have let our family down, but it is not over yet. On Thursday we stood together, we gave time, money and admiration to the members of our family that have been fighting for so long. We as a community opened our arms, and what were we met with?

Overwhelming support.