BRYN MAWR一Convocation ceremonies allow college presidents to usher students into a new academic year and, in the words of Bryn Mawr College President Wendy Cadge, “welcome [them] to the magic.” On Sept. 3, Bryn Mawr College students, faculty, and staff attended the 2024 Convocation Ceremony, marking the beginning of the fall semester.
On April 29, Cadge was announced as Bryn Mawr College’s 10th president following the stepping down of Kimberly Cassidy. Cadge’s inauguration as president came at a time of elevated political activism and discourse on campus that is ongoing today – particularly surrounding pro-Palestinian protests, including calls for divestment of the college from Israel, and political actions like the People’s College for the Liberation of Palestine.
Over the summer, students, faculty, and staff received an email with the subject line, “Affirming Our Shared Community Values” from the president’s office, that made an explicit plea to community members to follow the college’s mission statement, honor code, and various other college policies (Equal Opportunity, Non-Discrimination, and Discriminatory Harassment Policies, Faculty/Staff Handbooks, Freedom of Speech & the Limits of Dissent, Hazing, and the Posting Policy). The email was signed by Karlene Burrell-McRae, dean of the undergraduate college, Wendy Cadge, president and professor of sociology, Tim Harte, provost and professor of Russian, and Tijana Stefanovic, interim chief financial officer and chief administrative officer.
Echoing President Cadge’s goal of fostering common ground on campus, the email reads, “We hope this year will provide us with new opportunities for open communication, ways to engage with each other, and chances to approach areas of disagreement with respect, a willingness to listen, and an expectation that we will be heard.” This follows reports from students last spring of stalemates in communication concerning the People’s College for the Liberation of Palestine. These tense impasses seemed, to students, to be fault of the administration. Bryn Mawr’s student body has openly expressed a willingness to communicate about the issues through plenary resolutions and by following the honor code [see section on positive confrontation]. Lack of transparency, unwillingness to communicate, and detachment from political discourse have reinforced power dynamics between students, faculty, and staff, relegating discourse to a space of purgatory, a purgatory in which conversations are not acted upon and ideas that disrupt the status quo are either frowned upon or deemed idealistic and impossible.
This purgatory nature is exemplified by President Cadge’s encouragement to find common ground on political issues during her speech at the convocation ceremony. She shared her reaction to a social experiment conducted by the non-profit organization Narrative4. The premise of the experiment was to bring subjects on two opposing sides of a political position together to share their personal stories. Participants present their partner’s story, from the point of view of their partner, to the rest of the group. The exercise aims to foster empathy in an oppositional space. Empathy is important when discussing politics, but the idea of finding common ground on these political issues connotes a more sinister element of compromise on issues. For example, this iteration of the experiment focused on the topic of gun violence and gun rights, a subject that is personal for many people. This is not to say these conversations and debates should not happen, but that common ground as a goal limits these types of dialogues in terms of morality, which does not lead to political action. The experiment itself and its results explain this point clearly.
Todd Underwood and Caroline Tuft were the stars of the experiment, and the documentary followed them through their journey, as they are highlighted to be the pair who had the most success in finding some common ground. The duo was referenced in President Cadge’s convocation speech. She spoke of both of their backgrounds but did not mention that Underwood, who is the founder of United Gun Group (a “social marketplace for the firearms community”), allowed George Zimmermann to sell the gun he used in the murder of Trayvon Martin, on his website. This is crucial information to consider when interrogating the problematic nature of common ground. Underwood not only benefitted economically from the lynching of an unarmed Black teenager, but he explicitly states in the documentary, “We didn’t think it was the responsibility of a website to dictate morality to its members.” He transfers his agency in the situation to a website. The website itself is not in a dialogue surrounding gun violence, he is.
Underwood claims no responsibility for his actions in profiting off of racially targeted gun violence. As the experiment continues, he seems to understand the utter devastation of gun violence as he listens to Tuft say, referencing her daughter’s murder, “I’ll never forget her beautiful face just looking out into the store, and there’s nothing behind it.” He breaks down as Tuft tells her story and expresses empathy for her pain, but turns around at the end of the experiment and says, “I get it. I see her point. I understand what she’s saying. I disagree on the solution.” This utterance proves that the experiment was ineffective in its search for true empathy and common ground, as Underwood claims to comprehend and “understand” the terror and emotional trauma resulting from gun violence, but continues to ignore his responsibility within the issue, as the owner of a website that makes firearms available to the American public. Additionally, he does not take any action concerning his conversation with Tuft. He does not stop carrying guns and he does not shut down his website. On the other side of the metaphorical coin, Tuft does not suddenly become a gun rights activist after the conversation. She does not begin to carry around a gun with her every where she goes, and she does not become a card carrying member of the NRA.
The only common ground the two seem to find is superficial, as it rests on the level of their humanity. This is to say that the whiteness of both participants generates no historical memory of dehumanizing oppression. The superficiality of this finding demonstrates the ineffectiveness of common ground. The only action they can take based on their agreed position, one another’s humanity, is acknowledgment, which is a passive action. Therefore, there is nothing they can do to solve the issue because there is no pathway created toward a solution.
In observing the two participants, I noticed that the duo have two different ideas of humanity outside of their partnership. Underwood seems to view other human beings as adversaries. For example, his desire to level the playing field is linked to his experience with familial violence his childhood. Caroline tells his (Todd’s) story of his father punching him in the face for committing vandalism. She details how he responds to his father saying, “Are you telling me that because I threw tomatoes in a field, you are going to hit me with your fist?” Caroline finishes the story saying that Todd’s father backed down and never hit him again. On the surface level, this does not explain his affinity to guns, as talking basically ended the violence he was facing in his life at the time. Another part of Todd’s story is his diagnosis with Multiple sclerosis, he explains that he feels a gun “levels the playing-field” between him and someone who would like to commit violence against him. This idea is best exemplified in the example he uses to describe a time when he felt he had to use his gun in self-defense.
He describes a road rage incident in which he pulled a gun on someone approaching his car. He says his gun saved him that day. He did not fire his gun, he drew it. He used it to intimidate the other party, as they walked up to him in his car. He does not say whether or not the other person was armed, and he “wins” the altercation because his gun gives him more power over the other person. If he were to have shot this person (and they were unarmed) he would have committed a crime: murder. His gun did not save him that day; though by “leveling the playing field,” it gave him the upper-hand in a traffic dispute. Underwood begins the documentary in saying that it’s the first time in many years he has not had his gun on him, but he brought a knife with him. He had the intention, on the day of filming, of fulfilling an experiment on empathy and compassion, so why did he bring an instrument of violence with him? He has demonstrated before in his life that he can solve problems without knives, or a gun, or even his own fists. How can he “level the playing-field” with something that gives him a physical advantage over other human beings?
Tuft, on the other hand, seemed to recognize the humanity behind the perpetrator of the violence she experienced. Using the framework of Hannah Arendt, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, one could call this situation a sort of individualized “banality of evil” as the perpetrators behind mass shootings are not monsters or entities in a fantastical world of pure evil (and often work alone). They are human beings who use weapons built with the purpose of murder to commit evil acts. This observation alone proves there is a correct solution to this issue and it does not rely solely on morality or individual opinion. It is a fact that murder causes emotional distress, economic stress, and a plethora of other societal problems. If someone in a family is murdered, that means there could be one less breadwinner in the home, they could be grieved over by their family etc.
One can see the devastation in the family of Mrs. Tuft as she still grieves the loss of her daughter and deals with chronic pain resulting from the shooting. Tuft says in the documentary that there was nothing she could have done to prevent her daughter’s murder, even if she had a “gun in every pocket.” If she had so-called “leveled the playing field” by having a gun during the shooting, it would not have prevented anything. This point of view is further expressed at the end of the documentary, when she says, in regard to Todd’s stance, “I’m sad that there’s so much fear in people, that they feel like they need to carry a weapon everywhere they go.” She says this, despite the fact that she herself is a victim of gun violence, yet Todd, who does not express that he is victim of gun violence, has this fear of “monsters or entities in a fantastical world of pure evil” who are out to get him specifically. He is so afraid of evil in the world, yet refuses to take any action that lessens it. He does not acknowledge the humanity of ordinary people who commit extraordinary evils, which leads him to an inhumane way of dealing with human faults, through his perpetuation of gun culture, and frankly of gun violence. How does one decrease gun-related deaths? Remove guns from the situation.
Though I have focused so far on the topic of gun violence and its place in the debate on common ground in this piece, the optics of President Cadge’s speech were not great. Her use of the example of gun violence was in poor taste. The audience at the convocation ceremony was primarily students who have gone through the American school system, infamously known around the world for all too frequent school shootings. In addition, the opposing side in her chosen topic involved a white man who made profited off of the lynching of an unarmed Black teenager. Why on earth would I, for example, a Black woman who has gone through the American public school system, have a charitable and empathetic conversation with a man who thinks that my personhood is disposable and a fact of life? Students should not be encouraged to put themselves in harm’s way, whether it be emotional harm, or even physical harm, to make a moral point that leads to no political action, and in fact, could lead to violence against them. If students, especially those of us who are marginalized, are going to engage in dialogue, we have a lot more to lose. The oppressed do not find common ground with their oppressors. We take action because that is one of the only things we can do, to be noticed and listened to by those brave enough to overturn all systems, of all types of oppression.
Finally, I would like to mention that on September 4, the day after the Convocation Ceremony at Bryn Mawr College, there was a school shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Four people were murdered: Ricky Aspinwall, Cristine Irimie, Mason Schermerhorn, and Christian Angulo. Nine other people were injured and hundreds were traumatized. Is it worth arguing for common ground now, in the wake of this incredibly preventable tragedy? Should we find a compromise on the worth of the lives of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese? What is the point of political dialogue that does not lead directly to political action? Should liberal arts students trade critical thought for some passive common ground?
1 comment
Great and very important piece!! thank you!!