Community Dialogue Sparks Frustration Among Student Body
On September 17, the Presidential Council on Campus Climate (PCCC) sent out an email to the student body, responding to a series of anonymous posters around campus depicting graphic images of dead infants, claims that “Israel is stealing organs from child martyrs,” as well as quotations from specific Israeli politicians regarding the destruction and genocide in Gaza. The Council said it would not remove the posters with quotations, explaining that “they are political expressions of the kind that Reed protects, even when its messaging is provocative, upsetting, or strongly contested.” However, the Council made it clear that the remainder of the posters would be removed, stating, “When political statements appear as part of a broader campaign that includes graphic imagery, claims that invoke long-standing antisemitic tropes about Jews killing children for ritual purposes, and hostile messages directed at people identified as Zionists, we must consider the totality of the conduct and its effect on our community.”
Accompanying this statement was an invitation to a community dialogue on September 24. The goal of the dialogue was to distinguish between free speech and hate speech, and to help navigate issues as a community. Closer to the day, Interim Vice President for Institutional Diversity Neela Rajendra sent an email to the student body. She said that hard questions have been raised in response to the recent events, and the dialogue was intended to be “a chance to talk through these questions together—what free expression protects, where it ends, and how we hold space for vigorous, even painful disagreement while keeping the dignity of the people around us intact.”
On Thursday, the dialogue was opened by a small group discussion on what our family and community teaches us about speaking up, staying quiet, and disagreeing. After this, Rajendra addressed the room. First, she introduced herself as a member of the PCCC. Prior to beginning at Reed, Rajendra served as the Chief Inclusion Officer and the Chief Team Excellence and Team Success Officer at NASA. According to Audrey Bilger’s email about hiring Rajendra, “Neela will support the Office of Institutional Diversity team and partner with campus stakeholders in our shared commitment to creating an inclusive, equitable community.”
After introducing herself and inviting the other members of the Council to raise their hands, Rajendra opened the conversation with “the question at the heart of it: how do we engage when we don’t agree?” The goals were “to engage with this community and begin building bridges of connection,” and to “take the first steps together toward engaging important and painful topics in keeping up with the Honor Principle.” She said that this was the first of many conversations, to allow the community to “work towards those hard topics.”
As soon as the microphone was turned towards the audience, students expressed frustration that the initial conversation was centered on how to have a dialogue, as opposed to opening up the conversation right away. “That seems like a good way to wait until people don’t care anymore,” said one student, before getting up and leaving the room. “This is a massive downplay of what was occurring in the email,” said another. “Waiting so long for this conversation is pacifying the issue.”
Rajendra clarified that this was not the intention, and claimed that if we do not prepare on how to do this, there will be no progress. “I see Reed struggling with itself instead of pushing forward for change,” said Rajendra. “We need to work towards social change, but it feels like we are talking past each other.” Despite this, students continued to express frustration, with one student claiming that “this feels like a denial of what's occurring, rather than acknowledging what’s occurring.”
Next, Rajendra established a series of community agreements: expect non-closure; listen to understand, not respond; speak from your own lived experiences; assume positive intent; and see each other as human beings. After this, the microphone was once again turned to the audience. One student asked, “Are these community agreements ready to acknowledge that people will not be comforted by them?”
As the microphone was passed around the room, students continued to share their thoughts. “The neutrality we see Reed take with instances like this does not benefit anyone,” said one student. “It hurts people of color, which correlates to the hate felt on campus. The facade that we see needs to be talked about immediately.” As the conversation grew more intense, a member of the community grew frustrated that the dialogue was taking place over the microphone, and urged the facilitators to move the discussion back into small groups.
For the remaining fifteen minutes of the hour, we returned to our tables and discussed everything that we had heard. To conclude, Rajendra thanked everyone for their participation, reassured the audience that this was the first of many future conversations, and expressed hope to see everyone back soon.
After the dialogue, I spoke with Cyrus Stratton ‘30. “It felt like they were infantilizing us,” he said. “We’re college students. We have worked our asses off to get here. We have engaged in critical thinking; we have written papers for them. We have been graded and evaluated, yet they talk to us like children when it comes to anything that challenges them.” Stratton expressed frustration that, although we attend a school centred on open dialogue, “we are not allowed to participate in it.”