conversation – Houghton STAR

By Christian Welker

As I looked back over my college experience, there was this nagging sensation following me that I struggled to put my finger on. However, through conversations with friends and memories of the Houghton I first applied to, one phrase came to mind:

We have been silenced.

Let me be clear. This is not about Houghton’s academics. The classroom can be a spot for discussion and questions, which I believe is one of Houghton’s most amazing features. But we, students, have been taught a different lesson when we step out of the classroom.

Through the Houghton Rock, we’ve been taught that expressions of our sexuality, if they don’t match with Wesleyan virtues, will be met with anger and American flags.

Through the relocation of the Rock, we’ve been taught that the methods of creative expression will be regulated to the Field of Dreams if they make for uncomfortable press.

Through the Rainbow Alliance Cooperative, we’ve been taught that clubs and people who don’t adhere to the status quo will lose their ability to speak and gather freely on campus.

Through the Mosaic Center and the Center for Sustainability, we’ve watched programs designed to begin these conversations fall to ruin and vanish, becoming mere shadows of what they were meant to be.

My first serious opinion for The Houghton STAR was about debate in the modern world, which has become more about winning than discussing opposing views. In my four years at Houghton, I’ve seen that belief taken to the extreme. We are afraid to speak because others will do anything to win. It seems that if someone’s views do not perfectly align with the status quo presented to them, there is no support for them to present their ideas safely.

Conversation appears to have withered and died, with its only remains being the shallow roots of widely accepted facts, recycled endlessly from chapel pulpits and STAR articles: Jesus loves us. We should love others. Get off your phones during Chapel. Even Around the Table, which was supposed to be a place where deeper conversations occurred, has fallen into this pattern.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these messages. They can be timely and important in the right context, but the problem that has arisen is that these are the only conversations happening. This has cheapened those messages when deeper, more meaningful discussions could be paired with “Jesus loves us, we should love others” to take the message to the next level.

I’ve spoken to freshmen and sophomores who have told me that Houghton doesn’t seem like a place where open conversations can happen. Students find their bubbles and stay within them and rarely, if ever, bridge the gaps that form between them. I’m drawn to compare this to my freshman year (2020), when conversations about difficult topics happened frequently. Issues like race, sexuality, politics, and religious beliefs were commonplace, and there was little fear of expressing one’s own beliefs. Houghton was the place that broke the assumptions and stereotypes that I had started my college experience with. I had grown up in a conservative Christian environment and was simply never exposed to the LGBTQIA+ community, or the struggles that minorities go through on a daily basis. These conversations helped me round out my understanding and grow more accepting of ideas contrary to my own, shifting my perspective on social issues in ways that drastically changed who I was. These conversations made me the complete person I am today.

I’m afraid that the Houghton where those conversations happened is gone.

In its place, a silent campus has arisen. When conversations do happen, they have become loud, angry, and fear-inducing. The old Houghton would have embraced Chapel talks on uncomfortable subjects. It would have stoked the flames of discussion instead of suffocating voices out of fear that the fire would escape the bubble that we are in.

I miss that Houghton.

The new Houghton that has risen in its place threatens to collapse the community we’ve spent so long building. This new Houghton of simple chapel messages and simple opinions. This new Houghton of silence and silencing. This new Houghton where the only discussions that happen must take place in the classroom or administration-approved events. While the old Houghton boasted student-led forums on difficult topics and personal experiences, this new Houghton has forums led by singular faculty members where questions can be submitted via an online form and fed to the speakers via middlemen.

What is there, then, to be done? This silenced Houghton has become the new normal. How can we return conversation and debate to a silent campus without an explosive result?

Beginning the conversation is key to returning to the old Houghton. We must embrace the difficult and scary conversations, stand out from the crowd, and show why we are unique. We must listen to the voices that we disagree with instead of shutting them down or shutting them out. We cannot expect that the opportunity for these conversations will be handed to us; we must make these opportunities for ourselves.

I wouldn’t have become the man I am today in this new silent Houghton. Those who were willing to speak, the LGBTQIA+ students, the liberals, the conservatives, and speakers who challenged our view of the Bible and the God that we worship, shook my beliefs to their core. Despite the potential backlash they faced, they began the conversations and fundamentally changed who I am, making me love God and others in ways that this new Houghton’s “Jesus loves you, this is all” message would never have managed. I will forever be grateful to those people and the Houghton who allowed them to do what they did.

My only hope is that those following me will have that experience. I pray that Houghton will allow them to burst their bubbles and make connections instead of silencing them to maintain a status quo.

We have to begin the conversation.

Even when it feels like we have been silenced, we can still use our voices to improve the world. ★

Take Back the Night, Houghton’s annual weeklong examination of the effect of sexual assault across college campuses, is fast approaching. Discussing a controversial topic is hard. We all know this. Nothing worth talking about isn’t. Take Back the Night will attempt to encourage dialogue that seeks to explore the relationship between victim, perpetrator, and bystander. More broadly, the event examines the ways in which men, women, boys, and girls, by reasoning together, can address the issue in a more holistic way. The goal is to promote unity and to understand sexual assault as not merely a “women’s issue.” The language we use when discussing sexual assault is important, as it is with all matters pertaining to injustice. Such a dialogue should be engaging and accessible to an audience that may not fully understand the extent of the issue. It is of the utmost importance to avoid using language that risks alienating key members of that audience.

No one would disagree that sexual assault is a huge problem. It is an atrocious, dehumanizing act that robs victims of their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. However, like all matters of injustice, the mere suggestion of sexual assault can elicit a variety of powerful responses. Preconceived notions run wild, and speculation about the victim’s character begins to form.. Again, no one would deny that sexual assault is anything less than horrific, but our reactions are not always appropriate to the situation.

As important as conversation around this issue is, many men are unwilling to participate in dialogue with proponents of social change because they feel that admitting the problem could make them complicit in the culture that surrounds assault. No one wants to feel targeted, but these feelings are often due to a misunderstanding of the argument. However, part of that misunderstanding stems from exclusive language that can delegitimize the experience of men. Such language is unhelpful, and removes a voice from a discussion that direly needs multiple perspectives.

The way we react to being told there’s a problem is important. By flying to Twitter or Facebook to rant, we very rarely achieve anything of real substance. Hearing a buzzword in an argument, lecture, or chapel and tuning out because of some perceived loss of the speaker’s credibility isn’t productive. It stifles progress and builds up barriers. By refusing to take part in a conversation we risk drowning out real change and we open the door to more of the same: misconstrued arguments, the alienation of key demographics, and language that divides rather than unifies.

This has to be avoided at all costs. Where sexual assault is concerned, there are challenging systemic problems that have to be addressed. For example, why are the perpetrators of sexual assault overwhelmingly male? Where in the male developmental process does the behavior that fuels it begin to show? This is a conversation meant to be had by men and women, so that together, we can advocate for an end to sexual assault.

Seminars, surveys, and informational videos certainly communicate a clear message against harassment and improper behavior, but their effectiveness is hampered greatly by their oftentimes dry execution. We need more than that if we expect to see a change in the way society deals with sexually based offenses. Critics of the seminar/survey method call such measures like sensitivity training a mechanical response unlikely to amount to substantial progress. What many psychologists and activists recommend instead, is leadership training and tying the issue back to the initial point of the value of communication.

By holding ourselves to higher standards, by governing closely the words that leave our mouths, and by holding others to those standards accordingly is how a culture begins to change. Martin Luther King Jr. cautioned, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” He urged his listeners to not sit idly by while their brothers and sisters marched in the streets, but to make their voices heard. Individuals against sexual assault share the same vision.

Jackson is a senior political science major with minors in Spanish and business administration.