Tag: reflection

Categories
Opinions

We Have no Mouth, But We Must Speak

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. ★

Categories
Reviews Stories In Focus

Facing Forward, Looking Back

If you’re anything like me, you hear the name of Miley Cyrus and cringe a little bit. When her name is invoked in public, there are often looks of scorn and flashbacks to a Spandex-clad, hammer-licking past that none of us wish to relive (including, it seems, Miley herself). So I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I got a notification from Spotify telling me that Miley had a new album out. I was apprehensive. Still, as a college student who is always looking for ways to procrastinate, I clicked the play button. Wow, am I glad I did.

If I could describe her new album “Younger Now” in one word, it would be “mature.” It’s miles and miles ahead of Miley’s older songs, all dripping with pop star dreams and the monster that fame makes of us all. In her new album, Miley revisits her roots in the Memphis country music scene, borrowing from influences like Elvis, Dolly Parton (who makes an appearance in the track “Rainbowland”), and her father, Billy Ray Cyrus. The album has the reflectiveness that is often evident in these kinds of songs.

It’s not hard to see why, either. This album is a statement from Miley herself that she isn’t the same person she was. The album’s title track, “Younger Now,” is a ballad to both the past and the future. She explains that, while she is a completely different person now, she doesn’t necessarily regret where she’s been. As a junior in college, it is easy to relate to her sentiment: I’m both the same person and a completely different person than I was two years ago.

Other tracks on the album deal with topics in a similarly mature way. “Malibu,” which has risen to the top as one of the most popular tracks on the album, has a soft guitar riff that lulls the listener to consider their significant other under the lens of the California sky. “Rainbowland,” in which Dolly Parton makes a guest appearance, sings about unity and harmony in the homey, grassroots style that Parton herself is known so well for. “Week Without You” borrows its style from Elvis, with its opening electric guitar rhythm that is meant to get our hips swinging and our thoughts rolling.

Then there are other songs where Miley’s individual voice comes out, which further proves how mature she has become. “Bad Mood” is a rock and roll ballad that anyone who has ever “woken up in a bad mood” can relate to. “Inspired,” the final track on the album, describes her songwriting process, and where she draws her inspiration from.

Just in time for fall, with everything around us starting to change, Miley’s newest album rings true to the adult in us all. Just like this is a season for reflection on where we’ve been, and looking forward to where we’re going, Younger Now is an anthem for those who are in a different place than they were before. As college students, we look at our middle and high school photos and feel the things she’s feeling. Even those of us who are juniors and seniors can look back to our freshman selves and realize just how far we’ve come. After listening, I am reflective and optimistic, looking forward to what else Miley has in store for us.

 

Categories
Opinions

Rap: A Reflection of Culture; Not an Instigator

Courtesy of http://www.glogster.com/
Courtesy of http://www.glogster.com/

I’ll confess, I love rap. And not the clean Christian substitute that started making an appearance with groups such as The Cross Movement and Reach Records. I’m not even a fan of clean secular artists; Will Smith may very well have been the worst thing that ever happened to the rap industry. No, I like the raw, uncut, uncensored rap in all its vulgarity, and, in no way does that mean that I am misogynistic or racist. Rather, I think it is important for us to hear these words for the harsh critique of what our society is. The Marilyn Mansons and Eminems in this world are not responsible for shootings and rapes; rather, they expose serious problems that society struggles with.

Eminem writes, “That’s why we sing for these kids who don’t have a thing… or for anyone who’s ever been through [hard times] in their lives.” This is the reason that rap is one of the fastest-growing and furthest-reaching musical genres in history and why everyone seems so intrigued by it.

Lowkey was right when he sang, “You can never avoid the voices of the voiceless,” and rap gives the voiceless a voice. We can’t ignore the helpless. We must face it, but in facing it we run into layers upon layers of misconceptions, one of which is the notion that rap is evil. After all, any industry that glorifies murder, violence, drugs, rape and general hedonism must be evil, right? But this is the biggest misconception. Rap tells the story of broken people, not a tale of evil’s glorification.

Another misconception is that rap has strayed away from its glory days, that it has somehow lost its way and left its roots. The truth is that there never were any “glory days” that were somehow lost and forgotten; what has happened is simply a cultural paradigm shift. We are faced with different problems and the music industry has shifted its focus to reflect these problems. The poetry of these artists has changed from the socio-political platform it once held in the 70’s, 80’s and even early 90’s to the position it now holds: talking about the accumulation of wealth, drug use, and promiscuity.

During the days of Afrika Mambaataa and the Zulu Nation and the early days of Ice Cube, Eazy-E and Dr. Dre, the issues that needed addressing were those of the outstanding racism in our nation, the economic and social repression of minority groups, and the violence in underprivileged neighborhoods. Obviously these issues have not disappeared, and many are the rappers who still sing about them. But what we are currently experiencing is something different: the Great Recession and a world dominated by a small percentage of elite. And this has changed the focus of the songs being produced.

If you think that the “hood” is a worse place because of rap, you are mistaken. The violence that plagues the hood has yet to hit the suburbs with the influx of mainstream “gangsta rap,” you just need to look at the decrease in crime rates over the last 20 years to see that. What has happened though is that the negative aspects of our culture, the homophobia, misogyny, racism, violence, promiscuity, and substance abuse are being exposed for what they are. Rappers are reflecting a developing trend; not setting examples for youths.

Rather than attacking the rap industry, our time would be better spent addressing the social issues within our culture. Rap is not the cause of the issues. Ice Cube performs a satirical song titled “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It”—a witty twist on the famous “The Devil Made Me Do It”—in which a professor condemns gangster rap for the ills of society during a classroom lecture. The teacher says, “Prior to gangster rap music the world was a peaceful place. And then all of that changed, violence, rape, murder, arson, theft, war, they are all things that came about as a result of gangster rap.” Ice Cube goes on to list horrific things such as “if I shot up your college, ain’t nothin’ to it, gangsta rap made me do it.” The purpose of this line is not to blame the musical genre for society’s ills, but to recognize the problems’ origination and the need to fix them.

The issue with trying produce “clean” rap is that it too often leaves out the sting that this genre carries with it. It detracts from the message that is trying to be conveyed; the cries of a hurting society. In all this, I am not trying to say that there is no place for Christian rap. By all means, keep “ridin’ with your top down listening to that “Jesus Muzik,’” but do not be so hasty to throw away the rest of rap.