Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Exile . . . at Wabash College

A time in my life in which I have experienced the feeling exile was actually this year. During the Christmas break I had to return back to school early because of a basketball tournament in Texas. When I had returned back to campus and was about to enter my dorm room, along with my roommate Wesley, we noticed something on the door. Wesley stepped back and saw that something had been scratched or carved into our door. The words "DIE NIGGERS" had been embedded into our door. My first reaction was anger and a passion to find out whoever did this. We immediately called the police and school officials. They offered to put us into a hotel for some time, but it felt weird having to leave school to escape this sort of discrimination. Being excluded, degraded, and threatened is not what you would expect to happen at a place where you would call home away from home. This act was ignorant and naive but it goes to show you that some people haven't grown and are still close-minded individuals. The situation was really worse because this not really anybody that feels what you feel. Only Wesley knows the anger and pain I felt during that time but I don't think he knows the exact extent to which my anger was headed. Having something like this happen made me feel as if I wasn't meant to be here.

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