"Editorial: Exclusion, Harm, and Disillusionment at Davidson." The Davidsonian, 2021.
- Title
- "Editorial: Exclusion, Harm, and Disillusionment at Davidson." The Davidsonian, 2021.
- Description
- In this article, Ross Hickman describes their experience with their Davidson eating house system., then details their opinion on whether the eating house system is detrimental to student life.
- Creator
- Hickman, Ross.
- Date
- November 10, 2021.
- Text
-
Let us return to the early part of the spring semester in 2019. This moment was another in a long set of perennial confirmations that I do not belong in the system of social organizations in their current iterations on campus. Identifying at the time as a queer cisgender man, there was no possibility of my joining Turner House along with every member of my group of friends. In the words of a prominent Turner member, “No man will ever join Turner.” Their loss. Come fall of 2019 after I had come out as a non-binary person, members of Turner practically flocked to invite me to join the house. To say the least, I was confused. In the Spring, I had been an unwelcome threat to the culture of the institution. In the fall, I was to be a cherished initiate in the rites of this newly open and accepting queer community. I felt then, as now, the gnawing, agonizing, dulling realization that our social world at Davidson is predicated on ways of cisgender and heterosexual living to which I will never have experiential or relational connection.
(...) If we are to live up to our liberal ideals of diversity and inclusion in any significant way, we must disestablish the fraternities and eating houses at the college. These institutions are not only harmful and exclusive; they are also mediocre and unsatisfying for many of their current members. From sexual assault to racial inequities to homophobic and transphobic cultures, the complacency and complicity of these current institutions is profound. - Publisher
- Davidson College.
- Contributor
- Hickman, Ross.
- Language
- English.
- Source
- The Davidsonian.
- Subject
- Eating houses.
- Item sets
- Student Life- Eating Houses
- Site pages
- Eating Houses
Part of "Editorial: Exclusion, Harm, and Disillusionment at Davidson." The Davidsonian, 2021.