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THE MONITOR

Shraddha Datta

Community-building at Hamilton: Reflecting on Disorientation Week


My Experience as a Freshman 


On my first day of classes at Hamilton, I greeted someone who lived in my residence hall. They spoke to me, but quickly left. We never said hi to each other again. I noticed that people thought twice before waving hi to each other on Martin’s Way. During choir rehearsals, people around me talked to each other in groups as I sat quietly by myself. 


As a freshman, I felt that the positive rhetoric about Hamilton–spewed during and before orientation–was not true. Despite what Hamilton’s Instagram said, it did not feel like the student community was all one big family. I remember several nights when I sat on a bench outside of KJ and cried because of how lonely I felt. My journey here at Hamilton College had a rough start. 


During one of my therapy sessions on Mantra Health (a company that the counseling center partners with), I told my therapist that I wasn’t doing okay. At the end of my session, my therapist told me they were “glad I was doing okay.” When I talked to my White LGBTQ+ counselor about feeling disconnected from my queer identity, they told me that non-White queer students often engage more with the racial aspect of their identity than their queer one. As an international student, I didn’t feel like I could go anywhere on campus that would accept and understand my cultural background. Club meetings–such as those of the International Student Association–often clashed with my other commitments. I felt so separate from the rest of the world, sitting on a bench on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. 


I was at a loss about how to navigate advocating for myself on campus, let alone advocating for other causes. Hamilton emphasizes the importance of “knowing thyself.” But do we know each other? I found myself asking, “What do Hamilton students stand for?” While most student opinions have generally aligned themselves with movements that are pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ+ rights, student protests and demonstrations were few and far between. In my freshman spring, I joined the Gender and Sexuality Union (GSU) in hopes of supporting the queer community on campus. I quickly realized that, at the time, GSU programming focused more on hosting speakers and campus-wide events than on actual community-building. People rarely attended our lecture-based general meetings. 


The GSU is part of the Days-Massolo Multicultural Center (DMC), which was founded eleven years ago. It was born out of a coalition called the Social Justice Initiative which was founded by students of color at Hamilton to demand cultural inclusivity on campus. Sasaki, a campus planning firm hired by Hamilton College, suggested as part of its 'Master Plan' the tearing down of the DMC, and incorporation of it into a larger 'Affinity Group Village' located elsewhere on campus. Considering the DMC’s history as well as their positioning on campus, I found it interesting that many DMC organizations–including the GSU–rarely engaged in student activism. During my time at Hamilton, there have rarely been any calls to action for student mobilization. The climate felt suffocatingly apolitical.


Disorientation Week


On a campus that supposedly advocates for inclusivity, I spent most of my time lost and confused. I wish I had more resources to learn about my peers’ experiences on campus, so that I could have felt less alone. I needed Disorientation Week as a freshman. That is why I am so proud to have hosted it as an e-board member of the Feminists of Color Collective (FCC) alongside the Black and Latine Student Union (BLSU) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). 


During our “Intro to Campus Politics” event on Tuesday, September 10th, groups of freshmen and upperclassmen from various backgrounds rotated through tables with assigned topics: queerness, race, religious life, campus accessibility, and sexual violence. Sitting at a table with one of my friends, I conducted conversations regarding queerness at Hamilton. I saw the faces of freshmen light up when they found people like them at those tables. 


On Wednesday, September 11th, FCC held its first general meeting of the semester as part of Disorientation Week. We were excited to see so many new and old faces, to talk not only to people from different cultural backgrounds, but also to people who value intersectionality and inclusivity.


As a Brown person, very few people look like me on campus. When I was a freshman, I remember feeling so different from everyone else when I walked to my classes on Martin’s Way. I felt different when I stood in line for food at Commons. I felt different when I sat in class amongst my peers. Even as a senior, I haven’t entirely been able to shake the feeling off. That is why I feel so motivated to support this year’s freshman. As part of the FCC, I am able to support freshmen the way I needed to be supported when I first came to campus.


March for Palestine


At the beginning of the March for Palestine on Thursday, September 12th, I addressed my peers about the colonial history of Palestine, as well as that of  the United States. In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, announced that the UK government supported the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. However, Palestine was already a home for Palestinians, in the same way that the Americas were a home for indigenous people before Christopher Columbus “discovered” their land in 1492. Europeans instigated war and violence to claim land that did not belong to them. Land that still does not belong to them. In 1491, about 145 million people lived in the western hemisphere. According to Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt, authors of American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to Present, by 1691, the population of Indigenous Americans had declined by 90-95%, or around 130 million people. 


It was significant, then, that we were conducting a March for Palestine on the soil of the Oneida Nation. Palestinian health authorities say Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people, strongly resembling the genocide of Indigenous Americans. During the Walk for Palestine, one student leader said, “Decolonization isn’t just academic rhetoric.” As critically thinking students, we cannot blindly accept the genocide and murder of innocent Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation. 


We protested (and continue to protest) against the settler-colonial violence of institutions such as the United States government and the Israeli government. I closed my statement with the line “We supposedly believe that every human being deserves equal rights to ‘liberty, justice, and freedom.’ But where is the justice for Palestinians? That is why we chant Free Palestine.” As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” That is why we chant Free Sudan. Free Congo. Free Haiti.



Signs, Banner, Chalk, and Drum from the March for Palestine | Mele Kanealii '27


We marched forward from the Kirkland Green to the Science Center, and back around to the front of Buttrick Hall. We looked President Tepper in the eye and chanted “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest!” Remember the College’s lack of a definitive response to Hamiltonians for Divestment’s letter demanding the disclosure of all of Hamilton College's endowment investments. 


We dropped 4,100 notes of blood money (money painted in red), each with Benjamin Netanyahu’s face printed onto them. The dollars represented Hamilton’s investments in military arms and in Israel. To me, they symbolized the blood on the hands of U.S. institutions like Hamilton College that fund Palestinian genocide. One SJP leader stated that 10 Palestinians have died for each individual note, highlighting the escalating death toll of Palestinian civilians. The dollars also represented Hamilton’s investments in military arms and in Israel. When asked for comment, President Tepper claimed that he wanted to understand where we were coming from. He framed his stance as highlighting the importance of understanding the stories of human beings. This is in line with the “Hope for Hamilton” community conversation that he hosted on Sunday, September 15th in the Dunham Tent, about how “how reactions to global events are manifesting on our campus.”


Hope for Hamilton


During the conversation, while many pointed to the importance of understanding one another, I felt that vague notions of empathy were not enough to have constructive dialogue. A participant suggested that all human beings should be “civil” towards one another during difficult conversations. When criticized by another participant regarding the political significance of the word “civil,” they clarified that they meant “civility” as a synonym of “kindness.”


When I spoke to the other participants, I noted that the difference between “civility” and kindness is that “civility” prescribes a specific form of communication, while kindness is expressed through openness. Thus, while “civility” is up to subjective interpretation, being open to another individual is not. You are either willing to understand them or you are not. 


When we are talking to one another, we must make an effort to truly listen and understand the other person’s perspective, as well as reflect upon our own. This, however, does not mean uprooting our own values every time someone expresses an opinion. In order to engage with each other constructively, we must critically evaluate each other's perspectives in light of our own, with good faith and intentionality. This includes acknowledging the violence of settler-colonial institutions such as the United States of America.


What community-building means to me


Direct communication is the principal  foundation of human relationships. Protest is saying “please listen to what I want to tell you, because I feel unheard.” Protest is exercising the human right to free speech and expression. Protest is what led to the creation of the DMC. Protest is what led to Hamilton College’s divestment from South African apartheid. To create a stronger community for one and for all, especially freshmen from minoritized communities, we must listen to each other in open honesty and good faith. Those whose voices are unheard will make their voices heard through peaceful demonstrations, community programming, and art. Everyone’s voices deserve to be heard. Especially the voices of those who are dying because of the Israeli military technology that our tax-payer dollars are funding. 


Community to me means truly understanding one another–whether that be cultures, perspectives, or experiences. To me, it means coming together to support others for the sake of supporting others. Community is everything. It’s all we have. Let’s advocate for justice for all our brothers and sisters, our siblings of the world. If we don’t, then what even is the point of “Knowing Thyself” at an American institution like Hamilton College?

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