Opinion | Tuesday’s Incident: My Take

Kia Wallace

Freshman English major

On Thursday morning, when I heard the news about the instigator be- ing dismissed from Chap- man, I was relieved. You would think I wouldn’t be surprised that he was expelled, but I was. Incidents like Tuesday’s have got me thinking about if situations like this have always happened at Chapman.

I understand it isn’t a problem with the university itself and I applaud President Struppa for upholding and enforcing the values of the university. I talked to a friend recently, who is in her second year at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, and she said to me that “no doubt,” every semester there is a “defining racist incident.” Hearing that makes me wonder if I would have attended this institution had I known that. I love Chapman with all my heart; the caliber of education is phenomenal, I’ve made so many friends and I know that my experience here will be absolutely fantastic. However, the presence of racists here is known, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable that I could have a club or a class with someone who hates me simply on the basis of my skin tone or sexual orientation. The person expelled was not the last white supremacist attending Chapman – I am almost certain of this.

As a black, queer woman who’s always been in predominantly white, heterosexual spaces, I have been lucky enough to never have received any explicitly racist attacks or microaggressions. But since coming to Chapman, I have realized how big of a problem explicit bigotry still is. It makes me wonder about my peers and people I interact with and has made me increasingly worried for my safety, especially with the knowledge that you truly never know the person who sits beside you. Sometimes I feel like any day, I could be physically attacked by a racist and become yet another hashtag.

I wonder what the instigator of Tuesday’s discriminatory outburst was thinking. Yes, he was intoxicated, but what made him think that class time was the best time to let the world know about his hatred and intolerance? I wish I could get inside the mind of a racist and figure out what causes them to feel such hatred toward groups of people for just being themselves. People like him think that there’s a cure for LGBTQIA+ people. It makes me wonder if there’s a cure for white supremacy.

I’m not going to let Tuesday’s incident deter me from what I came to Chapman to do – to get a well-rounded education and form friendships with like-minded individuals who validate and accept my existence.

I want to leave readers with this quote from Fred Hampton, activist and founder of the Rainbow Coali- tion. “We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re going to fight racism with solidarity.”