Playing it Safe: Safe Spaces at Harvard

At my Harvard admissions interview, I remember being asked the most infamous of all college interview questions: “Why Harvard?” I recall having rehearsed my answer diligently, to the point of having it memorized. “Diversity,” I said. “I am excited by the opportunity to interact with students who are quite different from myself.” Having come from a very homogenous high school, I truly believed that attending Harvard would give me the unique experience to learn from my peers both in and outside the classroom.
This is the perception many of us had of Harvard before we came here. We believed that, by mixing together students of all different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds, Harvard created a magical community of open-minded thinkers. We believed in a marketplace of ideas, where even the most controversial topics were freely discussed and debated. Most importantly, we believed that these conversations would make us better citizens and empower us to strive for change.
However, since my initial arrival on campus, I have realized that diversity alone is not enough to spark dialogue, let alone social change. Discussions between people of different opinions often devolve into unproductive bickering. My belief that the “brochure Harvard” community is merely a fantasy was reinforced two weeks ago, when my house e-mail list was flooded with a heated discussion concerning Renegade Magazine.
As part of its publicity campaign, the magazine staff had put up a series of posters all around campus. The argument on my house list was sparked by, what appeared to be, the deliberate tearing of one of the posters inside a dorm elevator. After a slew of accusatory comments, an e-mail from our housemasters, and an article in the Harvard Crimson, it became painfully clear to me that there was no productive dialogue happening.
As a Latina who looks white, I felt like I was in a particularly difficult situation. Should I side with the supporters of Renegade who complained about being shut out of spaces on campus because of their race? Did I even have the right to identify with them if I had not ever experienced discrimination on campus? If not, then maybe I should side with the white students who felt shut out of the conversation because of their privilege. But how could I even complain about this? How could I be so selfish as to think that my feeling excluded was an outrage, when in reality the discrimination faced by students of color is so much more unjust?
As I tried to initiate conversations about this with my peers, I slowly began to realize a trend that I believe is reflective of a larger problem that severely impacts dialogue at Harvard: every person I talked to was white. How could I expect to have an honest conversation about race if I wasn’t able to engage with students of color? It felt like an incredibly fake and dishonest way of approaching the subject. I wondered if maybe I was a doing myself a disservice by not directly talking about it with students involved with the magazine.
But then again, I thought about the nature of Renegade and other cultural groups on campus, and I was not sure if I would be entirely welcome in their conversation either. According to Osaremen Okolo ’16, one of the co-chairs of Association of Black Harvard Women Action Committee and a staff writer at the HPR, cultural organizations are meant to provide a forum for dialogue among students whose voices have been silenced. “Some people need to have other people who look like them in order to speak freely,” she says. Edgar Garcia ’18 echoes this sentiment and believes Fuerza Latina has been a crucial part of his freshman experience. He says, “I think these spaces or these cultural groups are opportunities for students who would not otherwise feel comfortable to feel like they belong at this school, to feel like they belong within a community.”
Yet if Renegade’s founders intended to create a community in which students of color could feel comfortable to talk about their common experiences, how could I possibly chime in? If I did not share their same feelings, would adding my voice into the mix threaten the “safe space”? The idea of protecting ourselves from thoughts we are uncomfortable with seems to be wildly popular on Harvard’s campus. Of course, students who feel discrimination deserve to have a place where they do not feel judged. That being said though, I worry that there are almost no organizations or spaces on campus dedicated to dialogue among students of different backgrounds.
I identify as a minority but often feel white, so I don’t know if there is anywhere that I necessarily fit in. Why is there no open forum, where people who are black, white, Asian, Latino, Native American, or possibly a little bit of everything can go and speak their minds? I understand the logic behind cultural organizations, and while I do think they should exist, I have realized from my own experience that sometimes they, too, can be exclusive. If there were a place where all students were welcome, a sort of diversity collective dedicated to hosting honest discussions about racism, nobody would ever have to feel this way. Everybody’s opinion would be valued. And if we truly want change, we must be able to include people of all races in the conversation.
What this campus needs is a reexamination of the way in which we encourage and conduct dialogue. There is a tendency to avoid controversy, to elude the tricky subjects, and to surround ourselves with people who look and think like us. Our discomfort with disagreement has led us to hide behind the illusion of “safe spaces.” But progress has never been achieved by cowards. Instead, we should face the tough questions head-on and with brutal honesty. Only then can we recognize our prejudices and work together to create more inclusive communities.
 
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