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Dear Editor of Lantern:
I just heard in one of my classes that Butler CC has an inclusion policy to prevent discrimination against people of protected classes. I was excited to hear this particularly in the current climate of Trump and his stripping of my rights (as a Hispanic, a woman, a sibling of a gay man, should I say more?). This made me think, the point of college, right: to think? Well, thinking about the inclusion policy made me realize it is a policy in name only. Why, you ask?
One of my teachers says all gingers are Nazis. I don’t even have time to think about this because it is so flawed, out-dated and just wrong. Inclusion? Another teacher makes me sing in class and replaces words that are derivatives of him or man to feminine roots (history= “her”story). As a non-native English speaker, I can’t even begin to know how to talk to this person in class, so I just sit and shut up, and if I wanted to sing, I would have taken chorus. Inclusion? My extracurricular life is the worst example, though. I wanted to absorb the whole college experience, so I attend the theater plays. The first one had males in female clothing singing what I think was Spanish and using moroccos. The second one had two super fidgety, overly hand gesturing and skipping stereotypical gay male characters in pastel clothing. The third play had two women who were drunk all the time and I think were supposed to be women playing men playing women, (more cross-dressing)a brown actor playing an Asian house servant who occasionally acted gay, and at least five references to male body parts. (I stopped counting at 5…in the first act). Inclusion?
I get academic freedom and that professors are prone to express their own views in their work. I suppose one day when I graduate I can force my opinions and my phobias on those unlike me or even those who threaten my comfort in some way and call it a product of my education. But will that be inclusion? No. This policy is in name only.
Ana Mascio
Wichita Freshman
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