Does hate have a home here?

Over the last few weeks, we have seen a whole different side of Elmhurst College. This side was filled with hate and bigotry. This side made students scared to walk around in a place they once considered a second home.

The Leader has been non-stop reporting on all of the events that unfolded the past few weeks, from initial homophobic speech, racial slurs, and shooting threats found in Niebuhr Hall, to additional hateful and threatening messages discovered in other campus buildings, including the library, which led to EC closing for two days to allow for an investigation. 

Even as editors, we struggled to see our campus so torn. As journalists, we had a duty to inform the public, but at the same time we were helpless students watching everything unfold.

If there is any silver lining in all of the darkness that had overtaken the campus, it was the inspiring community that stood up together, mobilizing against hate and fear and rallied for a better campus.

During this difficult time, the campus became closer.

Students, many who were strangers to each other, offered rides to those who did not feel safe to stay on campus. Students opened up their homes for those who had nowhere else to go. Students created campaigns of solidarity and resilience. Students protested and wrote letters to keep leaders accountable to make sure the campus was better notified of critical incidents. 

We saw faculty, like Professor Ayanna Brown, create much needed safe spaces for students, especially for students of color and LGBTQIA+ students who were largely targeted in the first incidents of hate found in Niebuhr Hall.

Brown initiated an exercise to combat the hate speech found in the Niebuhr Hall bathroom by encouraging students to use notecards to post positive messages instead and “take back the space.”

There is still a lot of hurt, pain, anger, sadness, and fear on campus. More than ever we want this campus to heal. 

But for many, healing will not occur until the cowards who disrupted everyone’s lives are caught and faced with due justice. 

While we do want this to happen as soon as possible, it is equally as important for the campus to start being more proactive about making sure these types of incidents never happen again and send a message that this type of behavior, whether it is credible or not, is absolutely is not tolerated, and anyone who does this faces severe consequences.

As the campus moves forward the next few weeks, through unity events planned from musical performances and open conversations (see campus calendar) to show “hate has no home here,” we all should question: does hate have a home here? 

It is easy to push something under a rug or say “this is not us” or “these are not our values.” 

But there is something deeply embedded in our culture that allows for this to happen and go on for so long. 

This should be a wake-up call for the campus. This should be a wake-up call for the administration. This should be a wake-up call for each and every one of us. 

Our leafy suburban campus, our tight-knit community, our increasingly diverse freshman class, does not insulate us from hate and bigotry. 

This should be more than clear after the series of hate incidents we faced as a campus. 

Administration should listen with intention to the experiences of students of color and LGBTQIA+ students. As peers, we should also be listening to each other with intention and hearing the experiences of others. 

We all have a responsibility to keep each other accountable, to call out bigotry even if it is in our classrooms or in our group of friends. 

Faculty should be held to these same standards and work every day to create inclusive spaces in which students can confront their biases, think critically about their identities, and learn from one another.

Just because everyone may belong at EC, does not mean that everyone truly feels like they belong.

The Leader Editors: Syeda Sameeha, Marisa Karpes, Josie Zabran, Julia Zawitkowska, Gianna Montesano, Lexi Holmes