Her answers only added to my anticipation of her visit and my interest in her message. I went to Yale at a time when there was a lot of campus activism. My freshperson year I was involved in the divestment from South Africa movement and continued to be involved in speak outs and rallies on several issues, from retaining faculty of color to date rape. Ultimately, though, I ended up trying to address issues through art, founding with other students a journal for students of color, and making a documentary about the experience of being a student of color in a mostly white Ivy League school. I enjoyed college, but looking back wish that I hadn't felt so obligated and drawn to rail against the administration quite as much.
College is a time of reflection and learning and is really critical developmentally.
It is sad that so many students have to spend much of that time fighting for something as simple as their right to feel comfortable. I encounter many women here at Vanderbilt who, to a great extent, come from a background of both socioeconomic and white privilege, and who not only do not consider themselves feminists, but do not see a need for a modern feminist movement. I think it is less important for young women and men to personally identify with feminism than it is for them to actually do something about injustices and inequalities and, to put it even more simply, problems they see in their world. Whether you want to work against all of these things using the tools or under the umbrella of feminism or not, the most important thing is to recognize they exist and to feel that it is part of your responsibility as a being on the planet to respond and address these things that hurt us all. I think this is certainly applicable to people who feel their lives to be untouched by these issues.