Parent Newsletter Spg08

Student Showcase
RDP Senior Marjorie Gosling
"Exploring the Silence...
Dialogue about Diversity"

RDP Student, Marjorie Gosling For most people it is easy, a breeze, to write about their passions. To put down in words what fuels every day they live is something that is relished and wanted by others in my community. For me, someone who is still learning about what my passion is and how it affects my life, it is a terror to put onto the page the work that I have done in social justice, both internally and externally. It is a terror because I have been consumed by this passion more fully than anything else in my life and I do not see its coal fire burning out anytime soon. Social justice has taken up every corner of my two loves – creative writing and teaching- because as hard as I try I do not see the benefit of creating a life for myself where social justice, not unlike a house guest, is everywhere I walk.

Social justice work is not a hobby for me, a way to volunteer and then drop back into the rest of my life as if what I did had no effect on my grocery shopping or the way I talk to my friends. Social Justice, for the last two years, has been the biggest and most important love affair of my life.

Through classes at Prescott College and a life changing social justice conference, I was able to recognize the privileges in my life that I was blessed with. This was my first and most emotional step. To realize how I am seen in the world, and what step-ups have been given to me by society was the jolt I needed to loose myself from the blind reality I had been living in. I began to see the privileges I had from bring white, middle class and heterosexual. I was one of the lucky ones: I choose not to run from the things I had been given, but turn and face them head on, knowing that the first step to creating an equitable and just society was to face what scared you the most. For me this meant looking at my privilege and the prejudices that arose because of it. The hardest work I have done is to quiet my internal thoughts, the ones I never knew affected others, and realize how much thoughts are reflected in actions toward others.

Last spring, I found myself depending on a continued social justice education to get me through the days. I had found my salvation from a static and apathetic life and was unwilling to let that go. I found a conference to get me through the summer months: the Social Justice Training Institute. My personal education flourished and once more I was given a potent chance to look at myself critically from privileges to prejudices and everything in between. I came back to Prescott College brimming with thoughts and passion about social justice. When people in coffee shops asked me what I was study, I rushed past my degree title and spoke rapidly about social justice in education. At potlucks and on the street I found myself reaching out for others who wanted to speak about heterosexist society or the continued suppression of women.

I was hopeful when I began gathering around me a community I needed, but as a woman with goals and aspirations, I wanted to open the dialogue I was starting with the rest of my college community, not just those people I knew and felt comfortable talking to. I wanted to hear what environmental studies students felt about social justice. I wanted the art department to tell me, side by side with cultural and regional studies, what their thoughts were. I wanted to reach out to the administration and faculty and hear what they felt away from classroom, away from their curriculum. I had the far reaching and over whelming desire to hear what anyone had to say.

For this I organized Exploring the Silence: Dialogue about Diversity at Prescott College. It was a night led by Anita Fernandez, a Professor at Prescott College and I. Over seventy students, faculty and administration showed up, and were receptive to our question about diversity, how Prescott College dealt with social justice and personal growth around the topics. At the end of the night, which was more inspirational than I have words for, a list was generated for future educational topics that we would being to the school to continue our communities growth toward equity and a just place in society.

Social justice is not something you can speak of for a night, and then never think about again, or at the least I cannot. The Prescott College community is ready to go deeper and breathe in the hard education social justice can give you, and I am mixed up with it in a way I would never want to stop because the work I am doing will never be finished. It fills up my days and years like air fills up a room: intangible and necessary for life. Through social justice I have rekindled my love and hope for humankind, and even with the pain I knowingly rush toward, I have never been one to walk away from love of any kind.

Parent Newsletter Vol 1, 2nd Issue February 2008