By Kyle Campbell | Staff Columnist
By Kyle Campbell | Staff Columnist
I still wear my shirt with the holes in it. It’s a bit small, as I’ve grown since I bought it, and I have to tuck it in so no one can see I’m wearing damaged clothes, but I can’t bring myself to throw it away. It serves as a reminder of where I’ve been and how we got to where we are.
My freshman year, I was a member of a GroupMe in which members’ fraternity parties were often discussed. A member of the group posted an open invitation to his, but I didn’t know him well, so I asked a friend about parties at the University in general. He (an Old Row fraternity pledge at the time) told me to stay away from Old Row parties – that they were filled with drunk racists who would give me weird looks. “It sucks that it’s like this, but it’s UA,” he said. I assured him I knew what I was getting into when I came here. Still, this party was at one of the houses I was told was fine, so I invited my roommates and told them I would catch up with them after stopping to talk to a friend.
As I arrived at the gate, I was told I needed a wristband and that someone would have to come get me. While my white friends with bare wrists and no friends in the house waited inside, I made desperate calls to the person who had given the invitation to no avail. I was so embarrassed I made a desperate attempt to climb over the brick wall and landed in the party with a torn shirt and a sprained wrist. One of those would heal.
I spend a lot of time criticizing my university, but with all its flaws, The University of Alabama has given me a world class education at nearly no cost and provided me with life experiences I couldn’t have found anywhere else. Our school has a long way to go, but I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge how far we’ve come.
When I arrived on this campus in 2013, there were zero black students in any historically white greek organization. Tables at Lakeside were almost entirely segregated. Our administration would speak on issues only if the national media were breathing down its neck, and LGBT students were mocked in barely hushed tones.
That is not our campus climate today. The SGA is now tackling difficult issues like campus sexual assault. A Lakeside table today is often very mixed, and served by our new vice president for student affairs, who decided to take a late shift at the dining halls last night. Students are recognizing problems and demanding a change to the status quo that has silenced so many for so long. Black students can now attend almost any event on campus with their clothes and dignity in tact.
In these last two and a half years, I’ve come from climbing a brick wall to be accepted by those who hate me to climbing an even higher wall to accept myself. As I think of how different my experiences are now versus my freshman year, I can’t help but recall how freshmen two years before me had racial slurs written on their SGA applications and how the freshmen before them arrived on a campus chalked with symbols of hatred. I have to think about the freshmen today who are going to have their own experiences that make them feel like they don’t belong. I have to fight for them, and you do too.
This campus should be a home for all of us, and it’s getting closer. But the progress made since I’ve been on campus hasn’t been made by the passage of time, but the fighters: the sorority girls who stood up to the powers that be, the black students and allies who organized a march, the SGA members who decided preventing campus rape was on us. As we take our finals and when we arrive in January for a new semester, we must remember that what we’re doing matters, and we must never stop wearing our shirt with the holes.
Kyle Campbell is a junior majoring in political science. His column runs biweekly.
