The printers at LM are always broken. Any LM student can spot the bright red “Check Status” light from half way down the hallway. The familiar “beep, beep, beep” of a paper jam echoes with the sigh of an exasperated student already running late to class. The little image that appears on the glowing screen will tell you to open the back panel to pull out a piece of paper stuck in the gears or pull out the toner, shake it up, and reinsert it. That’s a lot of work. But on the second floor, there are two printers. When one of them is broken, it’s easy enough to use the other. Why fix the first?
And so it goes that you’re bound to find one or more of the printers at LM down. Throughout the past four years, I’ve realized that this embodies the fundamental barrier to changemaking at LM. When broken systems don’t directly interfere with our lives, it’s easier to not fix them. It’s a deceptively simple, unassuming strategy that, likely, every one of us is guilty of. We look out for #1. We lean into arguments that claim comfortable meritocracy and invent reasons we’re deserving of what we have when we know it’s so much bigger than that. We convince ourselves and others that a lack of diversity indicates a fault on behalf of the underrepresented. We roll our eyes when a particularly vocal friend labels a pop culture reference as an -ist, or we’re called out for a particular phrase we shouldn’t say. Put simply, we sit back, refuse to take a stance, and excuse ourselves from the narrative of oppression. And it’s comfortable.
Fixing problems can be messy—individual definitions of “solution” differ. We can’t come right out and say we don’t want to talk about something, so we intellectualize it, making up reasons that a broken system can’t be discussed. This particular obstacle to change hides in a single word I’ve heard far too often at LM: “political.” When something is messy, or forces us to think about, if not change, our behavior, it feels nicer to outlaw any discussion surrounding it with an elusive term like “political:” “Well, we can’t have that event, it’s too political,” “Honestly, I don’t really like talking about politics,” and my personal favorite, “I just don’t think politics should be in school.” Some say everything is political; others, that the term itself is meaningless. Wherever you fall, you know deep down, even as you say it, that what you really mean is “uncomfortable.” And that’s the overall theme behind refusing to talk about broken systems. It’s why two opinion pieces in the “Political” Review section of The Merionite were taken down this year—and I think we all know the two I am referring to. It’s why teachers aren’t allowed to have events to discuss the Middle East, why art with “Free Palestine” stickers are removed from the walls of Harriton, why a fundraiser for a nonprofit providing people access to abortions was denied approval. It’s why I was told freshmen year that a display for Pride Month in the upper atrium “isn’t applicable to the student body” and why the common response to the question as to why a “Free Gaza” sign was blurred from the Lip Dub was that “the event was supposed to be fun, not political.” And there we hear our favorite word again.
Ignoring the daily ways each of us contribute to large-scale social, economic, and political marginalization didn’t save George Floyd or Christine Blasey Ford. But there’s a reason we tend to do it—and we all do it. At the core of immobilization and censorship at LM sits this powerful collective notion: the fear of uncomfortability. If we can’t stand up and interact with the fundamental challenges facing the world, we can’t expect to solve them. And when we decide to engage in those conversations—as we all should feel compelled to do—we have to do so with full dedication, full willingness to make mistakes and confront biases we have. Full respect, not for the arguments posed against us, necessarily, but for the right of the others to state those opinions. Shying away from conflict or debate doesn’t make that conflict go away.
There’s something else worth mentioning with regard to activism movements: a fear particularly applicable to a predominantly affluent area like LM. A fear of change. A fear that things might change just a little too much and with it, we will lose what we love now. It’s a valid fear, but a burden. As computer scientist and mathematician Grace Hopper famously stated, “The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘we’ve always done it this way.'” It’s also particularly applicable to this stage of life for the class of 2024. I refuse to be so cliche to say we have to overcome the fear of negative change with the thrilling hope of positive change, but you can assume I’m thinking it.
As I graduate from LM, I am so grateful for everything I have taken away with me. I’m grateful for the teacher-student relationships I have forged, the sprawling curricula, and LM’s fulfilling activities. I’m also keenly aware of the takeaways I didn’t get, the conversations I wished had taken place. I hope that my fellow graduates and I are able to forge into the world with a deeply passionate and empathetic aspiration to feel uncomfortable.
