On slowing down

Vulnerable Discourse: Franklin Pierce’s legacy deserves more recognition and discussion

Bowdoin has a long history of impressive and impactful alumni, and we flaunt that history, with good reason. I felt a glimmer of pride at George Mitchell ’54’s speech last week, and I find it a beautiful coincidence that I developed a love for poetry at Longfellow’s alma mater. It’s important to recognize the rich history of the College and to honor those alumni who have made a positive influence. But what do we do with the history we don’t wish to market?
I learned Franklin Pierce was an alumnus of the College sometime during my first year. Since then, all I’ve heard about him is that he wasn’t particularly impressive or well-liked. However, I didn’t really take this to mean much since I don’t usually assume the greatest things about our nation’s politicians. Not until a few days ago did I learn about the reason he wasn’t well-liked. “Did you know Franklin Pierce was an anti-abolitionist?” asked my housemate, Anthony, as we sat in the Pierce Reading room, on the second floor of the main library.
I really didn’t have a clue about it. And a major reason for that is my own lack of research, but part of it is that no one really talks about it. Franklin Pierce was not just someone who had a problematic ideology; he was our nation’s president for four years and that problematic ideology guided his actions and the course of U.S. history. Although he claimed to be against slavery, he vehemently opposed the abolitionist movement and enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. It’s not pretty. While of course we have to understand any politician’s actions in the context of the society they lived in, there are certain policies that I can’t excuse in any context. Prolonging slavery and mandating the return of escaped slaves is beyond the logic of compassion, in any time period.
So maybe that’s why we don’t talk about Franklin Pierce. It’s very obvious that his influence isn’t one most contemporary institutions would be proud of, particularly one that holds ideals like the Common Good so close to it’s heart. But whom is Bowdoin helping when it chooses to ignore Franklin Pierce’s harmful legacy? Who benefits from the illusion of a spotless history? If we don’t honestly address our past, progress becomes an illusion, too.
Bowdoin College was founded as an elite institution that catered to the most privileged segment of New England society. Therefore, it is implicated in all of the inequality and ideology that elite institutions perpetuated for a very long time. Admitting women into the College in 1971 does not mean Bowdoin didn’t help institutionalize sexism; admitting John Russwurm in 1824 doesn’t mean Bowdoin didn’t help institutionalize racism in the decades prior. Let us never forget who this College was founded for. Let us never assume that progress will come to the College without us working towards it.
I want more conversations about Franklin Pierce’s legacy. I want more conversations about the actions and products of Bowdoin that we aren’t so proud of. I want Bowdoin to recognize its complicity in the perpetuation of social attitudes that aren’t always healthy. If Bowdoin is to be an agent of progress, we have to be open with what we want to change about ourselves rather than working to create the illusion of a faultless institution.

Vulnerable Discourse: Considering gentrification as a compassionate community member

After graduating I want to move back to my hometown. I know that’s a little boring, but I feel that we are unfinished. I was born in Queens, my dad grew up there and so did his mom. You can hear it when we say ahh-range instead of orange. Walking around the city with my dad would unfailingly consist of a story of how this block, or that neighborhood, wasn’t the way it was when he was growing up. And unfailingly, this was the result of either the hipsters or the yuppies or the trust fund babies, some kids like us.
Can I gentrify my own city? Part of the reason I’m reluctant to move to another city is because I don’t want to mirror the post-grads hanging out in Bushwick bars or riding the L train with their nose in a David Foster Wallace novel. I don’t want to be the San Francisco or Seattle version of that. So if I go back home, can I escape that trope? I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I look like in my city, or in a new city. What matters is what I do in that city.
I like to think I’m the same kid who took the subway to my 4,000 student, mediocre, public high school. In many ways I am, but now I am that, plus a girl with a liberal arts education from an elite institution. That entails opportunities and sets of knowledge that aren’t available to most people—particularly the ones who are most often negatively impacted by gentrification. And though I don’t have a trust fund for gentrification rent money, or parents willing to fund my anticipated gentrification, I will probably find myself in this web of real estate domination. At least I hope to have a job that will provide that possibility.
The place we choose to move is going to affect someone else. That is unavoidable. But this process of displacement is somewhat out of our control, unless you find yourself dabbling in real estate. The major issue I have with people who gentrify isn’t the simple fact that they move into a certain neighborhood—it’s how they refuse to interact with it.
Over the summer, I spent a lot of time talking to muralists in the South Williamsburg community of Brooklyn. Williamsburg provides a fascinatingly unfortunate example of gentrification—the worst-case scenario. Over a very short period of time, the entire character and landscape of the neighborhood has changed—racially, spatially and economically. A particular anecdote of one of the artists encapsulates the wrong way to move into a community: South Williamsburg has historically had a large and culturally lively Puerto Rican community. Over the years, that community, like many others in New York, has grown accustomed to hanging out on brownstone stoops and playing live music. One new, culturally unaware resident decided to call the police with a noise complaint. That is not how you interact with a community or try to become part of it.
To be a compassionate community member is to interact with the community, and try to learn from it. It doesn’t mean instinctively calling the police when you hear music. It means talking things out and having a willingness to learn. It doesn’t mean forging a separate community from the one that has historically been there. I believe that the damage that gentrification inevitably causes to low-income communities can be effectively lessened if those who move in engage with the community. This engagement can take the form of participating in existing community organizations, supporting local businesses or using your educational privilege to help local residents. If someone is being pushed out of his or her apartment, see if there is something you can do to help. In many cases, people are pushed out illegally, and when they are pushed out, they don’t have the resources or means to find a new apartment.
As future graduates who will have a particular know-how, which includes dealing with bureaucracy, we should feel empowered to help those in our future communities. Don’t just move somewhere and engage with the coffee shop intelligentsia or the rooftop bar hoppers. Try to have a positive impact on your community, while acknowledging your role in a complex and unfortunate historical process. Use your education to strengthen what’s left of the community that you choose to make your home.

Vulnerable Discourse

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Maya Reyes

Columnist

October 14, 2015

I’m at the point in my college career where everything seems to move much faster than I can keep up with. Some of my lucky peers have job offers, I’ve started to think about my last semester of classes, and my personal life has gone through a mesmerizing collection of shifts. Each day is filled up with activity from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep, leaving no room to think about anything. No room to just sit and process.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t wait for Fall Break. I would finally have a few days to just contemplate the big questions, like what the hell I’m supposed to do when I get out of here. (By the way, I still don’t have a clue.) Somehow, I found myself meeting up with five different friends in four days. When I wasn’t with friends, I was with my parents. The only alone time I had was a couple of subway rides and weird existential experiences with my bathroom mirror. Besides the usual senior year anxiety, I had two serious personal issues occur during my time at home. Yet I barely had a minute to just feel them out. I found myself forcing friendly conversations and trying to act like my usual self, but it was extremely hard to act like my usual self when so many things about my usual self were shifting. What resulted was just a lot of pent-up surplus anxiety.

The debilitating speed and frenzy of life is something I think a lot of my peers struggle with. Our culture encourages us to be constantly occupied and productive, because that is how we gain and exhibit success. However, I believe this constant activity has conditioned us into a state of mental laziness. This state has made us afraid of our own thoughts and realities.

This summer, I started meditating on a daily basis. It has been a really life-changing experience for me—it has encouraged me to carry on mindfulness and calmness into my daily life. Naturally, I wanted to encourage everyone I cared about to try it out. I believe everyone has the capacity to benefit from some form of meditation. But I was met with two sorts of responses from most of the people I introduced the idea to. Either people didn’t want to be alone with their thoughts, or they couldn’t imagine a scenario when they weren’t actively thinking. These responses represent two extreme mindsets that we should avoid.

In my experience, meditation does not involve the absence of thought; it is the process of acknowledging thoughts and letting them pass, without judgment. This is not something that comes naturally to most of us. What usually happens is we think about something and let it spiral into something far away from the original thought. We create a completely different reality in our thoughts. Therefore, when we meditate we let our thoughts occupy our mind in a lighter way. We are not thoughtless, and neither are we drained by our thoughts.

There are many reasons why someone might be afraid of confronting their thoughts, but the importance of this confrontation trumps the comfort of avoidance. When we confront our thoughts, we are making an active effort to understand our reality and to come to terms with that reality. If we live in constant activity, confronting our thoughts is a luxury we don’t often have. There is nothing inherently wrong with having or wanting a busy lifestyle, but we should always leave room for thoughtfulness. If we are not thoughtful about our activity, how will we ever understand or appreciate it?

On the other hand, there is something to be said for letting your thoughts go. I often find that when I dwell on something, I end up stressing myself out with the same circular thought process: somehow I always end up where I started. Instead of running through different possibilities in my head and fixating on the past, sometimes it is better to relax and focus on your present state. If you are sad about something, slow down and let yourself be sad. If you are nervous, slow down and acknowledge your nerves. If you are surprised by something, slow down and let the surprise settle in. Instead of dwelling on the why of every situation and emotion, allow yourself to feel it. And then allow yourself to move on. Do both things without judgment.

Take this as a friendly reminder: slow down. Be kind to yourself and confront your situation in a thoughtful way. Even taking ten minutes to do this each day can change the way you approach everything else in your life. If you don’t have ten minutes, shift things around and give yourself ten minutes of non-activity to be alone with yourself. Maybe you will find the answer you’ve been looking for, or maybe you will realize that there is no one answer, and you will learn to be okay with that.

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