<p>I’m sorry if my last post seemed curt. You asked for “current students” and I graduated 4 years ago. I was following HC Alum’s thread to not get involved for the moment in order to let current students speak, as proper, even though I wanted to jump in.</p>
<p>This is a link to historic pictures archived at Haverford. My point is that issues with race relations have been a part of America and Haverford for a while.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.haverford.edu/library/sc/haverford166/HTML/protests.html[/url]”>http://www.haverford.edu/library/sc/haverford166/HTML/protests.html</a></p>
<p>I’m not going to speak of the current events, as I don’t know anything about them, but feel somewhat OK to discuss my own experience as a white student. I’m a busy professional (trained in law) and with a family. As you can tell, I valued my time at Haverford- I love it what it is, what it strives to be, and I also appreciate it’s imperfections and what it is not. </p>
<p>As someone wrote here, race is a defining experience for many people and race relations in America seems to be the inescapable bugaboo. I think HC Alum’s comment to other elite colleges was that intelligent and talented students may still be immature and insensitive. Even at a place like Haverford with its honor code and self-selected student population, you will find apathy, disinterest and occasionally disrespect. I don’t blame Haverford, but rather American society and what experiences the kids have had in their 17-18 years prior which they bring to campus.</p>
<p>I’m surprised with your comment about how Haverford is “selling itself”, as when I was a student, the publication, tours, ect, never glossed over these challenges, debates and issues as they are an integral part of the Haverford experience- how do you rectify having ideal standards placed on an imperfect community? I would never want to skim over this because trying to figure such things out is what makes the Haverford experience 3 dimensional and beyond just academics and a decent social life/extracurriculars.</p>
<p>Regarding the current issues that you raised, all I’m going to say is that it takes a lot of guts to write what that student wrote and, at the same time, it takes a particular openess in campus culture so that an URM student can feel empowered enough to write “Why are white students annoying?” and to then organize and lead a campus discussion of 200 or so students during what appeared to be mid-term exam time.</p>