Returning The Smile

by Daniel Muniz ‘10

This is the short speech I gave at the Sexual Assault Speak-out. Various people requested that I post it.

I’d like to tell you about what I see as an identity crisis at Colgate. This crisis isn’t happening within any one person. It’s not happening only on frat row, or only in the dorms, or only in the offices of McGregory. This is a community crisis. I think we can all admit that we are not the community we could be – one characterized by positive qualities such as tolerance, mutual respect, interdependence, and individual integrity. Now that we recognize that there is a need, we have to reimagine this community. We have to shape it into the one we’ve always known it could be. To do this, some of us may need to reconnect with the idealism we had when we entered Colgate. I’m going to share with you a story of when I was a freshman, to help you see Colgate again through the eyes of one who has not yet had to settle for a community that didn’t meet expectations.

It was my first full day of classes at Colgate. I was excited, as I’m sure you all were on your first day. Having already set up a good rapport with my floormates during orientation, I thought that meeting people I didn’t know at college was always going to be that easy. I figured, “This is college! I’m connected to every other student here by the fact that we’ve all chosen to spend these years of our lives on this very same, beautiful campus.” So it was that I set out of Curtis Hall on the way to my first class, optimistic about the people I would meet, befriend, or just come to know by sight as we passed each other on the way to and from class each day.

I passed dozens of students, casually looking them good-naturedly in the eyes with what I thought was a welcoming, unassuming smile. I passed students of all class years. I passed all the people of my community. Not one student returned that smile. Not one of the fellow Colgate students whose community I had been fancying myself a part of even gave me more than a second’s look, and then sometimes with narrowed eyes (and I’m quite sure I wasn’t being creepy).

Now one could think of this as a funny story, as I often have. The naive freshman thinks that everyone wants to be his friend. He actually believed the myth of the “Colgate Hello.” But who is that person who laughs at the naive freshman, who laughs at my behavior on that first day? Are we laughing out of a kind of superiority in knowing better now? In what way are we superior to that freshman? What if everyone had the same hopes for our community as I had on that first day?

I think we need to get in touch with that freshman in all of us. I don’t know about you, but I’m the same person as I was when I got here. I’ve gone through a lot, as you all have, I’ve changed a lot. But that naive freshman who just wants to feel connected to his community is still alive inside me. Who doesn’t want to feel connected to one’s community?

We are responsible for this community, and it is about time we took a good, hard look at what we’ve created. The Campus Climate Life Survey shows that we are not a particularly tolerant campus. Sexual abuse runs rampant here. I know just from being on this campus and talking to people that students here have a compulsive need to stay busy, between sports, extracurriculars, meeting the demands of classes, and perhaps most significantly, partying.

When my freshman self did not get his smile returned by all the students he passed, he concluded that students here must be angry about something. I couldn’t imagine what that could be. But after 4 years here, I don’t think it’s anger. I think it’s fear. I have often heard fellow students express a fear that if they stay inside just one Friday or Saturday night, or just choose to go to a movie and then go home, they’d be afraid that they’re missing out on something. Missing out on pre-gaming maybe, beer pong, going to the Jug, going to slices drunk, walking back home still smashed. I think the most frightening thing to some of us at Colgate is the prospect of not having a wild story to share about our weekend. I’m so used to hearing a new acquaintance start talking about how much they drank the night before, I just tune it out now. What if we didn’t have a blackout or terrible hangover story to share? Wouldn’t that be awkward, right?

And what kind of identity crisis are we witnessing here at Colgate, when we see our fellow students sexually abusing or assaulting 45% of the women in our community?

The freshman who just wanted to have his smile returned could never have imagined his community to be this self-destructive. If it were up to that freshman, we could party and drink to our hearts’ content, but there would be no need for this kind of destructive behavior. We’d have nothing to prove to ourselves, nothing to gain by blacking out, nothing to gain by coercing a Colgate woman into sex, nothing to lose by giving perpetrators of sexual assault the punishment we all know they deserve, and nothing to fear in just going to see that movie, or chilling out instead of blacking out.

The fact that you are all here today shows that there is a desire to turn this around. We can forge a new Colgate identity. All we’ve ever needed is the willingness to do it, and your presence today is proof that the willingness is here. It’s about time we got in touch with that freshman in all of us, and create the community we always wanted. It’s about time we returned that smile.

Thank you.