Dear Westboro Baptist Church visitors,
Welcome to our campus. Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are the students of The George Washington University. The brochures call us “Colonials,” but we are also believers and we are atheists. We are Democrats and we are Republicans, liberals and conservatives. We are black and white. We are straight and we are gay. We are partiers and we are studiers, we are rivals and we are friends. We are the future doctors, lawyers, diplomats and politicians of the world. We are all of these things, and each and every one of us proudly occupies our own unique place on the continuum in between.
Most importantly, however, we share one common principle. Though there are hundreds of other things with which we could fill the blank that follows “We are,” in the end, it isn’t the changing blank, but rather the constant “we” that reflects our true strength as students.
It is critical for you to understand this, WBC, because as you bring your message of hate to our campus, you do so not to thousands of misguided and disparate heathens, but rather to a united “we.” It is a “we” that greets your epithets and anger not as lost and sinful souls, but as the future leaders of this world, proud of our diversity and our generation’s potential.
It is not with hate that we express ourselves to you, but with pity. Those of us who have a God pity you for your gross distortions, those of us who don’t pity you for your blindness, and we all pity you for your ignorance. Thus, while you protest, we will be studying, we will be collaborating and we will be living our lives as students of this University, because we know that our education is the torch that illuminates the cloud of darkness that your ignorance creates.
Now, some of us will be there to greet you. Some of us will be getting ready for class. Some of us will be reveling in restful sleep thanking God – or luck – for our 12:45 p.m. class. But, no matter where each of us is that morning, we will all pity you, WBC. We will pity you because your hate blinds you from ever knowing the power of understanding, the power of inclusion and the power of “we.”
With love,
The students of The George Washington University
Signed by: Daniel Wein and Dan Reade, Transcend Hate; Michael Komo, Allied in Pride; Jake Wolf, College Republicans; Melinda Michaels, Jewish Student Association; Will Frey, The GW Patriot; Richard J. Livingstone, LGBTQ and Transnational Film Studies Club.
The writer is the president of the College Democrats.
Readers can visit the Forum to comment on this op-ed.
