Clemson is all about this thing called “The Clemson Experience.” To the university, that means that every student is the happy, football loving 20-something that gets interviewed for polls in the Princeton Review. They wear orange every Friday, turn up every Thursday, and show up drunk on camera on game day. I am not that 20-something. And this is my Clemson experience.
In class the other week, one of my classmates went off on a rant about poor service he received at a bank where he wasn’t an account holder. Someone had written him a check, he had gone to their bank to cash it, and the teller had the audacity to tell him that the bank’s policy required a $5 fee on transactions like his. In his own words, “it got ugly in that lobby.” Part of his tirade? “I know you don’t want these Hispanics,” he spat the word like venom, “from [a plant nearby] coming in here cashing their paychecks, but this check was drawn on this bank!” He called the bank manager and the regional manager. Apparently being a non-Latino white male means you don’t have to pay to get your checks cashed at banks where you have no account. He laughed like he was proud of himself for being so clever.
As this happened, my professor, seeing that I was offended, offered me an apologetic smile and a nervous laugh. Racists, you know? They’re just so cheeky. What can you do?
When I was freshman, I dealt with a lot of harassment. Racially insensitive jokes. Predatory sexual advances. General disrespect. I reported my friends’ RA for these things. The university never did a thing about it.
When I was a sophomore, I was talking with friends about that MLK Day Black-Face Party from 2007, the year before we matriculated. One of them was lying with his head in my lap and said, “I don’t see what the big deal is about [the party]." When I reminded him that white students painted themselves Black and stuffed padding in their skirts he said, "It’s just a party.” I left the apartment. I don’t think I ever spoke to him again. It’s a shame, really: he was smart, and handsome, and had a beautiful voice. If he hadn’t had such terrible views on my culture as costume, he’d have made an excellent trophy husband.
I had a roommate once that treated me like a maid. Left her food on our table for days, and her clothes strewn all over the floor because I had nothing better to do than pick up after her. I remember asking her once, “How long are you going to leave that basket there? It’s in the way of the closet.” She glared at me and said, “Why?” Once, she came home from a frisbee game and left grass and mud in the bathtub. We had been friends before. She moved out at the end of the year without saying goodbye, and never spoke to me again.
When I was a junior, talking to friends about the way Belgium pushes its immigrant population into slums on the fringes of Brussels, one of them said, “Lyssa, you just need to go find Blackville.” I stood there, stunned into murderous silence. Realizing what she had said, she turned red and apologized. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to offend you!” Hadn't she? Was that meant as a compliment to Matongé, the Brussels neighborhood populated by African immigrants? “Well you did,” I snapped. I’ve never forgiven her.
When I was a senior, I was talking to a professor about the reasons why I didn’t like Clemson. I began with the story about my friends’ RA, and when I mentioned that the university failed to investigate my complaint, this man--a man with a wife, a mother, with daughters--said, “Okay, but that can’t be it.” I hope the things that were said to me are never said to his little girls. Babies, this is the sympathy you will get from your father.
Last year, my marketing professor used the Confederate flag as an example of a “confused positioning error.” You know, because history is so confusing.
These are my memories of college. There are more like these. There are more like these than there are of anything happy or good.
The people in these stories have names and I remember all of them, though I doubt any of them think of me anymore. I let them stay anonymous today because their names are not the point. The point is that while there have been a few bright spots in my educational experience, I look back on my college years and see a dark, dark cloud of otherness, loneliness, and not belonging. I see six years in a place whose culture was not my own, whose values were not my own--a place full of people who couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel grateful to just be there in the first place and who clearly didn't think I should be there at all (except, of course, as the maid).
This is not the experience Clemson will tell you that its students have, but I know I’m not alone. How can I be? I am not so special.
This is not the experience Clemson thinks it is capable of, but it is mine.
