I was walking to class one cloudy morning, absorbed in scratching off every particle of blue nail polish from my fingernails, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by images of blackened corpses piled together as if they’d been raked like leaves. Huge photographs of skeletal Jewish children and bloody aborted fetuses hung, wrapped by chain-link fences, in the EMU Amphitheater. I quickly learned that a group had displayed these images to somehow change the minds of pro-choice students.
On its Web site, the Genocide Awareness Project’s mission statement says: “By placing abortion images alongside traditionally recognized forms of genocide we are expanding the context in which people think about abortion.”
The concept of juxtaposing Holocaust victims and aborted fetuses seemed ridiculous, so I ventured down the steps to talk to one of the representatives of the group. I told a female group-member that seeing rotting corpses on my way to class was both horrifying and absurd. I asked her what these images had to do with the debate over legal abortions, and she began to respond, but almost immediately I stopped listening and my mind wandered.
I thought of my friend Isaac from Rwanda. Like many of us, Isaac kicks around campus with his iPod turned up, concentrated on his studies or his friends. Today, he would have to wake up, walk to math class and on his way see graphic photos of a massacre he had witnessed as a child. I once spoke to Isaac about his childhood in Africa and sensed the mix of horror and relief he felt reflecting upon his escape from
Rwanda. I was certain Isaac didn’t equate genocide with abortion. Did this group stop to consider the individuals they were offending? Or was offensiveness their goal? I could sense a stir of emotion in the people around me.
Feeling anger and disbelief on behalf of people outside my personal universe did more than just heat my emotions. It warmed me from my usual placid detachment. I saw frustration, understanding, cynicism and confusion written on the faces around me. My beliefs were one set of many that faced challenge. Knowing this, I felt suddenly connected to my environment.
When walking around campus, it’s easy to be distracted by details: a due date, your checking account balance, or familiar campus characters like Frog, hustling his unfunny joke books. But, once in a while something jolts the mind into a moment of lucidity, where truth is tangible. On this day I looked around trying to grasp what was going on outside of me.
Campus took a breath and, for the first time, I could feel it.
As students, we study the theories, the facts and the philosophies of untouchable academics. We listen to lectures and sprawl over expensive textbooks. But it’s through our interaction with the rich and complex personalities that line our lush campus that we can truly explore ourselves. Swimming in a pool of personal details, it’s easy to lose broad perspective. The controversy and conversations that arise here allow us to spit out our thoughts and let them puddle until we can recognize their form. The 25,000 brains crammed onto these eight, familiar blocks are filled with neurons sending and receiving messages. When we come together, even if we feel detached in a world of individual thought, campus forms a body that moves, thinks and breathes.