7 May 2019
Scribe editors
As a campus community, we should be devoted to creating an environment of inclusion and acceptance. Students should welcome the idea of programs like MOSAIC, the safe space events and the large amount of diversity on campus instead of disregarding them, or attacking them as somehow harmful to their identity.
Graffiti in restroom. Photo by Travis Boren – The Scribe
Yet we have those on campus who belittle other members of the community, specifically targeting victims of abuse without the courage to stand behind their statements. This is not even a new issue for UCCS, as anyone who can remember the anti-veteran letter that graced UCCS as an apparent hoax and the white supremacist flyers posted near Women and Ethnic Studies classrooms.
Both events were attributed to members outside of the UCCS community, but similar outrage for harassment targeting victims of abuse has been nonexistent from the community.
Fragile egos that cannot handle victims receiving empathy and attention attack others for seeking a group to help support them through their trauma, because it is not “how the real world works,” despite there being over 10 pages of support groups listed for Colorado Springs on psychologytoday. com, because Colorado Springs is not a part of the real world.
Just ask any veteran that goes to groups to help build a support network.
As a community, we know we can agree that it is awful to be a victim. Why is it that when someone suffering looks to find a community to help process trauma, and looks for a place where it is safe for them to process their trauma, that they are attacked for seeking that support?
Why does the concept of a safe space elicit such hatred?
We all have our own safe spaces.
For overwhelmed parents, it can be the bathroom where they pretend to be
attending to business for half an hour at a time.
For students, it can be back at home in the bedroom they grew up in.
For victims of abuse, it can be as simple as a community that accepts them without reinforcing an idea that suffering from a traumatic experience creates a broken, unwanted person.
UCCS is better than that. We are a community full of people who are completely capable of feeling empathy for those who suffer, and we can empathize with the pain and suffering others experience.
Participating in safe space events will help us come together as an even stronger community: one that will never let someone suffer alone, because when one of us is hurt, then all of us are hurt.
The photo shown is the exact kind of hatred that we all need to strive to overcome on a daily basis, both for ourselves and our community, because society only exists if we are a community.