The Photo
My freshman year, our lacrosse team held a private vs. public school practice at the end of our season. At this point late in our season, we didn’t know whether or not we would be advancing to the NCAA tournament, so we decided to the make the most of our time together by having some fun. Soon we would learn the hard way that our idea of “fun” was a nightmare for another group of students.
The locker room: Amidst the pre-practice bustle in the locker room while dancing around to Flo Rida’s “My House”, we laughed with our teammates as we suited up in unusual practice attire. The unconventional “uniforms” were as follows: the girls who went to private school wore pleated skorts, polos, knee-high socks, and bows in their hair. The girls who attended public high schools, including myself, had a different approach — we dressed head to toe in denim, army print, and fake tattoos. While these outfits weren’t accurate representations of what many of us wore in high school, we wanted to make sure the divide between the two teams was not only clear, but also drastic.
The photos: We snapped team and individual pictures of ourselves in what we deemed to be “costumes” before taking the field for practice. Naturally, the photos were uploaded to Facebook without hesitation. We had to show our friends and followers on social media how much fun we were having. And of course, if you didn’t document your experience publicly via social media, did it even happen at all?
The comments: Not even an hour passed before the photos of our seemingly harmless and playful joke quickly gained negative attention. Within minutes, there were comments on one of the photos I uploaded voicing concerns about our team’s “shitty and stereotypical” portrayal of public school students. Even worse, the jabs were coming from people who I personally, and many of my teammates, didn’t know. Following the
public “conversation” of comments piling up beneath my photo, I received what I would describe as “hate-mail” via Facebook inbox — switching gears to a private and direct form of communication — furthering the aggressive chatter about how offensive my photo was to a group of individuals.
Not only was I targeted “privately” via direct message, but the messages also addressed me as a “stupid athlete” and “biddie”- a negative term, commonly understood at Middlebury as a way to describe a catty and superficial group of girls. The students justified their name-calling by using it as an argument as to why I must have felt like I could act out in such a way — claiming that I thought I was better than them and purposely putting them down, because I, as a “privileged, white female”, thought I had the power to do so.
The aftermath: The “conversations” didn’t stop there. They lingered for days, via messenger, Midd confessional, and even followed up with an op-ed in the school newspaper. When my photo was posted anonymously on Midd Confessional, the comments under pseudonyms (screennames) read: “Stupid white girls they don’t know anything”, “dumb white whores” and “Those biddy bitches are the reason I hate Middlebury”. Cutting remarks, all behind closed doors, and all because of our careless decision to post what we thought were seemingly innocent photos.
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Such aggressions and cyber chatter have become quite popular with the increasing presence of social media in our lives. These screened aggressions, which often occur anonymously, are not only unproductive, but they are also dangerous. Our generation is so used to communicating online both in a positive and negative manner. In the same vain, we are also used to speaking out (typing out) against others before considering their “side” of the story, because we have been encouraged to speak our minds. It is almost too easy to channel our deep-rooted frustrations with just a few clicks of the keyboard. What our generation struggles with, however, is unveiling our anonymous remarks and exposing our issues by communicating them verbally.
Until we get to the point where we can confront our concerns about others’ actions in person, while still listening and making an active effort to understand the opposing viewpoint, problems like the misinterpretation of our supposedly playful practice will not be resolved.
Even though I did attend a public high school, along with many of my teammates, I agree that we definitely shouldn’t have portrayed ourselves in this way. My decision to upload photos of our “silly costumes” and “practical joke” was impetuous. I was a culprit of my own critique that kids in our generation feel the urge to constantly let everyone know what they are doing via social media.
However, regardless of what many viewed as my decision to act in a blatantly offensive way, the virtual hate mail that I received was an unproductive reaction to the issue.
Why was it okay, for someone to copy and paste my photo (which I immediately deleted from Facebook) to an anonymous forum, and allow free-flowing comments to spin out of control there? Why did commenters feel the need to call me names, such as “stupid athlete” and “biddie”? Why did they group me into the bucket of “the reason they hate Middlebury”?
These people don’t even know me — they don’t know the first thing about my background or any of my teammates’ backgrounds for that matter.
In and outside of the Middlebury community, we judge others. We label individuals with superficial tags that divide our community in more ways than they could ever bring us together. We assume. We associate surface-level attributes with particular groups of individuals. We stereotype and categorize. We judge.
We do this instinctively. We react without thinking. We do this behind closed doors.
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I am commenting on a number of issues that I see within the Middlebury community and also broadly within our generation and the way in which we speak out against adversity today. I am commenting on the labels that we put on each other and the categories in which we classify groups of individuals, which constantly reinforce the stereotypes that exist here.
I am curious about the ways in which we can work to unite our community despite our differing opinions and backgrounds.
The questions I still grapple with are: who is responsible for allowing people of all different opinions and backgrounds to speak out against others, while remaining non-partisan? And especially at Middlebury, how deeply should we allow these conversations to build? Via what medium? To what extent do our preconceived notions about specific individuals, skew our arguments and opinions as to what we believe is morally right or wrong?
Finally, when should we speak up? We still have yet to reach the equilibrium point at which our opinions don’t cross the line. It is my hope that the more we urge each other to have these face-to-face, civil conversations, the closer we get to reaching a stable point in which the seesaw effect of opposing opinions, ultimately settles.
