Untitled

By Sanya Bery ‘21

I think I have been writing and rewriting this article in my head since he was nominated.

When I actually sat down to write it I realized that it shouldn’t even be in Arcadia. Arcadia is a political magazine. His nomination isn’t political. Ford’s testament against him isn’t political. This is not a battle between Democrat and Republican, between Trump supporters and Trump haters.

I mean it is. But it shouldn’t be.

Honestly, I don’t care about him. I hate that his name is everywhere. I hate that when I check Snapchat his face is there and that his voice dictated the soundtrack of that fall week and every week after that.

I can tell you where he went to high school, college, and graduate school. What he studied, what his first job was, how many kids he has, and his career dreams and inspiration.

I don’t know what to do with all this information.

I didn’t research him. I half paid attention to the conversations before class, overheard the TV, scanned the New York Times once or twice.

Maybe, they think that if we know his background we will see ourselves in him. We will empathize with him. We will rationalize or justify what he did and why he did it.

I will not and I hope that you will not. But some people will. Some people have.

We have this idea of what a good person should look like, should act like, should come from. They are so embedded in our society that when someone has these qualities we immediately assume they are good and nothing, (not even a broken woman) can change that.

I wonder: if his parents could not afford tuition for a preparatory high school or an Ivy League, if he preferred men over women, if he had a Star of David on his neck or wore a turban, if his skin was three times darker, would we even be having this conversation? Would we be defending or debating his character?

I am tired of taking a person for what I’m told they should be rather than what they are.

Maybe we can’t accept the fact that a wealthy, white, well-educated, straight, Catholic man is wrong. That he has broken someone. Or maybe we can but just don’t care enough to do something about it.

I’ve been thinking about it and I’m not sure which is worse.

We go about the whole process in the wrong way. If someone says, “this person hurt me,” we should say “I’m sorry. I completely believe you and will continue to believe you unless there is the slight chance that you are proven wrong.”

But instead we say, “You are completely wrong and I will continue to say that you are lying unless there is the slight chance that it is proven that I should believe you.”

How many times does it have to be said that once it happens, you’ll never be the same.

When you walk down Main Street to get something from Rite Aid you’ll convince yourself that every man you pass on the street or make eye contact with in their car is trying to hurt you. You’ll stop going to parties because they will always smell like the night it happened and you’ll avoid relationships with anyone, even if it’s just as a friend, because you know that if you become close enough to them they will do it to you, too.

When you’re at lunch and people talk about a girl on campus who was sexually assaulted you will not say “that’s awful” like the others do. Not because you don’t think it’s awful but because when you hear her name you will think it is yours and the silence will consume you for an hour or two.

You will be given love and security, so much love and security, but it cannot erase the fact that someone saw you and decided that they wanted to kill you.

A part of you, at least.

When someone has his name or wears the color he wore that night you will smile at the ground but your mind will be falling and will continue to fall and you will never get it back, not completely.

And you hate that your mind has fallen, that you have fallen and you don’t want anyone else to feel like this because it is so awful so you risk what you have and stand in front of the country that has given you everything and tell the story about how you died 35 years ago. How he killed you.

While we listen to you quiver, we nod because we know him. We’ve partied with him. Sat behind him in class. Texted him. Almost loved him. We praise him. He is who we have taught our sons, our brothers, our friends to want to be and he is who we have told our sons, our brothers, our daughters, our sisters, our friends to let be.

As you speak you will take deep breaths but the air will not be fresh. It will be tired and old as it has been swallowed and spit out from so many people before you that have said the same thing.

When you finally finish we will clap and say that we don’t care. We will say it has not happened. And then we will continue on with our lives and your name will slowly fade away. After a couple weeks we will be surprised if we are still reading articles about you. How are you still relevant?

His name will be in textbooks and on the wall of the Supreme Court, and he will continue with his life, in all its privilege.

But you will not continue on with yours. After all, you have not been able to fully do so for the past 35 years.

But we don’t care about that.  

I am tired of being part of this we. I think you are tired, too.

But I don’t think us being tired is enough.