HOLDING THE TENSION
Continued from page 9
What those moments revealed is that the work of belonging is never finished, and that a statement, however well-crafted, does not protect anyone on its own. What protects people is how an institution responds when its values are tested. Every response is a lesson. Every time we named what happened, gathered the community, and chose engagement over avoidance, we were teaching something more important than any single class could convey: that we mean what we say.
In the weeks leading up to the election, our students led pre-election dialogues. They discussed the history of voting rights. They practiced the kind of discourse they had been building for two years— not perfectly, not without stumbling, but with genuine effort and real courage. Faculty who had done the work were better equipped to hold those rooms. The foundation we had been laying since October 7th was holding.
And then the results came in. Students who had worked hard to stay in those conversations— students who had practiced exactly what we asked of them— walked into school the next morning carrying something heavy. Some were frightened for their families. Some were grieving. Some didn’ t have words yet. What they needed in that moment wasn’ t a lesson plan. It was confirmation that the adults in the building saw them and were not going to look away. That is also what belonging requires.
“ What protects people is how an institution responds when its values are tested. Every response is a lesson.”
The work continued. As it always does.
We are now in a moment that none of us fully anticipated— a country at war, communities on our campus directly affected, students watching the news and then walking into our classrooms carrying what they’ ve seen. The grief, the fear, the outrage, the confusion— it is present. It does not check itself at the door.
And layered underneath all of it is something perhaps even more insidious: the normalization of harmful speech. When dehumanizing language becomes the wallpaper of public discourse— when it streams from political platforms, from social media, from the mouths of people in positions of power— students absorb it. They begin to believe that cruelty is just candor, that slurs are just opinions, that targeting the vulnerable is simply saying what others are afraid to say. Our schools are not separate from that culture. We are inside it. And if we are not actively and explicitly naming what is happening, we are participating in the normalization by our silence.
Page 10 Summer 2026 CSEE Connections