I’ve learned to ask very little of my school. It’s a self-preservation tactic; I can only hold so much disappointment and anger within me. So, I don’t ask them to come out as pro-abortion. I don’t ask them to denounce anti-choice politics. I don’t even ask them to give student advocates the same support they give the Federalist Society (because that’ll never happen). What I will ask, though, is that when they offer a space “for members of the community to come together to understand and process [Dobbs] and its implications,” they leave Noah Feldman out of it. I WILL ask for the bare minimum.
I spent the last three days since the Dobbs decision waiting for HLS to do something—ANYTHING—to acknowledge the fact that over half of its students just got stripped of their bodily autonomy and status as full, rights-having persons. Doing nothing would’ve been more respectful of those students. Instead, HLS invites us to grieve the loss of our rights and our hope for a better future with the man who consistently uses his platform to boost the very people who took those things away from us.
I don’t want to hear from the man who wrote that “Amy Coney Barrett Deserves to Be on the Supreme Court.” I don’t want to process this loss with the man who silenced our fears by trying to tell us that “Kavanaugh Is the Last Hope for Abortion Rights.”
I ask very little of my school. I don’t ask them to speak out when their professors use their platform in harmful ways. I don’t ask them to tell students “your fears, your tears, your loss of hope are valid.” I don’t even ask them to say “we love and support our students impacted by this decision.” ALL I ask is that you don’t invite a man who cheers for the very justices who robbed me and my community of so much to lead the community in conversation as we mourn that robbery.
HLS: this is offensive and invalidates the very real harm your students are experiencing now and will continue experiencing for the foreseeable future. We deserve at least the bare minimum of respect, and you can’t even show us that.