‘Oh, let’s not. ’ Hospitable Silences: Home: Hospi ta l i ty, Belonging, and the Nation

Recently a professor in my department was threatened by one of his students. The intrusion happened in his classroom. Immediately, students felt the onslaught of tension and turmoil. The perpetrator stood up in the middle of a lecture, pointed his finger, and searched accusingly around the room for the victims of his verbal anger. He bolstered questions such as, “Who in this room is gay? Who else is a Homo?” After a moment of shocked silence and avoiding eyes, he then approached female students in the room, made advances, and even tried to touch one on the leg. After this outburst and a reprimand from the professor, he sat back down. Then again, this student stood up and demanded, “I need a tutor. Do you think there are any women in this room that want to come home and give me private tutoring? ” After that class, whispers of the student having a gun filled the hallways. I wasn’t there. It wasn’t my class. The prior quotations are paraphrased statements, heresy accounts. I didn’t see the rumored gun. I do not know if he showed students the gun, but some say he did. Others say it wasn’t a gun at all. I do not know all of the details. Perhaps, it is not my story to tell. Yet, what I do know is, after the incident, I felt the panic around the building. When I entered my classroom a few hours later to teach my course, Communication and the Sexes, the fear was palpable. My students look up at me. They stop their chattering and wait, eyes wide, to hear what I have to say about what occurred only a few hours ago in this very room. This is a teachable moment. I want to explore the intersections of violence and materia