I associate New Year’s Eve with noise. Every year when I was growing up, my mother would bring us outside at midnight with pots, pans, and noisemakers. Our own private pandemonium would be echoed all around us by the singing and wild cheering of neighbors as they enthusiastically greeted the new year to booming speakers.
I’m not a child anymore, but I’m bringing a noisemaker with me to tonight’s celebration. It’s clamorous and it’s inconvenient, but enough parties have silenced me, and I have made it my new year’s resolution to trounce on every violation to my person.
This is the truth about how I have been treated so far as a student with a psychiatric history who is living in Rainbow Perspectives at Rutgers University.
I do not owe anyone protection and I refuse to be ashamed for anything that I am about to say.
All semester, I grew close with someone who lives with me in Rainbow Perspectives, which is queer housing. He confided in me his mental health issues, so I confided back. On various occasions, he confessed to me suicidal thoughts, so again, I confessed back. He ended up reporting me right after the Thanksgiving break out of nowhere.
There were cops and ambulances at my door. Let me just say that for a group that made such a big deal about preserving confidentiality when I asked them if I could have my best friend with me (who not only was two doors down but ALSO my emergency/medical contact), they sure do a shit job of maintaining it themselves. Six cops standing in front of someone’s door isn’t exactly inconspicuous. My friends later told me that they were able to hear everything that was being said. At an even later date, I was told by the Director of Res Life that I actually did have the right to request that we meet in a private room in a different building. I had never been informed of these rights at the scene when I actually needed them.
Oh yeah, I ended up being victim blamed by a cop about rape. That was fun.
I also had a mandatory CAPS evaluation, the results of which would decide whether or not I would be kicked out of the dorms. I had to literally beg the woman who was conducting the interview to take into account that without the dorms, I would be homeless and, by extension, bereft of other vital resources, such as mental health and medical services, including but not limited to testosterone and psychiatric medication. Completing my degree would have been out of the question. I simply couldn't go home.
I did wonder why their first instinct was to kick me out instead of supplying me with resources. All year, I've been requesting to see the trauma specialist at CAPS, after I found out that there wouldn't be a trauma psychotherapy group open to all genders until the spring semester. I guess Rutgers just can't admit that its resources are being stretched thin, so instead, they take it out on the students.
I was allowed to stay, but was told by the Director of Res Life that there was still an investigation being conducted about me and that my housing status might still hang in the balance (I later learned this was false. There was simply a time lag between parties as they relayed information to each other). But at the time, I was confused and wanted to know what exactly had been said about me and what I was up against.
I went to knock on the door of my ex-friend to inquire a) if he was the one who reported me and b) if so, what had he said that would warrant an extended investigation?
What happened next requires that I preface by saying that the impact of the experience and diagnosis of mental health issues on my identity has been profound. I will gladly make the bold statement that these experiences have been more central to my identity and vital to my voice and sense of self than being queer or trans*.
The person who screamed at me was someone who I had never seen before in my life. He was unrecognizable as he screamed at me, over and over again, that I was fucked up in the head, that there was something seriously wrong with me, that I was a nutcase, that I was fucking crazy, that I was selfish, and weak, that I was a burden on my friends and a drain to everyone around me, that no one should have to be friends with someone like me. He kept screaming these things. I told him if I was kicked out of the dorms, I would be homeless; he said he didn’t give a shit.
Finally, he told me that the director of the Rainbow Perspectives program related to him when he reported me that if a student kills themselves, whether it is on the premises or completely off campus, the program has to shut down.
And he told (screamed at) me that I was a hazard, I was a threat to the safe space, and he was going to personally make sure that I wasn’t going to be there or do anything to fuck everything up for everyone else.
I told him the policy was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, and I asked him where all of the trans* students were supposed to go in the event that Rainbow shut down. He said he didn’t give a shit about the trans* people in Rainbow and that it wasn’t his problem. And he continued to demonize me and claim that I was a hazard and he was going to prevent me from fucking the place up.
God, there are no words to describe the impact his words had on me. It was life changing in that it permanently stole a piece of my ability to love myself. To me, it was worse than being called a faggot or derogatory terms for trans* people.
Most people have legal and psychological tunnel vision in that they are unable to see a hate crime when the offense is motivated by someone's psychiatric history and/or status.
I know that when you think of crimes inspired by hate or bias, you conjure images of queer people, trans* people, people of color, or people wearing hijabs, or yarmulkes.
Few of you are aware of the vulnerability to abuse, assault, and intimidation that accompanies mental health issues.
We have no voice.
We might be in a position of dependence on a system that is capable of concealing sadism in the high credibility of institutional power.
Other times, we are simply viewed as undeserving of being taken seriously. And that fucking hurts!
The slurs, pejoratives, and violence that we endure are just as devastating as their anti-queer, racial, and religious counterparts, but they are not recognized to nearly the same extent, because our culture reinforces these practices on a quotidian basis.
But he shattered my sense of self-worth and made me feel violated. I FELT ASSAULTED. The term came to my mind as soon as I left his room for a reason! Furthermore, he basically threatened me. I felt disgusting, like a criminal, something that needed to be expunged. More than anything, I felt worthless. So worthless. Instinctively, I concluded that if he felt this way about me, so must everyone else. It’s a vicious cycle; his words enable attitudes and practices that marginalize me, and, in turn, those practices and attitudes endorse his words.
***note: from this point on, I am going to refer to members of staff and administration, both students and non-students, as POP (person of power) rather than their actual titles, in an effort to preserve their anonymity.
I left his room shaking uncontrollably. By now, I was legitimately afraid. Up until this point, I had never seen this side of my friend before. Clearly, he couldn't be counted on for predictability. I was terrified that if I told someone what he said, he was in a position of power where he could retaliate out of anger by using my psychiatric history against me-and I was already in a precarious situation with my housing status as it was. Furthermore, I found out that his good friend, a POP, had actually spread my private, confidential psychiatric information around Rainbow Perspectives. That is, the content related to the reason why I had been reported was disseminated around my dorm, by someone who works for Rutgers.
So at this point, I had no fucking idea what to do. If people were talking about me, and someone else decided to report it, not knowing that it had already been reported, CAPS would be called, it would be considered another incident, and I could get kicked out or hospitalized. I knew from experience that no one was going to take my word, the word of the accused, over his. I also had no idea anymore if my very presence or the sight of me could prompt this person to retaliate out of anger-again, I couldn't put it past him to be unpredictable and volatile.
Finally, he verbally attacked me and threatened me. If Rainbow Perspectives was as committed to upholding a safe space as it purported to, surely, that would be seen as unacceptable, right?
Apparently not. I know for a fact that if I had been attacked on the basis of a queer, trans*, or racial identity, there would be a zero tolerance policy. There is no question in my mind! I’m not going to list the titles of all of the people who I have approached because I still desire to preserve their anonymity, but they are in positions of power and are closely related in some way to either Rainbow Perspectives, Res Life, or student affairs. And so far, no one has done anything.
One person didn't respond. I never heard back from them. Big surprise.
I was shocked when no one outright expressed outrage that I had been threatened by their own policy. And no one assured me that they would at least try to protect me in the event that this person retaliated.
One of the POP I spoke to finally told me that while it was outside of her jurisdiction to get directly involved, she would file a request that the situation be examined further.
But this was only after I expressed my consternation at her suggestion that we set up a meeting between her and other administrators/people from res life so that they could figure out how to find me support when things like this happen. This was even after I had told her that, according to another POP who I confided in, this was not the first time the person who did this to me had hurt someone else, nor was it the first time someone had complained about the staff member who was spreading my psychiatric information.
It felt like an implicit form of victim blaming.
Instead of claiming that the actions of these parties were unacceptable, she decided to put the focus on me. And only me. She even implied that what happened upset me so much because my history made me “emotionally fragile.” And while she did supposedly issue a request so that Res Life would investigate the situation, her first reaction was not to do something about this individual.
And while we’re on the topic of victim blaming, let’s talk about that Rainbow Perspectives policy (for the record, when I related this part of the story to the same POP who my case was originally reported to, the one who told my friend about it, she did not deny that it exists).
If a Rainbow Perspectives student kills themselves, even if it's off-campus and not in any way affiliated with university property, the entire program has to shut down.
This means that every student-including the trans* students-must surrender their access to a safe space because of the actions of one individual.
This means that in spite of our community's ardent emphasis on recognizing intersectional identities, we are going to make the dangerous assumption that the queer identity alone was the impetus to suicide.
All over this university, people are assaulted and raped. Assailants have a ubiquitous presence. But of course, the burden ALWAYS rests on the victim, and the victim alone, to provide a safe haven for everyone else.
And yet, the person who envisioned, fought for, and ultimately established Rainbow Perspectives killed herself. You cannot evade this topic by demonizing it. Suicide is already entrenched in our program's history.
And it is STILL an invaluable program. I have no idea what I would do or where I would be without it.
What shakes the program to its core are not its roots but rather, where it can potentially go.
If you provide someone with a safe space, that is a right, not a privilege. They should not be forced to benefit from that space in a purely conditional way.
And by creating a policy that attributes survival solely to the adherence of these community standards that we have, the antithesis of survival can be viewed not only as a violation of these standards, but also as a character defect, a failure on the part of those who did not survive to fully exercise the program's instrumental value.
You cannot cultivate sensitivity toward a behavior that beleaguers our community by, essentially, criminalizing it. If anything, a punitive stance in relation to this person's actions becomes a defamatory statement. It becomes victim blaming.
It’s ironic, because no one’s dead, and I was victimized by the policy anyway.
Victim blaming takes so many forms...and so does victimization. To be completely honest, because this person attacked a part of me that is so fundamental to who I am, it hurts more than when I was raped in the beginning of my college career. Yes. Yes, it hurts that much, the things that he said and HOW he said them, in a way that was meant to demean me. He made me fear for my safety. He made me feel worthless.
At this point, I am exhausted. These past few weeks have been agony. I failed a final because of everything that was going on. I don't sleep and when I do, I have nightmares about the things he screamed at me, and how awful he made me feel about myself, and how the burden of an entire community rested on my shoulders, and how my mind could actually be unclean and awful enough to sentence a housing program to closure. I don't fall asleep until 7 am anymore because I am wracked with the guilt of being a criminal, or at least, someone who has been treated as such.
I consider myself a fugitive, but not in a legal sense. The de facto criminalization of my social reality has exposed me to abuse, intimidation, harassment, and exploitation at the hands of mental health professionals and leaders in social justice communities, my whole life. My grievances are systematically placed outside the realm of surveillance. And all too often, clinicians and administrators have demonstrated their lack of understanding of the causal direction and institutional practices of marginalization that deter individuals from seeking care. Indeed, it is the structure and procedures of the psychiatric system-and the school administrators that implement them-that deny people access to assistance and thereby perpetuates their invisibility. The abuse that is inflicted by the administrative aspect of psychiatric practice within the educational system is not a unilateral occurrence that can be caught by a security camera. It is an all-pervasive condition.
It is this silent endorsement of our predicament that has stolen a piece of my ability to love myself.
And that is exactly why I brought my noise maker tonight.
