ANDROID ATHLETE

Why I Love the Girl Named Jennifer

August 21, 2010 at 8:48 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: college, diversity, Drew Linne, ice-breakers, LGBT, love

If you don’t already know me, I’ll just let you know that I just moved into the dorms at the Kansas City Art Institute only two days ago, and I have been meeting a ton of new people. Classes have not started yet, but the school had planned out almost the entire weekend for us with ice-breakers, name games, assemblies, etc. I have really enjoyed talking to everyone I’ve met so far, and everyone is really kind, and unique. I honestly cannot wait to see what kind of artwork we all like to create. I have never been around so many creative people in my whole life!

But anyway, one of the first people I met and remembered the name of is this girl named Jennifer, from Texas. The reason I love Jennifer is because, even though I’ve only had like, two conversations with her, we had an assembly about diversity yesterday. Now, this assembly was kind-of awkward, interesting and sometimes downright depressing for all of us. The woman who led the event would have people who associate themselves with a particular group stand up at different times, and then as we were standing she would recite some sort of statistic about that particular group.

Now, she gave the option to all of us that we did not have to stand if it made us too uncomfortable, but I think most of us did it. Some examples of the groups she called out were Blacks/African-Americans, Asians/Pacific Islanders, people whose parents or grandparents immigrated to the U.S.A., LGBT students (that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender for those of you who may not know the term), Hispanics/Latinos, people whose parents never graduated from college, people from low-income households, women, Jews, people of mixed-race, and… I think that might be all.

But anyway, like I said before, it seemed to be that most people stood up when asked. Then at the end we were asked to discuss what we thought of the exercise. Some people thought it was interesting, others found it to be intrusive, but most people (including myself) found it to be enlightening. Several people spoke, and I was very happy with one guy who commended everyone who stood up as part of the LGBT community, and he called us courageous for doing so. But the reason I love Jennifer is because she stood up and said very clearly (something along the lines of), “I just want everyone to know that we are all bolted down to this Earth whether we like it or not, and I love you all.”

I instantly felt the urge to run over to her and give her a great big hug, but I was all sweaty and stinky from playing frisbee earlier. Instead we all clapped and cheered and whistled with each other, in celebration of our differences… and maybe even more so, our similarities that maybe none of us knew existed.

Much love to all of you,

Drew Matthew Francis Linne