While Ole Miss continues to struggle with the racial environment on campus (and, no, spring break was not long enough for anyone to forget about February’s hate crime), another social issue poisons campus, and, if you can believe it, is even less subtle: xenophobia.
Xenophobic attitudes prevail inside classrooms and materialize as harsh criticism of foreign professors. Some professors born outside of the United States are consistently harassed and mocked by students, who, having been born in a cardboard box, suffer the grand injustice that is their professor having a strong accent and who may struggle with expressing themselves well in English.
Saying that your professor’s accent is the reason your grade is low is a pretty terrible excuse. I don’t know any professor who doesn’t utilize his or her office hours or who wouldn’t take the time to repeat instructions if you asked him or her to do so.
Further, nothing taught to you in a textbook is the exclusive knowledge of a singular professor — there are tons of resources, from tutoring to the Internet, available to carry you on the blessed, refreshing breeze to the mountaintop of academic success. Resting in mediocrity and folding yourself into closed-mindedness like a little bigoted paper swan just won’t get you anywhere.
The purpose of attending a university, as my friend Charles aptly put it, is to experience things that broaden your perspectives and make you smarter. This is an institution of higher learning, after all, and one that, despite some students’ never-ending efforts to ruin this perception, does hold intelligence in high regard, whether or not that gift is better wrapped in another language besides English.
More likely than not, your foreign professor brought a Ph.D. to this university. All you have is an ACT score and a high school résumé. Have a seat. Listen to people. Know that people who don’t look and sound like you can teach you something valuable.
It’s heartbreaking to me to know that these talented, well-traveled, extremely diligent academics have to suffer patronizing attitudes from young people who needed only a pulse to be accepted into this school in the first place. It is not the raggedy, adolescent, entitled hoi polloi idling through college who make The University of Mississippi the esteemed educational institution it is. It is not Greek life, Oxford nightlife or even our athletics programs.
Some of the faculty and staff who teach and research here are world-renowned authors, scientists, philanthropists and thinkers. Some of them are not fluent in English. And those who work for the university whose positions here aren’t necessarily academic, such as secretaries, custodians and food workers, deserve to be treated with dignity as well.
All of them deserve your respect.
Sierra Mannie is a junior classics major from Ridgeland.
ssmannie@go.olemiss.edu
