A Student Run site
Last November at a thanksgiving dinner, a math professor from here at Biola made a joke about Black Lives Matter. He said something to the effect of "I don't particularly care for Black Friday, when all Friday's matter!" I was the only black person at the table and everyone laughed but me. I will never forget that moment.
-- Anonymous Talbot Grad Student
Posted April 25th, 2016
​
As I was thinking about how stupid for someone to draw swastika on the dorm door of Biola students.
Joke or hate crime, it is not a laughing matter though.
I can feel the same way when I was second year of fall semester and wrote on my white board explaining that I'm deaf and may not hear people knocking my door.
But someone cross the word deaf out and I was crushed inside, thinking nobody seem to acknowledge my presence.
Well it turned out that someone was just messing with everyone's white board just for fun.
But I think prankster should be careful about their actions and avoid offending anyone.
- @Juguardian Biola Senior
Posted April 26th, 2016
In my Intro To Teaching class we were supposed to discuss what defines a good, bad, and average teacher. As various students shared their experiences I felt it was necessary to share an upsetting experience that I went through, which happened to be at a predominantly white private school, my history teacher pressed a Spanish “that was easy” button and told the class this is what a Mexican would say after jumping the boarder. Since I was 1 of the few Hispanics at that school every one turned to me and began to laugh. Ever since then I felt that it was very obvious that I was different and struggled to be comfortable with my ethnic identity.
I made myself vulnerable in sharing this experience because I wanted to stress the importance of making sure that when trying to facilitate conversation in the classroom you must be careful about what you say. I’m sure his intentions weren’t to hurt my feelings but they were. I expressed that he made me feel marginalized and extremely uncomfortable. I told the class that it also gave way for various students to think it was okay to call me names such as beaner or cracked jokes about the boarder very often. I shared an expereince with the class that had a very negative effect on me ever since.
​
After sharing this experiences one of m classmates at Biola came up to me and said, “don’t be offended but when you were sharing your story I thought you were over reacting.”
-Noemi Nesta Biola Sophomore
So one of my friends was a music major, and him and a group of us needed to rehearse for Pumpkin Pie, he resesrved the room and we started peracticing. Their were 4 black students in his band and a couple hispanic students and two white students. While were in there practicing two other music (white) students walked in the room, stood for a second and then started to rummage through some drawers like we weren't there. They started talking very loudly and playing instruments while we were practicing. We were Completely silent, all wondering why they were interrupting and not acknowledging us.
We eventually went back to our practice only to be interrupted a second time.
This was by another white music student who came in very distraught.
He demanded to see "who was in charge?" and seemed very irritated.
By a glance we all silently nominated, my friend, the music major, the one who reserved the room as our "leader" and he approached the exasperated student. He informed our leader that we were in violation of some "reserving code".
Our leader calming explained to him he was in fact a music major and handled it the way the it was supposed to be handled. The student huffed really loud and left the room. We all were once again very confused but eventually continued our practice.
Until once again but this time by the exasperated boy and some other music students... this time he was smiling though. Calm cool and collected and smiling. He confidently told us that we needed to "evacuated the building immediately".
This time we were confused...however very audibly confused this time.
Our leader took charge and demanded what was going on.
"You didn't follow the proper protocol! I texted anna (random name cause I can't remember ) and she said she didn't finish signing all the papers because she had to leave early and yours was one of them!"
"You texted her?" I blurted out, confused as to why he went through the trouble.
"Yes it was urgent."
Okay? So we packed up our things and ashamedly walked down the hall, out the building.
This time even our leaving was interrupted once again. As we made our way to the door 4 other white students were blocking our way. 2 of them were siting so both of their feet blocked the door frame.
My friend calmly asked them to slide their feet out of the way so we can walk. She explained that she didn't want to trip.
To both our surprise the girl just looked at her friend and looked up at us and said "you can just walk over"
I couldn't contain my shock I accidentally blurted out once again and said "excuse me?"
Her other friend (I'm assuming) said "yea its not that big of a deal"
I was appalled, but my friend was a little more. She stammer almost to tears, "please just let us go, I won't step over you so please move your feet."
The girls looked confused. But continued to not move. The other band members slowly emerged the room as they were finishing packing up the equipment.Down the hall the leader was still discussing why we had to leave.
My friend stood there waiting for the girls to move. They looked at her told her they had no where to be adn would wait telling her that she could use the other door.
After standing there and waiting. It was extremely uncomfortable and we knew these girls didn't respect us.
One of the girls timidly removed her foot and motioned her other friend to do the same.
We walked through the door and went on our way. All feeling a little pretty hurt that night.
-Jamai Fisher, Biola Junior