Original Document:

RESPECT AND NO-HARASSMENT POLICY

Saint Ignatius College Prep works hard to create and maintain a safe and secure academic and social environment for all its students and to prevent situations that create offensive conditions. The school wishes to recognize and celebrate the diversity of our school community.

A major goal of Saint Ignatius College Prep is to teach and encourage students to become men and women who are aware of their own talents and blessings and who are willing to share them with others in open, loving and generous ways. Saint Ignatius recognizes its obligation to prepare its students to live, work and serve others in our increasingly diverse society.

Interactions among students and adults should, therefore, reflect acceptance of and sensitivity to the diversity within the school community. Affirming the richness of diversity in a community is not simply avoiding intolerance. Rather, it is a way of thinking, seeing, and behaving that demonstrates an understanding and respect for all ethnic and cultural traditions.

My version:

RESPECT AND NO-HARASSMENT POLICY

Saint Ignatius College Prep works hard to create and maintain a safe and secure academic and social environment for all its students and to prevent situations that create offensive conditions. The school wishes to recognize and celebrate the diversity of our school community.

A major goal of Saint Ignatius College Prep is to teach and encourage students to become men and women who are aware of their own talents and blessings and who are willing to share them with others in open, loving and generous ways. Saint Ignatius recognizes its obligation to prepare its students to live, work and serve others in our increasingly diverse society.

Interactions among students and adults should, therefore, reflect acceptance of and sensitivity to the diversity within the school community. Affirming the richness of diversity in a community is not simply avoiding intolerance. Rather, it is a way of thinking, seeing, and behaving that demonstrates an understanding and respect for all ethnic and cultural traditions.

Process Notes:

This is the official Respect and No-Harassment Policy in the student handbook from my high school. I didn’t add any words here–just simply crossed some of them out. This “policy” is extremely vague, so one part of my aim in crossing out words was to emphasize its vagueness in making a general claim about diversity. Also, I did cross out some of the words crucial to establishing what they were trying to get across, which as a result, makes this statement read a very different way. My choice to do this comes from a reflection of my own experience there, especially when crossing out “celebrate” as the school just barely recognized diversity, as well as “all ethnic and cultural” since the only tradition they seemed to understand and respect was the Catholic tradition.

Long Soldier’s “Five” section of “He Sápa” was one I had to read over and over. I really enjoy the concept of “Born in us, two of everything.” This idea of duality, even within our own selves, is one that I find resonant, especially in the context of having a voice inside your head that both is and isn’t you. I think Long Solder’s exploration of the internal as a space that has both internal and external parts was very poignant, especially when she addresses the idea of dragging the other “you” up to the surface. I also think her evocative imagery of the scalp and the head made this exploration very visceral in the physical sense. It made me think about so many things, like child inside that we bring out at times – voluntarily and involuntarily– as well as the person whom we aspire to be, which we often picture to be trapped somewhere inside ourselves, waiting to be set free. This poem really made me think about the duality of myself and made me pause to listen to my inner voice with new ears.

Another poem section that I really enjoyed was the fifth section of “Vaporative” which starts with “example:” This poem was incredibly eloquent in summing up an experience that I have often: when a word, because of the way it sounds or feels or looks, feels like it should have a different, sometimes opposite meaning. Long Soldier struggles with “opaque.” I have a similar issue where “chaos” feels like a peaceful word to me when it’s meaning is the opposite. I also really enjoyed how Long Solider expanded the poem to illustrate that people who have different instincts and emotions and understandings should still be able to connect and communicate with each other.

I also wanted to briefly note section two of “Dilate.” I thought the use of words to create the shape of a pregnant stomach was fascinating. The language and phrasing choices also really gave me the impression of stretching, just like the body stretches to fit a child.

Excerpt from Christine Blasey Ford’s Opening Statement and Notes:

I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified.

She is terrified. She has been terrified. She will be terrified. After 40 years, she will speak, and the terror will only grow. Terror is a white-hot fire that burns like ice; it heats the soul until it crystalizes like shattered glass. The sharp edges rub against her throat. If she had a daughter, she would flinch a little, like a shiver, every time her little girl walked out the door.  

I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. I have described the events publicly before. I summarized them in my letter to Ranking Member Feinstein, and again in my letter to Chairman Grassley.

The people in the tall-backed chairs, one woman and one man. They look at her like stones who blink and breath. Are they moved? Are they worthy? Do they believe?

  I understand and appreciate the importance of your hearing from me directly about what happened to me and the impact it has had on my life and on my family.

Her reputation is in their hands. A woman’s reputation is her life. Her life is in their hands.

I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I attended the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1980 to 1984. Holton-Arms is an all-girls school that opened in 1901. During my time at the school, girls at Holton-Arms frequently met and became friendly with boys from all-boys schools in the area, including Landon School, Georgetown Prep, Gonzaga High School, country clubs, and other places where kids and their families socialized.

Teenage girls in skirts and knee-socks, desperate for the male gaze. Starved. Giggling. They practically ask for it.

This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me.

Enter the villain. Begin the end.

In my freshman and sophomore school years, when I was 14 and 15 years old, my group of friends intersected with Brett and his friends for a short period of time. I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett’s for a short time during my freshman year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended.

There it is: she parties. She drinks. She deserves.

We did not know each other well, but I knew him, and he knew me. In the summer of 1982, like most summers, I spent almost every day at the Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland swimming and practicing diving. One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I remember my friend Leland Ingham attending. I do not remember all of the details of how that gathering came together, but like many that summer, it was almost surely a spur of the moment gathering. I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to.

Of course she doesn’t remember. OF COURSE SHE DOESN’T REMEMBER. The worst moments of our lives are the ones we must forget. Her brain tried to protect her. It knew that she needed to get up and to brush her teeth and to put on her shoes and to walk out the door and to smile. Every day. And it knew she couldn’t do that if she remembered the beating of her heart, the adrenaline, the eyes dilating in fear, the unthinkable, the pain. So she forgot. And forty years later, in a room full of strangers and him, she begs forgiveness for being human.

But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.

When something happens, it lives in your bones. In your tissues, your sinew, your DNA. Memory lives in the body. She knows exactly what happened.

Process notes:

I think my main challenge in writing this piece was changing the tone I took in my notes. Sometimes, I wanted to be sarcastic and voice what detractors said about Ford, and at other moments, I wanted to be completely earnest. I’m still not sure if I executed this in a way that made sense but I did enjoy working on it. Another fear I had was that I could not presume to know what was going on in Dr. Ford’s head at this time and I wanted to make sure I took creative license in a way that was appropriate. I think that is a general concern I have when writing about intense moments that have happened to people.