The unfamiliar "other"
October 31, 2024
It’s spooky season!
For most parts of the city, we know what this means—Halloween night includes a parade of costumed kids and guilt-free candy consumption. As members of the College of Arts and Sciences, we also have many ways of thinking about the evening. For example, our theologians and historians may ask “how has All Saints’ Day (November 1) shaped this unique celebration?” Our philosophers may invoke a theorist like Mikhail Bakhtin, whose concept of “carnival” explains why society’s moments of revelry—temporary breaks from the rules—ultimately serve to control people for the rest of the year.
In my own field of English literature, we focus on stories. A story like Frankenstein is about a lot of things: science gone amok; the risks of hubris; our fear of the unknown. This final point is particularly worth reflecting on. Whenever we talk about monsters, we’re really talking about ourselves. Whether it’s vampires, zombies, or aliens, we tell stories about what’s unfamiliar in order to think about humanity in new ways. What are the features, both inside and outside us, that frighten us and represent the “other?"
So, what’s unfamiliar and scary on this campus? For many students, it may be coming to a new campus or taking a new subject. It may even be trying to figure out the project of higher education. What does it mean to “get advised” or how do you find a math tutor? For those of us who have been in spaces of education our whole lives, it can be hard to imagine how different our students’ lives may be. Students may be the first members of their families to come to a university and are still processing why they’re here. They may come to the classroom with a host of complexities in their lives, navigating challenges we know nothing about as they tackle a full course load. They may come from a high school that prepared them very differently from what we experienced. An instruction like “read chapter 10 for the test” can mean a lot of different things to different students. Consequently, the university can be a scary place.
As we move through the final weeks of this semester, I suggest we reflect on what the “other” means for many of our students. As we continue offering support in our current courses, prepare for our spring students, and imagine an incoming class for next year, think about what’s unfamiliar and “other” about Xavier University. Most of us know this place well—we know how the campus is laid out; we know how classes work; we know how to find answers to questions—but many students find this institution, and us, an intimidating “other.”
Fortunately, this is something we can overcome. Ask yourself how you can make things more familiar. This might mean explaining very clearly how to access a campus service; it might include making reading strategies clearer; it might be making explicit how an assignment contributes to a specific student learning outcome. All of these lead to building empathy for a student’s position and the breadth of experiences they bring. What’s at stake is not simply making Xavier University less scary for the newcomer. By increasing familiarity, we strengthen our fundamental goals of learning and reinforce an invincible feeling of belonging.
Dr. Stephen Yandell
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Professor, Department of English
