Dordt College, Day One

When I woke up Thursday morning, I didn’t expect the morning would be any different than I had planned. I went outside to get some supplies from the bus, and when I stepped on board, that’s when I saw that the bus, our home, had been vandalized. When everyone found out, we were caught off-guard. I can’t say that we hadn’t expected this sort of hate at some point, but not at our very first stop. We hadn’t even gotten a chance to step onto campus yet, and already someone had left us a message of hate. But this wasn’t going to deter us at all.

Our first experience at Dordt was meeting with administrators, and they asked us a bunch of questions as to our experiences and our goals for the visit. They also expressed their apology for the vandalism, and offered to wash our bus for us. Then we got to meet our hosts for our visit on Dordt’s campus.

My host was lovely and we got to know each other very well. She in no way seemed uncomfortable with me, and actually she treated me as if i was a prospective student as she showed me around campus. I have to admit that I had no clue that the dialogue would be so easy with her or other students. Going into the day, I had had preconceptions about the students’ preconceptions of me, and talking with students brought me back to the days of training when it was drilled into our heads that no matter the opinions of the students at these schools, they are still people.

At lunch, the Equality Riders were served a buffet lunch sponsored by Dordt. I sat down with three students and two counselors. I never thought that i would allow myself to be put into such a position. When the co-directors had explained during training how this was very likely to happen, i had just imagined grabbing someone else to at least stand with me, but I felt so comfortable that no one needed to help me. Actually i was barely able to eat my lunch because i was so immersed in our dialogue, and the same could be said of the rest of the table. The counselors and I had some very specific dialogue about the coming out process and how to help students, not with reparative therapy, but with understanding and seeing what is truly best for the student.

I was amazed at how hungry the students were for dialogue. After lunch, my group gave a presentation on “Loving like Jesus”, and the students were so interested in learning, that they packed the room. Afterward, the school had a panel discussion scheduled with key members of their faculty, and the students also crowded into the auditorium for that event as well. Not only did they attend the event, they even asked amazing positive questions that they just needed to hear the answers to. Moreover, several students told me that they would join our group us at the local coffee shop for fun and more conversation the issues the next day.

The experience at Dordt college was amazing, surprising, heartwarming, draining, and dynamic. The school was surprisingly accommodating figuring their stance on the issue. Though it did not feel very friendly and welcoming in the conference room at the beginning of the day, the faculty and the students greeted us with open arms and open ears. There was an all-around feeling of caring at the school, as long as there policy stands, it will do damage to the school and the community around. There are students that are being directly affected by the policy and general misinformation that exists at Dordt College, as I have come to learn this through close connections with several students, and I can only hope that our visit is the first step in the right direction.

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