From the Editor

Molly Backes, Communications Coordinator

In college, I had a friend named Greg who was one of the most energetic activists on campus. I could never figure out how he found the time for it all. While I struggled to balance my classwork, campus job, and social life, Greg seemed to juggle it all easily—with time leftover to attend protests, run meetings, and organize activists statewide. I admired his tenacity and enthusiasm, but I never saw myself in him. In my mind, we were two separate species: Greg belonged to the superheroes, the ones who would save the world, and I belonged to the average people, the ones who had just enough energy to get through the day.

And then, over spring break of our senior year, Greg was killed in a tragic freak accident. When I got the news, my first thought was, “But who will save the world now?” It seemed impossible that someone so brave and full of life could be gone, especially when it was so clear to me that the world needed him.

Later that semester, with finals looming and a case of Senioritis infecting most of my friends, I stumbled into an incident of such glaring injustice that I couldn’t turn away. Greg would have known what to do, but I didn’t. It was tempting to postpone my ideals and hush the nagging voice inside me until after finals week, after graduation, after we all moved off campus, when I’d have more time—but in my heart, I knew this issue couldn’t wait, and if I put it off, I might miss the window of time in which I could actually make a difference. Plus, losing Greg had taught me that I couldn’t count on tomorrow.

So, even though I was busy, and even though I was terrified of standing up against a powerful institution and worried about the consequences of speaking out so publicly, I did it. I found the time, and the courage, and created a petition, collected signatures, wrote an open letter to the college president and published it in the student newspaper, and sent emails to every administrator and department head on campus. A professor pulled me aside in the mail room to demand who put me up to it, and another professor suggested that I might not graduate with my class if I didn’t stop making problems for them. The fallout was even scarier than I had anticipated, and yet I stood firm.

I learned then that there are so many ways to be afraid, but there’s only one way to be brave: you just take a deep breath and do it. You realize that some things are more important than your fear, and you decide that you won’t let your fear hold you back from doing the right thing, and you just... go.

Our theme this month is courage, and in this issue you’ll find references to different kinds of courage: the courage to love someone with your whole self, the courage to create something new, the courage to take a stand, the courage to be honest and vulnerable about your truth, the courage to make good trouble, and the courage to stay hopeful in a world that sometimes seems determined to suppress that hope. I hope you find inspiration to find your own moments of courage this month. You never know who else you might inspire—and your own acts of courage, large and small, just might be enough to change the world.