DOSTAL’S DESK
A Giant Step for Jasmine
W
hen i came to wabash, I had had
before easy at-home ancestry DNA test kits and internet family trees that span centuries. I had to have real conversations with my family. Through that assignment, I learned of my Virginia ancestors’ role in the enslavement of African Americans in the 1700s. I also learned that sometimes plantation owners, like my ancestors, used their power to take advantage of enslaved people in ways that resulted in not only free labor, but, perhaps, the impregnation of enslaved females. I posited rather matter-of-factly, maybe even flippantly, in my essay that I could be 1/128th Black.
little experience with personal computers—other than playing Zork. All my high school papers were typed on my mom’s hand-medown electric typewriter. The computer lab, then in the basement of Baxter Hall, felt foreign to me. The sterile room was impersonal and the hum of the machines seemed loud and hollow. I would try to concentrate on writing while surrounded by people, but it was not what I was used to and not how I worked best. Yet, when I went to the computer lab, I felt grounded. That grounding it wasn’t until an extended was Jasmine Robinson H’85. stint in addiction treatment and As a student, my relationship recovery in 12-step meetings that with her was wholly transactional. I I began to realize the discomfort I did not know her as a person, and, if still held regarding my fifth-greatshe were still living, she would likely grandfather. In other words, I was have no memory of me whatsoever. continuing to learn from the essay I But I always thought she was had written 30 years earlier. striking, almost regal. She could be It was Step 4 specifically, the intimidating and comforting and “searching and fearless moral inviting at the same time. She was a inventory,” that brought me back fixture in my Wabash experience. to Rosenberg’s course and the My senior year I took an ethnic assignment. As a 21-year-old, I felt literature course taught by English generations away from my ancestors’ Professor Warren Rosenberg H’98. beliefs and behaviors. But, the older I Among the books on our reading list got, the more the discomfort grew. were “Invisible Man,” “My Ántonia,” Many years after I graduated, I “Things Fall Apart,” and “Ceremony.” learned more of Robinson’s history. The course taught me a lot When she was hired at Wabash in about the history of the Black October 1963, 25 years before I came experience in the United States, to campus, she was the first woman but one particular assignment was of color to work in a professional sort of a genealogy study. This was role not only at Wabash College, but
in all of Crawfordsville. It is difficult enough for professional women or Black women to get the respect they deserve. Jasmine was both! And yet, by the time I arrived, she seemed so firmly rooted on campus that I never gave a thought to how she had struggled or even continued to struggle. All I know is that Wabash would not have been the same without her. I’ll never be able to undo my history, but during the Giant Steps Campaign, as a small way of providing partial restitution for my family, I established the Jasmine Ernest Robinson H’85 Scholarship. I hope this fund will provide financial resources to help young men continue to receive the benefits of a Wabash education, foster a better understanding of the Black experience, and recognize trailblazers like Robinson who supported, advocated for, and mentored members of the College’s Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies. It was a Giant Step for me, but it’s a very small step in the grand scheme of civil rights for all. My late father always said, “Go where you are needed and do what you can.” Endowing this fund is far from all I can do, but it is something I can do. Ron Dostal ’92 | Director of Alumni and Affinity Group Engagement
WABASH.EDU
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