A week ago, one of my fellow Odyssey creators and Baylor bears wrote an article about how she was frustrated with Baylor's decision to discuss racial matters at all University Chapel, a required class for underclassmen. Here are my thoughts:

Ok guys, I get it. We all went to chapel last week, we all heard what the professors and commentators had to say. We all felt the tension in the room when the slide with big letters saying "Racial Reconciliation" came up. We were all were there. And we can all agree that it wasn't a particularly comfortable situation; and that's good.

The things we were talking about, racism and racial reconciliation, aren't supposed to be easy to talk about. They've been prevalent in our country since the signing of the constitution. This is stuff our grandparents and sometimes even our parents dealt with. It's not easy to talk about. And that's the point. The purpose of that chapel wasn't to persuade you in any kind of way. It wasn't to encourage you to run to the nearest department store to purchase your very own black leather glove and berét. It wasn't to tell you that your voice as a non-minority isn't important, because it is. Because all of our voices are. The purpose of that chapel was to encourage us to have these difficult conversations more often. To open our minds and be brave enough to ask the difficult questions and step out of our comfort zone. To stop beating around the bush. To stop acting like we don't see the hashtags and the news stories and the protest. To be honest with ourselves and with each other.

Some of your are really mad that this even happened, and that's ok. Being told to check your white privilege at 9 or 10 in the morning is not exactly how anyone wants to start their day. We were more aware of who we were sitting next to in chapel that day more than ever before. More aware of how what we did say or didn't say could be interpreted in so many different ways by so many different people in that small auditorium. And that's a good thing, too.

I'm not saying that you should definitely watch everything you say always and forever in order to never make anyone mad ever again, because that's literally impossible. Because living a life that's centered around pleasing other people isn't really living at all. It's just being present. Just shaking your head yes or no after you see how others are responding. So maybe we should be more aware of who were sitting by more often. To understand that only hanging out with people that agree with you 100% of the time doesn't do anyone any good. So instead, let's force ourselves to communicate and interact with people that we don't normally talk to. To step out of your comfort zone and see things from a different point of view. Because if you're only hanging out with people that totally agree with you 100% of the time for everything forever and ever, how do we expect to grow? Those people don't force you to think or add anything of value to the conversation, and if all your doing is saying the same thing in different ways and agreeing with each other, then what's the point of speaking at all. So don't just say things for the sake of talking and further agreeing with each other. But since when has anyone ever been satisfied with receiving just the participation award? Growth only happens when you step out of your comfort zone, and if you're always comfortable, then you're not growing at all.

Now I'm not gonna overwhelm you with a bunch of statistics and percentages in order to persuade you in one way or another. We all know that numbers and percentages don't always give us the whole picture, and that in reality those are only just numbers until someone uses those numbers to add to the context of their own argument. Now I'm not saying that statistics aren't great, but when we're talking about Black Lives Matter and the percentage of minorities living in poverty or the percentages of minorities who are incarcerated each year we're not just talking about numbers. We're not just talking about checking a box, getting a tally, and putting those numbers in a calculator to get a statistic. We're talking about people. People who are doing the best they can to make the best of what they've got. These aren't perfect people, they don't always make the right choices or do the right things, but they're people just like you and me. We all want the same things, to feel loved and safe and appreciated and successful in some form or fashion. We just happen to get those things in different ways. Our means of fulfilling those desires aren't always good, but feeling the necessity to fulfill those desires in some way is what makes us human, and all the same in some way.

A lot of people will assume that there's only two sides to this argument. They'll assume that you're either one side or the other, that you're either 100% wrong or 100% right, and that's not true at all. No one knows all the answers, and none of us will always say that right thing at the right time. And that's fine. But the fear of failing, of being wrong or making a mistake, shouldn't stop you from speaking up at all.

So thank you, Baylor, for being brave enough to talk about these things. For pushing us out of our comfort zones both intellectually and socially. For taking the first step towards making our community more interconnected and aware than ever before. For forcing us to understand that this involves all of us, in one way or another. For making us aware that failure and diverging opinions aren't bad.

Thank you, Baylor, for encouraging us to get out of our own heads and to consider issues that are much more complex than just being black or white.