On Sunday, May 4th, all third-formers participated in a special activity called Building Bridges, which, according to the pamphlet, was designed to “celebrate diversity” and “highlight the pluralism of our community.” Even though Choate Rosemary Hall has such an open community, third-formers and their deans were still eager to “gain an increased awareness of [our] hidden biases,” and interested in “crossing boundaries and seeking others who are different from [us].” But Building Bridges presented a bigger challenge than we had expected: it encouraged us to divide, not unite, ourselves.

After we had all gathered together in the PMAC, we listened to one of the coordinators say a few words. As soon as he was done, he directed us to divide ourselves into groups with people that shared the same race. After he finished speaking, I looked around to see if I had heard him correctly. Seeing everyone’s confusion, I intuited that I had.

As we all know, race is a very complicated issue that has presented problems in many countries. Most people know their race, but I, a Caucasian from a South American country, had some trouble realizing that I had to find “white” people to group with. In Venezuela, my native country, racism is not an issue and has never been, for even though Spaniards conquered the country, they soon mixed with native people and African slaves. This is one of the reasons why I have never really regarded race as a fundamental component of a person’s qualities. Furthermore, my family never taught me to see the color of people’s skin, something that I had always considered a good quality until I was required to participate in the Building Bridges program.

After finding three other Caucasian girls, a Peer Educator—also of our race—began to ask us some questions related to race, class, sex, and sexual orientation. It was clear that none of us really understood the point of revealing our economic status, or answering “female” to an obvious question. Therefore, I decided to ask the Peer Educator in charge of my group why we had been divided instead of integrated. She simply answered that they were trying to teach us to distinguish and value people’s races. But wasn’t the whole point of the workshop to “eliminate epithets, slurs, and more subtle forms of bias” by disregarding people’s race, sex, class, or sexual orientation? Shouldn’t we have looked beyond external and unchangeable qualities?

Even though the object of the activity confused me, I continued to follow directions. Next, the program leaders wanted us to sit in a circle—something I thought we would be doing the whole time. A new activity began: we were asked questions related to racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Students who answered yes to a question were supposed to step into the circle, look around, and see who did and did not agree with them.

I considered this exercise a very good way to make us realize that all of us have been touched by prejudice at some point in our lives. However, after the coordinators had separated us, the activity did not have the same effect it would have had if we had been unified beforehand. Some of the questions led to criticisms of the people who stepped into the circle, but I think that third-formers should be mature enough to ignore such thoughts--or at least understand that we are humans after all. It is almost inevitable that we will judge each other.

Suddenly, right after we finished commenting about the positive results of the activity, the coordinators announced that the Building Bridges program was over. There was no closing activity to relate the previous ones. Lost, we left the PMAC, with no noticeable changes or realizations. We just walked out, and started talking about something else. Some students even joked about referring to the workshop as Burning Bridges.

Personally, I think that the logic behind participating in an activity such as Building Bridges is to reinforce the openness and diversity of our community. However, the program certainly did not accomplish this goal, for the coordinators approached it in the wrong way. In order to eliminate racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia, one has to understand that judging someone by any of those concepts is completely ridiculous. A person is more than white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, straight or gay. The way to realize this is not by pointing out the differences that, in the end, can be misinterpreted.