An Apology, an Update, and "Where do we go from here?"

Greetings everyone,

As you might have surmised from the title, I have some things to say. Additionally, if you are a regular reader of mine, you've probably been waiting quite a while for this. So, to start with, I'd like to give an apology. In the comments of my last post, I promised an update to cover more angles and perspectives of the election night hate incident.

Unfortunately, I got busy. Such is life. In my defense, I am just an undergrad student, and I have been working through my capstone project, honors thesis, and several other projects. (They all turned out well so far, thanks for asking!) I feel like this excuse is not nearly strong enough, and so I feel guilty that I have waited so long to post any sort of update.

To be perfectly fair, though, there really hasn't been too much going on on campus in the same sort of dramatic scale (pertaining to this incident, I mean). There has been a very nice level of continued conversation about it, though. Everyone at the school has continued to be concerned about this sort of incident, and so we have all started working on way to prevent this sort of thing from happening ever again. I have personally started attending meetings with the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities (I think I have that acronym right), along with several other student and student leaders. The workshops have gone exceptionally well.

I also hear tell of several programs that may be introduced next term for incoming freshmen that revolve around promoting the idea of inclusiveness. It's starting to look like things are taking a positive turn. Of course, at the same time, there's no way to tell how this will turn out, and only time will really tell.

And finally, a look toward the future. You might wonder why I chose today to update. Well I'm currently in Ann Arbor, Michigan with a few professors and students for a conference hosted by the American Men's Studies Association. We were all presenting on different things (one of our students even spoke about the racial incident and the way rhetoric was used in the aftermath. Very good stuff!). I'm in the hotel room right now, because I wanted to avoid the madness outside (it's fairly crazy at the moment). I was thinking about the blog, and several things, and since I had nothing else to do, I thought I'd take a look here and work on this.

Now, I graduate in May. Over the past few months, I regret to say that I've become far less interested in what is going on at the school. I will be gone soon, after all, so why care? I still care, though. The future of this blog, however, may not last as long. I have a few other story ideas that I may be able to work on, and I'm going to keep the site up, just in case anyone wants to go back and look at it, but there's a strong possibility that my stories will be few and far between. Additionally, since I wont be attending the school anymore, my information will all be a bit disconnected from the source. we will see what happens.

In the end, though, I just want to thank everyone for reading and supporting me in this endeavor. As always, feel free to leave comments, and if you have a story you'd like to share, please email me at walter.mccoy91@gmail.com

Again, thank you!
--Your editor