Last spring I transferred to NIU from a small community college. Typically, I didn’t know what to expect. I saw racist flyers posted on the buses, heard people shouting slurs from a pick-up truck during the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s visit and read about NIU in the pages of TIME magazine. It was a cold spring warmed only by softball games in the park, lagoon parties and the anti-racism rally.

I was unable to return in the fall but am back again this spring. One week here and I’ve already caught up on campus news; the cold spell promises to be a long one, and the snows of white supremacist dogma are drifting high against university buildings. But this time I’ve learned how to beat the weather; I intend to keep warm. And I’d like to suggest that if any non-white is feeling the chill of discrimination, it is his fault and his alone.

Let me offer some personal testimony. Last December, while apartment hunting, I realized that if I anglicized my name I would be more appealing over the phone. I carried this further and re-invented myself. I am now John Elliot Avramakis, a sort of Western European/Mediterranean blend I know I can pass for. Now, for example, when I hear racist humor on the buses or in the hallways I can laugh openly—none of that throat-clearing or apologetic grinning for me.

Of course, I do have to be careful not to give myself away. Some people are already suspicious. I only eat tacos, I inexplicably know all the words to “La Bamba” and I leave the radio and T.V. tuned in to Spanish speaking stations. As you can imagine, it gets pretty rough, so for comfort I turn to my Roman-Catholic background (I have cleverly pasted pictures of Spanish Madonnas on the backsides of my Bruce Springsteen and U-2 posters).

I have no empathy for someone who is tired of discrimination but keeps quiet and does nothing. If you are like me or know someone like me who has been content to stand deadened and idle, tell him to go ahead and take the next step: lie, conform, disinherit himself. It’s easy. People want to believe he’s not there.

So while it appears that time stands still and there is but one season at NIU, I, for one, plan to keep warm. I know where I stand. To take the advice of this letter requires no great personal cost, merely a reflex action. If any whites or non-whites are chilled about present circumstances, I say there is not one good reason to wander adrift in the cold. There is a common building. Come inside. A cord of wood is beside the hearth, and a fire is going. Find the log marked with your name. Burn it.

John E. Avramakis

junior, history