Grace Wynter, DC ’20

Yale can be an apathetic political space. Some folks blame this on Yalies’ tunnel vision — it’s uncommon for Yale students to engage with political issues that don’t directly affect Yale undergrads. Other people might point a finger at Yale itself, and the ways the university is an inherently conservative institution that suppresses political resistance, bent on ultimately reproducing the systemic inequality that makes Yale possible in the first place.

However, I think that the real thing that’s missing from Yale activism is me, Grace Wynter. Sorry y’all, I’ve been slacking. I’ve been too busy, uh, crafting tiny macramé Handsome Dans to send to Yale’s sweet sweet donors. But I’m here now, and so I’d like to offer myself up as the ceremonial figurehead for your cause. Any cause, really.

Seriously, just send me that Facebook event invite, and I’ll be there — no matter what the cause. I’ll rile the public about Yale taking chicken wraps off the menu (#notmydininghall). Your crush got a bad haircut and now he’s ugly? I’ll go to bat with the salon lobby over follicle abuse. Now, you may be thinking, “Grace, what makes you think that YOU can be the poster child for my charity, Dolphins Without Mittens?” Because, Sharon, unlike other porpoise protestors, I’m willing go above and beyond for your chilly dolphins. I would literally do anything for the resistance, even if it means dying.

I would love for my death to be politicized, no matter how history will have to justify it. If I get hit by a Tesla, I wanna see Elon Musk’s factories burnt to the ground. Struck by lightning? There should be mass boycotts of Big Electricity. And if I die choking on Kellogg’s Special K Original Breakfast Cereal, I’m taking the Wheat-Industrial Complex down with me.

Oh wait, you want me to walk out of class? Sorry I’m in Professor Anglo-Saxon’s History of Yale and the Cosmos. Sorry, next time!

A Martyr For The People was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.