It’s Saturday, October 5^th. Head of the Trent is well underway, and the streets of Peterborough are vessels for the uncoordinated movement of hundreds of drunken failsons majoring in Business. I should theoretically fit right in with this crowd, yet as I stumble my way through George Street, avoiding puddles of vomit and concerned pedestrians, I am forced to contemplate the inevitable truth. 

No matter what I do to relate to my fellow students, I simply don’t belong in Trent culture.

Trent culture may at times seem amorphous, or like something that can’t really be defined by Trent students themselves, but I think I’ve come to a basic understanding of its formative elements.

For one, I cannot seem to relate to Trent’s attitudes around drinking. I have observed, through lengthy conversations with my fellow students, as well as the insights of my PSYCH-1001 course, that Trent students most often use alcohol as a tool to resolve their shortcomings.

Some appreciate the dissociative effects of drunkenness. The combination of alcohol and the university environment, often so far away from home, lends them a sense of solace—a temporary relief from the throes of their past and an unforeseen sense of liberty. I find it hard to relate to these sentiments, or to identify any event or place I would want to run away from. How exactly should I relate to classmates drinking away their problems, when I have already resolved all of my past issues through psychotherapy?

I find that many fellow students make use of the emboldened state of drunkenness in their search for sexual intimacy. Classmates often lack much sexual experience, and feel ashamed and nervous about sex, leading them to appreciate the carelessness of inebriation as a means to flirt more confidently. I am once again lost as to how to navigate these attitudes, having often seduced some of the most beautiful Computer Science majors Trent has to offer, while completely sober. When sexuality does not feel like a nervous minefield, it is hard to find much use in drinking.

While alcohol consumption is mostly contained to specific time frames, apart from some courageous day drinkers, the larger political culture of our university can never quite seem to account for my life experiences. 

Courses with a focus on critical theory tend towards very binary ideas of ‘privilege’ as opposed to ‘oppression’, relegating more complex experiences to ‘intersectionality’ without much elaboration on what that entails. This leaves large swathes, if not the majority of students in these courses without much of a framework for understanding their lives beyond snapshot experiences of ‘oppression’ and ‘privilege’.

Complex and contradictory subjectivities already lack understanding, but what about when our experiences of violence are deeply tied to our social privileges? It is easy for critical theory frameworks to account for my classmates’ stories of being called slurs, or mocked for their body, but can they account for my history, as a five year old being followed by mafiosos because of my family’s ownership of grocery stores that sold non-Sicilian olive oils?

I am reminded of an experience in an Indigenous Studies course, where my seminar leader was encouraging us to discuss our perspectives on food deserts and food insecurity as they pertained to neo-Colonialism. I struggled to offer much of a perspective on this, because I struggled to find a way in which my participation in the conversation would not be maligned in-and-of-itself. 

My family has played a direct role in the creation of food deserts, but also experienced oppression at the hands of the Canadian government and its financial law auxiliaries. In this class, only one side of that experience is ‘real’.

While I go home tonight, some of my classmates will have to rely on the TCSA’s food pantry because Chartwells, Trent’s main food provider, has made meals too expensive for them. How can I feel at home here knowing that my father is on Chartwells’ administrative board, approving these prices?

When I return to Indigenous studies on Tuesday, we will discuss the problematic naming of Champlain College. How can I feel at home knowing Samuel de Champlain could be my ancestor, according to a rumor in the family?

I’ve come to accept that I will never be a part of Trent culture. People here will always understand that my tuition is paid for and that my meals are free. Yet, when I talk about the mafia and the Canada Revenue Agency stalking me, when I talk about the alienation of coming from a different world, no one will hear me.

I have to accept my fate, but at the very least, I can publish this here, and hope that someone else will someday understand. 

This is for all of those who don’t belong in Trent culture.