As a Christian attending a secular college, I have from time to time found myself doing battle with an enemy named fear. When a classroom conversation slants markedly to the left and you realize you may be the only one in the group leaning right, fear can be nearly paralyzing. Your heart quickens, you feel flushed, and you desperately hope there is just one other person who will side with you. The fear grows so thick you can almost see it and smell it.
What’s to fear? Plenty. The first thing to fear is a grade. I always wonder if speaking up is going to cost me academically. Does the professor have an appetite for vengeance? How battered do I want my GPA to be? And to be quite honest, and borderline opportunistic, the chances I’m going to change a professor’s mind are probably zero to none, so is it worth the risk?
I also fear a certain amount of rejection among my peers. My fellow classmates may hear what I have to say and unfairly label me close-minded, a bigot, intolerant or a homophobe.
A good deal of fear is generated by professors because of their position of authority. The professor always has the upper hand – more experience, more wisdom, more letters behind the last name. The professor rules the class. If professors want to eat you for lunch, they can. They write the menu.
In my freshman English class, the professor liked controversy. But since most of the students would either agree with him, or didn’t care to speak out, I became the one who most often held the opposing view. The professor would present an anti-Christian topic in class, give his opinion on it, then pause to see if anyone would speak up. He would try to make eye contact with a student and frequently find that no one wanted to debate him. He’d then look at me to see if I would oblige. Evidently we’d developed something of a routine. Even if I didn’t want to engage in a debate, it somehow became a responsibility, sort of like an unwritten job description.
By being called on repeatedly, this fear began to diminish somewhat, but there were still times when being singled out grew wearisome.
My friend Angela was singled out in her speech class when she gave a presentation in defense of the Second Amendment. During the in-class student evaluations, her classmates ripped her apart. Student after student criticized her stance on the topic.
Later, Angela was talking to a friend that had been in that class with her. She found out that he had agreed with her stance, but since he didn’t speak up, Angela had assumed he held the same hostile opinion as the rest of the class. When Angela found out he had shared her views, she was deeply hurt. She felt he had betrayed her. The truth is, he had been paralyzed with fear. He saw the way the class reacted to Angela and he simply didn’t want to offer himself up as the next living sacrifice. So he kept his mouth shut and his head low. But to this day, he deeply regrets not speaking up in class.
