In the aftermath of a deployment

TW: Self harm, suicide, alcoholism, sexual harassment 

The person that I am is not the person I was a year ago. 

 The person that I was a year ago had her growth, her confidence, and her passions stripped from her throughout the course of my deployment. 

I look at the person that I was with agonizing longing and a type of anger that makes me wonder who I can blame for creating the conditions of that loss. For the longest time upon returning, I believed that person to be completely gone. I spent days gathering the pieces of who I was, who I wanted people to remember, and shoving them into the mask I presented to others. 

The military can do many things to a person, and many of those things include stripping away people’s personalities, values, morals, and replacing them with a false sense of camaraderie through trauma bonding. I joined the military for the money, and that’s that. The ways that the military abuses the most vulnerable folks with the promise of adventure, money, and honor—to die for a country that would not ask the same of those who already have these resources—it’s a tool of exploitation. 

The truth is that the military takes more than it gives. The most significant thing the military has taken from me is time. I haven’t had a full summer with my family and loved ones since 2014. I’ve missed weddings, birthdays, births, and funerals due to the military. As a primary caretaker for my family, being gone for months at a time means that my brothers shouldered most of the burden of translating, explaining bills, calling SSI, working through transitional periods, and during this past year, COVID response. 

My deployment took time away from me and my loved ones. It took time away from my graduate degree, time away from learning, time away from myself in the prime of my years of activism and passion. It is time I will not get back. 

When I deployed, the world and time seemed to stop for me. For my family, friends, and loved ones, their world continued. It’s such a hallowing feeling to know that everyone’s life goes on without you while your world has completely halted. I still feel like I’m living in 2019 sometimes, and the changes in people’s lives without me still feel so drastic. 

The Deployment

The details of my deployment are fuzzy at best. 

All of the things that happened to me feels like a list in my brain. Some are bolded, italicized, circled, but each thing that happened to me (and others) got bumped down every time something new popped up. There are things my mind has intentionally blocked out. I will attempt to recall my experiences as a means for you to understand the mess of my mind. 

I deployed to a non-combat zone. While there were definite risks where I went, I was not actively being shot at. I make this clear because the type of PTSD that veterans go through can be from multiple types of experiences, and one is not more or less than the other. PTSD is a serious mental condition that the military still misunderstands (i.e., seen as a weakness). I am here to say that it is not, and anyone who is in the military who undermines Soldiers and their strength for not being “resilient enough” to “get tough” with shit going on in their head is not here to support anyone but themselves. 

There are two types of Soldiers: commissioned officers (Officers) and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). In a perfect world, Officers are the “planners” and “decision-makers” while NCOs are the “executors” and also the subject matter expert in their specific areas—they come with a wealth of knowledge to ultimately drop knowledge bombs on officers so they make the right decisions. Both officers and NCOs are entrusted with caring for the Soldiers below them.

I am a commissioned officer. I was not only new to my role, but new to being a commissioned officer. I was fresh out of my basic officer course—which teaches you the basics of your job in the military but not quite the intricacies. The military typically trains its Soldiers with “on the job” training. 

For the deployment, I was assigned as the Human Resources Officer in Command (OIC). I said earlier that Officers and NCOs work in tangent with one another, so an OIC has an NCOIC assigned to it as well (Noncommissioned officer in charge). Typically, you pair a new officer with a more seasoned NCO. My NCOIC and I were completely new to our roles, which meant collectively, the HR expertise was not there—this was at no fault of our own; the people who created the manning document should have put someone who would be able to advise me through this HUGE role. This is where the problems would begin, and never end. 

Because of the lack of expertise that we both had, our credibility was not strong to begin with. It only plummeted from there. Ultimately, I was the face of our HR section (6 Soldiers total, including us). 

Because of my youth, and because I didn’t know any better, I was easily manipulated to get what people wanted, to get the answers that people wanted to hear. 

Because of my youth, my superior officers did not take my recommendations into consideration. It was always “this is how we do things” with the guise of “I just didn’t understand yet.” 

Tasks were given to me without context, without purpose, without direction. This meant I put countless hours of work into products, only to have them dismissed because they weren’t what people “wanted.” 

Being an OIC is a position of high responsibility, even when I am not a high ranking officer. Equating my rank and responsibility meant that my words did not mean anything when I provided answers or recommendations. People would always find a way to tell me I was wrong, that I didn’t know what I was talking about, or simply berate me because they had more experience in the military than I did. 

I did my research. I consulted with the experts of the organization for their advice, their input. I did everything in my power—gathered all the information I had at the time to make an informed decision. It was never enough, there was always something wrong, and the way it was delivered to me was never in a way to empower me, only to exert power over me. 

At the beginning, I was resilient. I took it one win at a time. I reminded myself that HR was a thankless job, that there would be more difficult problems to solve than easy ones—that I was being paid to think and problem solve. But there was so much more going on that pushed me over the edge. 

There are days I would skip lunch to cry in my room, because I knew my roommate wouldn’t be there at the time. 

There was a week straight where a high ranking officer came into my office everyday to interrogate me about decisions that were made at a level higher than me. I was just the messenger. That week, I cried every single fucking night. That weekend, I skipped every meal except dinner so I could sleep through the day. 

Not a week went by where I was able to keep a consistent schedule or task list. There were always things being piled on, emergency fires to be put out, one being prioritized over the other. Deadlines from 9am being due at 12pm. Emergency meetings added onto my plate. Soldiers coming to me to fix things “at that instant.” 

My inability to draw boundaries and need to find a purpose meant that people manipulated me. I was approached and asked questions/for favors at every venue. The gym, the track, walking back to my room, the coat room before getting into chow, on the way to the bathroom, getting out of the bathroom, when there was food in my mouth, at the beer tent. Everywhere.

There would be nights I would have nightmares about waking up late, missing meetings, misspeaking at meetings, missing Red Cross Messages, forgetting to address someone as Sir/ma’am in emails. Forget to send up a report at 10am on the dot and get a phone call from our higher HQ.

There were rumors spread about all the women and who they were supposedly sleeping with. At the beginning of the deployment, I took it personally, and as a marker on my character, as if people weren’t questioning it enough. Even after multiple tries by the command team to address the issue (i.e., a separate meeting with the women to address it…as if the only problem was the women), eventually, I became numb to it.

The military has a fraternization policy on NCOs and officers not having unprofessional relationships beyond work. But when the gossiping came about, I was told to “watch my perception” and to hang out with the women of my section instead of hang out of people who were my own rank (who were mainly men). I was being given a different set of rules in order to navigate the system and my “perception” because it was too difficult to create the conditions for people to stop spreading rumors. With every rumor that was spread about the women of the deployment, I became more and more suspicious of everyone’s interactions with me and “what people would say” if I laughed too loud, if I smiled, if I didn’t smile, if I rolled my eyes, if I did yoga, if I was walking the same way as someone.

Testimonies, quotes, “proof”

These are comments that were made about me: 

 - “Take pictures when you have sex with her.” – A Soldier had messaged me asking about HR questions, and a buddy of theirs had looked over their shoulder and said this to them. 

 - “She’s just learning English.” – A group of officers and I were playing scrabble and I had failed epically because I’d never played before. 

 - “I want to put my nose in your butthole.” – An officer said this to me while wasted on New Years night. I left immediately afterwards. When I told someone about it, they made “nose” and “butthole” jokes for the rest of the deployment when I was around. 

 - “I treat you like a daughter” / “I’m old enough to be your father.” – Literally all the fucking men on the deployment. I’m not your daughter. I don’t want you to protect me like a father. I am a commissioned fucking officer in the fucking Army, and I deserve to be treated as a fucking professional. I deserve to be respected as a person, as a woman of color and the unique experiences that it affords me, but not as your daughter. It is infantilizing and condescending. 

 - “I’d like to talk to you about polygamy.” – This person found out that I was bisexual and immediately equated it to polygamy (this happens a fucking lot…please fucking stop. I’m monogamous), and asked me about my “experiences” 

 - “We don’t serve people who don’t open their eyes” – A man of color, to me. 

 - “I don’t want COVID from you.” – After the COVID bs and the racism against Chinese/Asian presenting folks, someone said this to me when I offered them my drink because I was leaving. I said something back on the lines of “Wow, it must suck to be such a racist piece of shit.” 

I don’t remember when I hit my breaking point—it was definitely 2-3 months in. It was amidst the feeling of hopelessness, having my recommendations dismissed, the gossip, COVID. I dreaded waking up and having to sleep just to wake up. There were days I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. I wanted to die so I would not have to face people, but I remember telling myself I had to live because there was so much work to do that it would just create more of a burden for those around me.

I did everything in my power to prove that I was trying, that I was making decisions as indicated by my job. I tried to prove myself to people who were dead set on misunderstanding me.

I drank almost every single night. If I wasn’t at the beer tent, people would ask for me (and that’s a bad fucking sign y’all). I started cutting myself (again). It’s the first time I’ve cut myself in years. While the feeling of relapse was terrible, I drowned it out with alcohol.

I mentioned earlier that the military is good at masking trauma bonding as camaraderie and group cohesion. I had a strong bond with people through the traumas that we were going through, which isn’t the best way to form friendships with people, but they saved me during this time. I’d like to think we all saved each other. I had a group of women who ate together, drank together, went to the lake together, or worked out together. While they were not regular in my life (because I was always busy working, or asleep), they allowed me some comfort.

I also had strong bonds with a few men during the deployment. Of note is that the bar is low, but I was craving such intellectual conversations beyond work, that leading up to the George Floyd protests, there were a few men that had a racial reckoning and were able to process with me. The emotional labor that went into developing these men took a toll on me, but it was one of the very first times that I was able to have candid and critical conversations in months. I craved it and it fed my soul. These people helped recenter me, remind me where my passions lie. These men were also the ones who supported me as I completed my training to become a Unit Victim Advocate on top of my regular duties.

Again, the bar is low while the trauma-bonding was strong with the folks I surrounded myself with. But some of these folks saved me during this time. I hold these connections as necessary during hardship and I hope that they grow—and even if they don’t, I’ll know that during my deployment, we had one another.

I’ve said this many times before in my career in the military: code switching from Ka to Military Ka is exhausting. When I was in college, code switching was only on during my ROTC courses, and I could turn it off when I went home for the night. But for 9 months straight, I wore a mask. You wear a mask for so long and you start to forget who you were underneath it (it’s a v for vendetta quote lol). The type of emotional and mental exhaustion is unimaginable. I’m still tired from it. I don’t even know what recovering looks like. There are still missing pieces of me that I am still discovering everyday.

The aftermath

My therapist and I have worked through my emotions since coming back. It took me a few months to even push myself to get a therapist. I recognize how privileged it is to even afford one (my therapist is free; I receive an hour of free counseling per week through a military program called Give an Hour). Going back to therapy was a good decision, and I don’t believe you have to be “fucked up” in order to go. Sometimes you need someone who has enough distance from you to process through events in your life or your childhood and call you out on your bullshit.

She and I have worked through (and continue to work through) key things from the deployment: 

 1) My confidence was not lost, it was taken from me. Overworking to fill the gaps of my knowledge, only to be told my work would not be taken into consideration for 9 months straight takes a toll on the voice and confidence I had. ESPECIALLY because on the civilian side, I work in an office that values my voice and all that I have to offer. Coming back and attempting to engage with less confidence is demoralizing and dissonance-inducing for my body that has only knew defensiveness for 9+ months straight. 

 2) My inability to draw boundaries is directly tied to the worth that I placed in my work, and when I was told that I was unworthy, I intentionally put myself out there for people to do labor and find a purpose through that labor. 

 3) The way that we cope when we are stressed is not inherently wrong/right. Regaining control by cutting/drinking are not healthy coping mechanisms, but they were all I had to have control. 

 4) There is no saying that I can’t go back to the person that I was prior to the deployment, but the person who existed before the deployment does not have the experience and resilience that I do now; not acknowledging that does a disservice to my survival. I wish surviving this wasn’t a marker of strength.

I was not prepared for the drastic change of a person that I was when I returned, and as I recount the person that I was when I returned, I think about how much pain I inflicted on those closest to me. I’ve left scars on people in ways that I can never forgive myself for.

When I returned from my deployment, my friend committed suicide a few weeks after. In the same way I am still learning to grieve the beautiful person that she was, her absence, and the anger of the conditions of her suicide—I am doing the same to grieve the person that I was before this deployment.

I still don’t know what it means to “allow myself” to feel all the emotions from this loss. Responding to the feelings the deployment created for me has been messy. I have not been the best person to be around. My worst traits have revealed themselves through unhealed trauma: pushing people away, being silent when I’ve wanted to say something, being easily irritable, being a control freak, being selfish, stifling my own creativity because ‘I don’t deserve it.’ I’ve ruined relationships and hurt loved ones through this. I’ve become someone I do not love, I do not admire. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if this is the best person that I can be for myself, for the world.

My entire life, I’ve held words of affirmation as one of my top love languages to affirm my existence, because I can’t seem to do it for myself. I’ve heard so many times, “You don’t realize how amazing you are” “I wish you could see you the way I see you” “You underestimate your impact.” Because the truth is, I don’t know how to accept myself or love myself for who I truly am. I live in moments and bubbles where there are times I can acknowledge it. But it is not a truth I can accept of myself yet.

I’ve never fully believed the phrase “if you don’t love yourself, no one will.” I believe that if I don’t love myself, I won’t be able to accept others’ love. It’s one of the hardest fucking lessons I’ve learned in life, and I hope that one day, I can see myself worthy enough for the love that everyone gives me.

I’ve spent my entire life caring for others, pleasing others, and serving others in ways that is so detrimental to myself. I am a first generation Hmoob daughter of refugees, the eldest daughter in a swarm of sons, whose life is supposed to be dedicated to leading my people to liberation. But I know that it’s time for me to invest in myself. It’s time for me to care, please, and serve myself.

I still don’t know what it looks like. But I know that my decision to choose myself is the best decision for the version of myself waiting on the other end. I hope she is proud of me. I hope she can look at me with more love than I can give myself at this moment. And most of all, I hope she can fully and truly say that she made the right decisions for her healing.

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I am, and always will be, enough

*This work was submitted as a chapter in the 2019 anthology "A New Journey: Hmong College Student Experiences" and can be purchased at Her Publisher* 

Foreword: 

I often see myself as inadequate to fit the expectations my community and my family puts on me. I must be worth their sacrifices, and I must do everything in my power to continuously give, contribute, and lay the groundwork for my people. I think for many Hmoob youth, we see education as a means to attain success and a means to gain credibility within society (both U.S. and Hmoob) and to go far in life. The thing they don’t tell you about success is that it was never built for and never meant for people like us. People with experiences, trauma, and history like us. Systems are blessed to have us but treat us like burdens. And when we return home, we speak less of the language of our ancestors and more of the language of colonizers, for the sake of success. We feel inadequate in both U.S. and Hmoob society despite how much we believe we have gotten it “right.” There is no right way--there are only journeys and experiences that highlight the injustices of a system not built for us. And yet, we are still here. 

***

Whether I choose so or not, I will always be first and foremost, the eldest and only Hmoob daughter to my parents in a sea of sons. As a daughter of refugees, I am someone whose successes are a testament to the sacrifices my ancestors have made to get me where I am today. I have always been and will be a relentless caretaker, activist, and protector, and that is a trait that carries me to my future endeavors. 

My story is as complicated as my life is right now. I write this as a 24 year old bisexual Hmoob woman, with a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication from a University of Wisconsin school, one of two years completed of my Master’s degree in Student Affairs Administration, and I deploy in less than two weeks to a country that has the potential to be a warzone. On top of this, I have five brothers whose lives are changing rapidly, too fast for me to catch up with and give them the support they need. 

Things are changing for me fast, and they have always been changing and challenging me. I balance my life and my passions in ways that I’ve been told is both freakishly productive and unhealthy. These habits definitely formed while I was searching for my identity and my place in the world as I navigated through my college years to create the personality of the person I am today. I am so proud of who I am right now and I honestly can’t wait to see the person I become in the future. I have so much growth and further potential that I am excited to tap into. I can’t wait to be the role model that my younger self needed. 

My journey to discovering my voice, my passions, and myself requires background on me. I am the oldest and only daughter in my family. My parents had 5 sons after me and these sons are mistakenly called my sons all the time by both strangers and my parents. I raised my brothers because that is what I was born to do, and it is a responsibility that I didn’t know I could refuse. The youngest right now is three years-old and the oldest is 21 years-old. 

My motivation for attending college was pretty straightforward. It seemed like the next logical thing for me. I didn’t know then, but I know now that I’m in love with learning. I’m in love with how many different ways I learn and most of all, I’m in love with the possibility of a future where I will always be learning from the people around me, from myself, and from the youth. 

For my parents, the decision to go to college was a possibility that was up in the air for them. They didn’t quite understand what it meant. They were indifferent because of their conflicting understandings of the role of a Hmoob daughter versus what the American Dream was to them. I remember when my mom said to me “ Mus kawm ntawv, txhob mus ua tus ruam li kuv” (Go to school, don’t be stupid/dumb like me). My mom is hard of hearing and she has been told her entire life she’s not able to do things she wants to by both Hmoob people and society in general. Her identity as a Hmoob disabled person is complicated and she motivates me to create a better life and dismantle systems that tell her what she can and cannot do. 

The process for applying for college was mind-bogglingly difficult. I remember being stressed, having anxiety, crying, and just being frustrated. As the very first in my family and extended family to go to college, I had so many questions with no one to turn to for answers. What was FAFSA? What was financial aid? There’s a difference between grants and work study and scholarships? What classes did I need to take? What does an advisor do? How did parking work? My parents helped me as much as they knew how to, but again, navigating the systems and institutions of the United States is intentionally difficult for refugees, immigrants, and anyone with a marginalized identity. It both frustrated and saddened me to hear about how people completed their multiple college applications and FAFSA with ease, while I continued to struggle seemingly alone. It was a time where I wished I had a mentor to help me through this difficult and alien-like process. 

Going through this process alone was painful, but it made me a stronger person. I’ve now become a valuable resource for my brothers, but it was also a painful and lonely process that I believe no one should go through by themselves. Being this resource for my brothers means everything to me because of how lost and helpless I felt in those moments. 

My family was important to me when deciding what university to attend for my Bachelor’s degree. I toured and applied to only one school, and it was the school in the hometown I grew up in. I was not ready to leave the responsibilities that I had at home and my obligation to my brothers. I decided though, to live in the residence hall to give myself the mental distance from family and distractors in order to focus on my studies.

While I think I have a lot of unique personal growth that shaped my experiences, I believe that my experience may mirror the ones that Hmoob women go through as they navigate their space and place in higher education as well as in Hmoob society. I grappled with imposter syndrome, being a caretaker, being a “good daughter,” performing emotional labor for our families, our relationships, and the Hmoob men who demand it. Being close to home meant I went home a lot. I made it an effort to balance between my social life and family life, but I know deep down that I still feel a sense of inadequacy of how well I actually did. 

As an undergrad student, I was looking for and learning about my worth, my passion, and my sense of direction for the future. I don’t think this is an extraordinary experience that is unique to just me. 

Initially when I entered college, I was internalized. By this, I mean I had really adopted and adhered to the ideology that if I worked hard, everything would fall into place. That if I wanted to be successful, I had to take away as much Hmong-ness in me, and replace it with whiteness. Internalized racism has many names, most commonly used as “whitewashed.” I want to tell the people who continue on their journey to discovery that it is a process and it is a long and painful one. Some people may never go through this process and have always had a strong sense of how important being Hmoob is. But for those who have gone through this process of self-hatred, of shame, of embarrassment, please know that you are not alone in this. I thought I was the only one. I was not. 

Once you learn how much your mind has been corrupted to think you are only worthy when you are less of your culture and more like white people, you will feel a sense of anger and obligation. I joined an organization that held weekly meetings that talked about all the racist shit that happened and continued to happen on campus. We talked about what it meant to exist on campus as visible people of color. We talked about how flawed the education system had to be in our town that housed a large population of Hmoob people for them to ask “What’s Hmong?” As if our siblings, parents, grandparents, ancestors crawled through bombs and blood for nothing at all. As if their sacrifices and their thirst for liberation added up to simply “What’s a Hmong?” and to be told “Go back to where you came from” and to bite your tongue instead of saying “My people wouldn’t be here in the first place if your fucking country didn’t go around sticking their nose up everyone’s business.” This group became a place where I could process my daily interactions with (mostly white) people who said things out of ignorance and unknowing, but would change none of their behaviors, no matter how many times I would call them on it.

And as more and more women spoke up in the group, we also analyzed how Hmoob men, despite their marginalization, also used tools of oppression to silence and abuse (literally and figuratively) the women in their lives. This opened up conversations about Hmoobness and queerness. My world opened up. I spoke, and people listened. People listened and they related. I had never been able to relate to people like this before; on a level deeper than just interests and likes. It was a deep, resilient, and trauma-related connection. And my connection to these people, to hear their pain that was like and unlike my own lit a fire under me to pursue the people who were the cause of it. I wanted to know why almost every single year I would experience the same shit from different people. I wanted to know why, when we reported or were victims of racist, sexist, and xenophobic things were said or done by other students, professors, or staff, why they were not reprimanded for it. I wondered if they were waiting for one of us to die before they did anything. If they would do anything at all. 

I became an activist. I wanted to (and I did, and continue to) fight against systems and the people who enabled people to silence, burn out, and eradicate beauty in cultures like and unlike ours. I wanted to fight against systems and people who enabled the spread of hate without stopping it at its roots. 

When I was thinking about my future (the summer before I graduated in December of 2017), I had been searching for graduate programs that fit my career path. I had come to the realization early on that I had gone through my undergrad by myself, with little institutional support from faculty and staff. The support I did receive was from other marginalized faculty and staff that were already bombarded with trying to take care of themselves as well. I realized and I saw a lack of administrators who cared about their students of marginalized identities. I looked at the executive administration of my university and saw that I’d been doing their jobs for them while they averted responsibility with words like “diversity” and “inclusion.” I recognized my worth and my relentlessness. I saw a deficiency of a sense of urgency required of an administrator when interacting with, making decisions about, and advocating alongside marginalized voices on campus. And basically, I set out to replace them. 

I applied to a master’s program that did not require a GRE. My philosophy is that if a program does not require a GRE, they therefore have an understanding of how standardized testing disproportionately disadvantages poor, disabled, people of color and other marginalized communities. I was accepted into a Student Affairs Administration program in the Midwest, two hours away from my family and started in the fall of 2018 on my journey to be a Student Affairs professional. I was going to embark on my journey to replace the administration that had refused to provide resources to support my journey. I was going to become the woman that I needed when I was a lonely, scared, and frustrated teen applying for college for the first time. I was going to be the visible role model that I needed for support when I was going through my undergraduate experience. I was setting my sights on and pledging my life to serve students and their needs. 

My first year in the program was the hardest, most challenging, yet most rewarding experience I have ever had. For me, I felt like I had reached a peak in my life. My program was a cohort that was filled with a majority of people of color. The program had never been that diverse before, and it showed in the way they prepped the faculty and staff that would interact with us. We were relentless in our search for deeper conversations, critiques of the bureaucracy of our field, and what was required of us in order to change it. 

At one point, a white woman in class had the caucasity to say that when she walked into the classroom, she felt uncomfortable and that she didn’t belong. As a person of color who had done this all my life, I laughed. I had been code-switching, keeping silent, and making my words nice enough and palatable for white people to listen to me and see me as non-threatening and worthy of listening to. Grad school was the first time in my life that I felt genuinely cared for and heard of in a classroom. I felt that my experiences were valuable and that they would launch me into the field and make it better, more accountable, and student-driven. People commented on how powerful my voice was and what it meant for them to hear someone speak the absolute truth--uncensored. 

I don’t think people realized how much that statement would have an impact on me. As an activist, I had always been told (and continue to be told) that I am too much. I have been told I’m too angry, too loud, too hopeful, and wanting too much too fast, and that everyone isn’t ready for it. This gave me a sense of inadequacy. People told me I was intimidating and I felt as if my existence of being “too much” was scaring off potential relationships and connections I could have with people. I learned to swallow my words and make them more palatable, nicer, censored for the sake of other peoples’ comfort. I felt disingenuine, fake, and not like myself. It was as if someone had gutted the truest parts of me and kept only the things that made me outwardly desirable. For a long time, I became a shell of myself and tiptoed my voice around people in fear of losing relationships. This has contributed greatly to how much I guard my emotions around people and how people see me as cold. But the most important thing I realized when I became this shell of myself, and silenced my own voice for the sake of others was that I was never too much. I realize now that I am not too much and I have never been “too much.” I am only too much for people who cannot handle me. I will always be enough for myself, for my cause, and for my people. Grad school solidified this. 

The people I surrounded myself with were a circle of support, love, validation, challenge, and we were all we had to survive. The institution is not built for marginalized people to succeed, so we had to lean on one another to do it. The lack of institutional accountability for the emotional labor that students have to perform for one another is uncanny and unacceptable.

In my time during my graduate degree, I worked for an office that intentionally created space, time, and resources for students to feel welcome and validated in their experiences. They are the biggest reason why I decided to attend that specific school and specific program. I saw the way that they impacted students like myself, and I wanted to be a part of that. No matter how shitty the people of the institution were outside of those doors, I always had people in that office to support and validate me. I can only hope to replicate that feeling in the future.

On top of that, I had four other Hmoob students with me. My heart has never been so full of validation before. I never had to explain myself and my experiences to the Hmoob members of my cohort. It seemed to click immediately and it was a bond that I will always cherish between us. In a sense, my Hmoob cohort saved me. My graduate school was so far away from home that I missed everything about being near my family and Hmoob people. We would get together and cook Hmoob food and play board games. For a year, they were my family and the people I leaned on. 

I also leaned on the community within the town to ease my loneliness. I remember how full my heart was when we did a dinner with all Hmoob faculty and staff at my university and how much collective wisdom there was to go around. I attended a weekly outing called “Paj Ntaub Circle” that also saved my life in my darkest times. All we did was eat, do paj ntaub, tell ghost stories and/or gossip. It helped me with speaking Hmoob and it eased my homesickness. It took my mind off of things that stressed me out and brought me back to my roots. 

I finished my first year on a high. I learned so much about myself and I couldn’t wait to learn more with my cohort. But alas, I like to consider my life a series of trials and challenges and that my resiliency is what makes me so strong. After completing my first year of graduate school, I was called on to deploy. 

For the longest time after being told I was deploying, I told no one. I sobbed in my car on the way home and that took all the strength I had. One day, I told my therapist while in a session and she asked about it a few weeks after, questioning if I’d told anyone yet. I hadn’t. I was doing it out of selfishness. I was afraid that people would see me differently. That my relationships would be a series of “lasts” and that they would lack the spontaneity of living in the moment. I remember the question she asked me that forced me to think. She asked me: “Don’t you think they deserve to know, so they can take time to grieve as well?” 

I don’t speak much about the military. It’s something that I don’t speak about often because the military is just a part of my life; I don’t consider it something that I’d like to be a part of me, especially when I leave it. I love the skills I have learned and continue to learn. It has enhanced my confidence, my voice, and my ability to be concise and precise. I don’t see being in the military as a part of my life that I enjoy disclosing because many of my beliefs do not align with the bureaucratic structure that the military operates under. But when I joined in my first year of my undergraduate degree, I did it out of curiosity and the appeal of money. I am thankful for how the military has contributed to my financial stability, but it always comes at a cost. I am gone frequently, away from loved ones. I am burnt out when I come back from drill weekends. And I consistently have to code switch between the real me, and the person the military wants me to be. But I have met so many amazing people through the military. I’ve heard stories of loss, pain, strength, resiliency, and a means to change the world. These stories are with my heart and they inspire me to be better alongside my soldiers. My biggest fear is that I will change unknowingly and unwillingly while I am deployed. This is always a fear of mine. How deep can I infiltrate and how much survival can I do until the values I oppose become a part of who I am? 

As I continue on my journey, I’ve come to the realization that I cannot always take people with me. People grow apart, grow into different people that do not align with our goals, or just simply lose touch. I pray and hope though, that those who matter will stay. I use the analogy of the door for my relationships. Doors may close, but I do not lock them. All it takes is a knock and we can grace one another with our presence again.

***

As I continue into my future of uncertainty, I am still learning to love the parts of me that I do not speak of. I find solace in spoken word, written word, but mostly, I find the most validation when there are words to describe my experiences, my feelings, and my pain and joys. That is why I do the work that I do; to have others/my own experiences validated by words that show that what I’m feeling is not normal and what we feel as a collective is what creates who we are. Hmoob people are a collectivist culture, not an individualistic one. We must come together to fight for injustices not just for ourselves and our people, but for others as well. If I can feel the pain of others as my own, that empathy will pave the path for us to want change not just for people who look, think, and identify as us, but to all marginalized peoples. Black, Indigenous, Latinx, trans and nonbinary, queer, disabled, poor, immigrants/refugees..the list goes on and the list will always go on. It is our collective duty to disrupt systems for the sake of all, not just ourselves. 

What we feel deeply amongst ourselves is extraordinarily groundbreaking for the children we were and the changemakers that we are and will become. When the youth ask us what we were doing in times of hate, turmoil, and concentration camps, we must give them an answer that will bring us peace. We are the people we have been waiting for. We must be the heroes of the stories--yes, even if it is our own. 

No matter what, your journey whether linear or non-linear, always remember these things: 

• Be kind to yourself. 

• Healing is messy. Do it at your own pace, and don’t force it until you are ready. 

• Your ancestors see, hear, and believe in you.  

• Sib pab thiab txhawb nqa. 

• Some people are not ready for you, and that is not your fault. 

• You belong here. 

• Laugh. 

• Thank the womxn in your life. 

• Do not apologize for voicing the way you deserve to be loved. 

• If you set yourself on fire to keep others warm, I hope that when you meet the sun, you will both fall in love. 

• And lastly, angry bitches get shit done. 

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Why PWIs like UWEC do not deserve students of color

I am here to talk about the racist incident that happened in Towers that attacked all Indigenous students with racist slurs, and how institutions of bullshit coddling of snowflake racists have led us to this moment (again). 

Here, I will outline points that were brought up during the conversation that I would like to address for everyone, especially administrators and staff out there as to why UWEC (AND ALL OTHER PWIs) do not deserve students of color: 

1. the continuation and perpetuation of racist ideologies through policies and practices
2. the persistence of hiring and/or elevating SHITTY FUCKING PEOPLE to positions of power
3. the constant fucking repetition of “we need to do our jobs so students can be students” while simultaneously repeating the actions of doing nothing
4.  the way universities always say “change takes time” when they have the fucking power to change it and make it go by fucking faster, and finally,
5. it's been years since I fucking graduated and we're still doing/saying the same shit that they told me when I was here. 

I will leave you at the end with a list of demands that I believe students, faculty, and staff should adopt and probably send en masse to the administration until they fucking listen. But what do I know about organized protest???? 

1. The continuation and perpetuation of racist ideologies through policies and practices

 Racist incidents continue to exist, survive, perpetuate, and continue through the racist ideologies that universities have engrained in their existence. People of color (I mean, staff, faculty, administration, and students) and all marginalized folx were never meant to make it this far into the education system. It was not built for people with marginalized identities. We were just kinda added and expected to adapt. We are not here to adapt. We are here to claim what is ours. We are here to be loud, proud, and fucking annoying.

Administrators have the audacity to say “this is how we have always done it and this is how we will do it” or do some stupid shit like “this is not a value of our university.” Bitch it is now, cause it was perpetrated by one of your students. You are breeding peoples’ ability to spread, spew, and violently harass others with oppressive, hate-filled language and actions by abiding by “the rules” all the time.

FUCK. YOUR. RULES.

FUCK YOUR POLICIES.

Your bureaucratic means and ways of conducting investigations and the intricacies of the channels means literally nothing without the actions. This event is one event of the many that have been reported over the years.

Do you know what happens to the victims typically? I’ll tell you: they report, get an apology email, go through the investigation that requires them to retell their experience 39304850945 times, get interrogated about their experience, and did I mention they still have to be students? If they live on campus they still have to live on a floor that is unsafe. They have to walk the halls, walk outside like it won’t kill them. And by the end, they are just so exhausted with everything that they just want it all to stop.

That’s what administrators want, because it is always too much work to do actual social justice work in pursuing perpetrators and hunting down people. (Additionally, I’d like to add that the people who are typically responsible for actually doing the ground work for these types of Hate/Bias response organizations are marginalized folks, and the responsibility and burden gets put on them. This is shitty because they also have full-time jobs that require attending to, and Hate/bias response organizations and the people who make up these teams are only supposed to dedicate 15-20% of their time to Hate/Bias response. THIS. NEEDS. TO. BE. A. FULL. TIME. FUCKING. POSITION. IF. YOU. CARE. SO. MUCH. ABOUT. CATCHING. PERPETRATORS.) #Duh

2. The persistence of hiring and/or elevating SHITTY FUCKING PEOPLE to positions of power

Speaking of people who inhabit/are a part of hate/bias teams, we need to sit down and have a little fucking talk about this. I’d like to give you a little story time: Once upon a time, I was a student at UWEC and was almost sexually assaulted RIGHT OUTSIDE of my dorm (in front of a male RA who was at the front desk and making eye contact with me at the time and did nothing to stop it but whatevs). I remember distinctly someone within the group of guys calling to their group of friends and saying someone’s name. After I submitted a report to our response team, someone reached out and after a long string of emails, gave me a few individuals to pick out as this person whose name the group of guys called out. The individual that stood out to me was NOT the individual that tried to sexually assault me, but was a witness/friend who was in the friend group who was watching when this happened. He was a bystander. The individual who was conducting the investigation told me that in order for the team to bring in the individual for questioning, I had to accuse him of being the person who tried to sexually assault me. This individual also told me that they had gone and talked to this guy’s RA and the RA said that this guy “didn’t hang out with” that type of crowd and “would never” do something like that. Sounds like someone’s siding on the side of perpetrators, hm….

So instead of pursuing it further, I decided to fucking stop. I was fucking tired of telling the same old story again and again and getting nothing out of it but institutional road blocks.

This person who told me I had to accuse a witness of sexually assaulting me is still currently on the BIRT team at UWEC. This person also has a history of threatening students of color with their future endeavors and implying that they can jeopardize it.  I’ll just let that speak for itself.

BUT ADDITIONALLY: we have to fucking stop elevating shitty fucking people to positions of power where they do EVEN MORE DAMAGE. I’m calling out the entire campus for its lack of diversity in hiring unless it’s for a diversity position. I’m looking @ u UWEC Housing and Res Life.  I’m looking at the ways in which WE PROTECT SHITTY FUCKING ADMINISTRATION AND FACULTY WHO DO NOTHING BUT DO THESE THINGS:

• -          play devils advocate. Last time I checked the devil didn’t need a fucking lawyer
• -          show graphic and traumatizing video for the sake of trauma porn (aka traumatizing people into believing racism/genocide existed and STILL EXISTS). It is only for the benefit of the majority population at the detriment of marginalized folks.
• -          Entertain the idea of “both sides.” You want to entertain the “good side” of slavery? How about you meet my fucking fist? Or better yet, meet a letter calling for your resignation!
• -          Sit back and do nothing. (“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” –Desmond Tutu). You are just as bad as the perpetrators of these crimes if you let them happen ON YOUR WATCH, IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES, AND ON YOUR DAMN DIME! Stop paying pieces of shit.
• -          Rely on students to do the educating. (I thought you got a PH.d? Why the fuck are you having students teach? Are you paying them to do your bidding?)
• -          There’s probably more. Feel free to add.
• 
  

3) the constant fucking repetition of “we need to do our jobs so students can be students” while simultaneously repeating the actions of doing nothing.

Faculty, staff, and admins are always saying “we want to do our jobs so students can be students” but then continue to do nothing? If students are doing your job so well, why don’t you just give them your job?

Students are constantly performing emotional, mental, and educational labor for the sake of everyone else and rarely for themselves. The reason why students of marginalized identities are advocating for themselves is typically because their lives are at stake and their own humanity is on the line if they do not speak up.

During the panel, we heard students say that they are willing to educate others on it. This should not be their jobs. This should be the jobs of the administrators and faculty who have students in their class, to do the fucking educating. Students should not be performing labor FOR FREE for the sake of the university and giving a “cultural experience” for their white counterparts. We are not knowledge machines that shit bricks of cultural awareness.

When I say PAY STUDENTS FOR THEIR LABOR, I fucking mean it. I don’t mean with shitty food, I mean cold hard fucking cash (in a way that in no way, shape, or form, fucks up their scholarships or financial aid awards).

This I the fucking least you can do.  

4) “Change takes time.”

It wouldn’t take so much time if you did your job correctly, and you held your colleagues and supervisors and bosses to a higher standard. It wouldn’t take so much time if white people were willing to sacrifice their jobs and legality for the sake of a better future for their students that they claim to care about so much.

“Change takes time.” Is a copout. It is a FLAT FUCKING LIE. If you think about it, realistically, if you threw the bureaucracy out the window and had enough people to back you up on it (*cough* unions) you would be able to change the fucked up policies and make change go fucking faster.

Change takes time is a copout because it is THE NUMBER ONE WAY UNIVERSITIES WILL WAIT STUDENTS OUT.  IT’S WRITTEN IN STONE FOR UNIVERSITIES TO SAY THIS FUCKING SHITTTTTTT. THEY WILL WAIT YOU OUT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT AFTER YOU, THE PEOPLE AFTER YOU WILL BE QUIET, AND THAT EVEN IF THEY’RE LOUD THEY JUST HAVE TO PRETEND TO MAKE LITTLE CHANGES UNTIL YOU GRADUATE AND ONCE YOU GRADUATE THEY’RE OUTTA THE CLEAR OR THEY JUST HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL THEIR CRUSTY ASSES RETIRE AND THEN THEY’RE OUTTA HERE SO THEY CAN REPEAT THE SAME BULLSHIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN BECAUSE “THIS IS HOW WE’VE ALWAYS DONE THINGS” AND “THIS IS WHAT THE POLICIES SAY” AND “WE ARE TRYING OUR HARDEST” AND “CHANGE TAKES TIME” IT ALL COMES BACK FULL CIRCLE AND WHY DO I SAY THIS?

5) because the events that unfolded in the Woodland Theatre on September 18^th, 2019 were the exact (I mean like almost 200% verbatim) words and promised actions I was given when I was a student.

My name is Kab Vwj and I was a student at UWEC from Fall of 2013 to the Fall of 2017.

Before I come to UWEC, there was an incident in Towers that was publicized that targeted Hmoob people. It was a sign that was taped to a bathroom mirror that said Hmoob people made smelly food, take Hmong pictures, and only hang out with Hmong people. When I was at UWEC, I was aware of even more incidents that had occurred before my time, and during my time, some of which was directed towards me. Signs written on doors, signs being slipped into showcases,  n words being screamed across the halls, Trump enthusiasts spewing their BULLSHIT all over campus, being spit on, being told we needed to calm down, being told we were threatening, making people cry and having them come for us, staging protests and being told we were “fire hazards”, experiences in class being invalidated, faculty and staff being told to take on more mentees of color, white saviors coming out of their White Savior bat cage to save us poor POC, a merging of OMA and BB that ended only with horizontal oppression of the most vulnerable and visible students of color on campus. All orchestrated and perpetuated by the institution.

This incident is not new. Racism, sexism, xenophobia are not new to UWEC. It is woven in the fabric of UWEC and their policies.

These policies have not changed, though people have come and gone.

During my time at UWEC, I died. There are deep, dark, parts of me that I will never speak of when it comes to UWEC. UWEC haunts me to this very day in the ways that it forced me to change who I was to become stronger and more resilient. My personality is not something I am proud of, it is something I had to morph myself into in order to survive and stay alive. My spirit, my soul, and my well-being was damaged there in ways that are irreparable. I wanted to die when I was there; UWEC is a black hole of trauma, and its ancestry can be felt through every inch of its fake beauty. Every time I come back to UWEC, I am drained by simply being there. That place has a lot of reconciliation to do with the spirits that it has trapped there and the hauntings of the ancestors they have pissed off. A part of my spirit still exists there and it is not a piece I enjoy visiting until reconciliation has been done.

I want to leave a part of me at UWEC that is good though. A little nugget that I hope people continue, not as a part of my legacy, but the legacy that Mizzou taught me when I was at UWEC.  

During my time at UWEC, we created a list of demands that were never met. It may have been the vague nature of the bulletpoints, but I have better ones now. @University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, please see below.

• Create a CAMPUS WIDE land recognition statement, but only if you’re actually committed to the lives and well-being of your Indigenous students. If you aren’t, then don’t even fucking bother. If you want to be super high speed, you might also want to add something about recognizing that the US is built on enslaved Africans and genocide of Indigenous peoples…???

• Update your policies on smudging in the residence halls. Actually, jk, do better than that. You are on Ojibwe land—enable smudging for all buildings on campus.

• How can you honor Indigenous peoples? Give them back their land.

• Wearing the Washington team’s mascot is hate speech. Simple as that. White people wanna be angry about not being able to be racist? Hmm I thought you said you supported your Indigenous students. @Chancellor Schmidt.

• I do not care about the processes that you have in place for finding justice. Tear down those policies and processes that do no good to victims, and only protect the racist.

• Expel students for being racist, sexist, xenophobic pieces of shit. You want to increase your diversity on campus? Let racists know they will not be tolerated there.

• When hiring, you might want to know how candidates will contribute to a safe environment for students of marginalized identities to thrive. Just a thought. MAKE. IT. A. MANDATORY. QUESTION.
• When hiring individuals to teach EDI courses, they should have the correct qualifications to teach it such as: demonstrating an ability to do anti-racist work within communities, have members on committees that are already invovled in these efforts (not just your typical joe) AND INVOLVE STUDENTS. 
• WHEN YOU HIRE DIVERSE FACULTY AND STAFF, YOU TAKE ON THEIR DIVERSE ISSUES. YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO FUCKING PROPERLY SUPERVISE AND MENTOR THESE FACULTY AND STAFF AND NOT FORCE THEM TO LEAN ON EACH OTHER FOR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT *ALL* THE TIME. THERE SHOULD ALREADY BE POLICIES IN PLACE TO PROTECT THESE FACULTY AND STAFF BECAUSE THEY WILL BE SCRUTINIZED FOR EVERYTHING THEY DO AND SAY. 
• WHEN HIRING, CHALLENGE YOURSELF TO MOVE BEYOND "QUALIFICATIONS" AS REQUIREMENTS, AND LOOK AT BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE AS A SUPPLEMENT TOO. 
• This is just general good practice and accountability for you shitbags who just hire people cause you know them and overlook qualified candidates: When you do not hire a candidate for a position, write a statement for that individual as to why they did not receive that position or why they were not selected. This is just a professional courtesy. 

• When admitting students, it’ll be easier off of the bat if you just ask “Are you a white supremacist/racist/Nazi piece of shit/rapist or a sympathizer to any of the above?” to save you the heartache of having to expel them later. (You might also want to reflect the demographics of the community that surrounds your university...hmm what a fucking thought). 

• Hire more staff/faculty of marginalized identities. These marginalized faculty/staff/administration will more than likely be seen as mentors for the marginalized identity that they inhabit so…why don’t you just offer them more money off of the bat???

• Want to hear student voices? Put them on your committees, your hate and bias response teams, and pay them for it. Give them class credit. Stop asking for student voices and shrugging when they have to leave because you’re inadequate at retaining them.

• Recruiting is not the same as retention. You should be more worried about retention at this point. Students of color are telling other students of color not to come to UWEC. Be worried.

• Mandatory training for everyone. Every. Body. HR will make it work. And not a ONE TIME deal. CONTINUOUS. Talk about Queer theory, Critical Race Theory, and the complexities of identities within the 21st Century (IN AND OUTSIDE of the US) 

• Education is not enough. Education paired with action is necessary. We are beyond the point of letting racists be safe or comfortable anymore. If you claim to want to make it safe for HISTORICALLY MARGINALIZED FOLKS you have to be okay with taking risk on the white people you will lose in the process. Your actions will speak louder than your words. 
• Allocate proper funds to the offices that serve marginalized folks. We all know they're always fucking struggling. 
• Take a stance. Are you anti-racist or not? Are you a sanctuary school? 
• The student and faculty code should have a section on anti-racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/classist...ETC. behavior and SPELLED OUT consequences that come with the violation of the code. Too many "types of behavior" to count? Why don't you use your hate/bias response team to highlight the most common and start from there? 
• Police accountability. Have you thought about what that relation looks like to students/faculty/staff/admin who have been historically abused at the hands of the police? What does that relationship look like on a campus and what is the role? 

(If anyone wants more ideas for Lists of Demands, please visit thedemands.org)

These points are not just for UWEC. They are for the entire UW system, the entirety of the United States education system too. I am exhausted with having the same fucking conversations ever fucking year about the same fucking shit. Of being told by my peers who are still at UWEC that nothing has changed. I thought that by now, everyone on campus who has had to live through these conversations would be fucking tired too. But I guess they’re just waiting for the next incident to tell us how sorry they are, or they’re waiting for us to fucking die before they do anything about it.

Universities are lucky to have students of color choose them. We bring color into their lives and celebrate life in ways that white people can only yearn for (that's why they're so keen on stealing so much fucking shit...and people). We were never meant to be here and yet we are, and we are fucking killing it. We are ready to replace the administration that enabled racists to get away with taking our humanity, and we are not letting anyone, anything stand in our way (so get the fuck out of the way). PWIs may need us, but we do not need them.

And lastly, for those of you who read this far, I want to point out this: I’m not doing this out of hatred for my alma mater. It may seem that way. I am doing this out of love. I am doing this out of disappointment for the glorious university that I thought would know by now, how to answer the call when it comes to accountability and justice. I see and seek out so much more potential out of UWEC than I ever got out of it. I made it a point to make that place better than when I arrived, and I feel disappointed in every administrator I’ve come into contact with since graduating that they are still upholding practices that I thought had died when I was a student. I’ve had such negative experiences at UWEC and I grew into a badass bitch despite all of the trauma (no thanks to the individuals who attempted to and/or inadvertently tried to stop me from succeeding). But if it is true that y’all are on a new path to accountability, transparency, communication, and true change…then you need to get rid of your bureaucratic legacies and replace them with truth and radical policies that will make racists afraid, not empowered.