In college: people may show respect to their profess ors, but do we know what respect really is??ors, 

Kristen talks about what respect really is, and how to create it on our campus.

When someone brings up the idea of respect, the first thing my brain jumps to is the song by Aretha Franklin. That song is such a classic—her brassy voice coupled with her passionate delivery makes for a knockout of a performance. But maybe there’s another reason that song is so popular: maybe it’s because, after all these years, we still don’t really know what respect is, beyond a slight knowledge of its general requirements. Be polite, don’t yell, don’t put your elbows on the dinner table—all these are respectful actions. But when you ask someone to define respect, it often results in a circular definition, such as “Respect is treating someone respectfully.” So many of us only understand respect as some sort of elusive quality, impervious to being defined in other terms.

And that’s the problem. Respect is a buzzword on college campuses today, but it’s a word that is thrown around oftentimes without meaning. Not to mention the complexity of the notion itself: being respectful towards someone and having respect for someone is not the same thing. I’m often respectful towards people I have absolutely no respect for. So perhaps that's where we should start—by acknowledging the difference between acting respectfully and having respect for someone.             

Acting respectfully is, at its essence, just being a polite human being. Look people in the eye, at least feign attention, if you disagree with them say so in a way that doesn’t attack who they are as a person. That’s the easy part of respect, and that’s the respect you need to treat your boss and teachers with. But then there’s the deeper kind of respect: respect for a person as an individual. This is the kind of respect that interests me. It is so important to not only treat people with respect, but, to the best of your ability, try and actually respect them; an idea I think is inextricably linked to compassion and honesty.             

Respect is, I believe, at its core about being aware that you are not the only sentient being on this planet. Everyone you talk to, everyone you interact with—they have the same breadth and depth of emotional idiosyncrasies that you do, and respect is being aware of that and acting with that knowledge in mind.  That’s where compassion ties into respect: if you’re compassionate, you’re more likely, and more easily able, to view other people as actual human beings, not just people who should bend to your whim. But respect isn’t just being compassionate towards others—as you are also a sentient human being with their own valid thoughts and opinions, you deserve to be heard just as much as anyone else, and you deserve to be honest about your own experience. 

This is where respect exists, I think: between having compassion for others and being honest with yourself. In that way, respect could perhaps be roughly defined as a sort of compassionate honesty—you state your opinion with the awareness and knowledge that it is going to be received by an individual who feels things differently, but equally, to you. That, to me, is respect, and I think in the swirl of ambition and entrepreneurship at USC, we tend to not practice it as much as we should. Yes, it’s easy to be rude to your barista at Starbucks who is taking soooo long to make your hazelnut coffee, but it’s even easier to ask them how their day is going, since they’re probably just as stressed as you are. It’s easy to put your fork down during Monday Night Dinner while someone is getting a delivery. It’s easy to introduce your friend to your other friend that you bump into on the street. 

All these little acts of respect are so, so easy, and they in turn foster a more respectful environment for everyone. And even when respect isn’t easy—like when someone used you or lied to you—you can respectfully tell them that what they did was inexcusable, and hopefully they’ll listen to you and become a more respectful person themselves. It’s all just a big karmic circle, really: treat people the way you would want to be treated, with compassion and honesty, and hopefully you payed that respect forward. Respect is, at its core, about co-existing peacefully, and that, to me at least, sounds pretty wonderful.