Numbness is an interesting sensation. Where pain can be bitingly cruel, and pleasure can be soothingly sweet, numbness can be both everything and nothing at the same time. Ultimately, I sit here today talking about numbness because its amorphous mass has settled over an incredible number of people here on Wake Forest’s campus—and in the United States as a whole.

Almost exactly two weeks before today—February 3, 2018—a young man, Najee Ali Baker, lost his life here on Wake’s campus. Regardless of the manner in which he died, the reality remains that his light was snuffed out.

On the same weekend, a video documenting a young woman’s confession of what could be identified as hate-speech was reported to the University’s administration.

Almost a week later, it was revealed that another individual was the victim of sexual assault on the same weekend.

It is clear no matter who you are that the weekend of January 20th was far from a good one for many, and yet, Monday greeted many emotionally, mentally, and physically taxed students with complete and utter indifference.

On Monday morning, after having spent the previous 24 hours worrying about and checking on my community, I walked out onto the quad to discover that the events I mentioned to you had not actually happened. I discovered that no one had died, no one was sexually assaulted, and no one was verbally abused in a building named after Maya Angelou, one of the world’s late champions for equality.

I discovered that my friends and I had hallucinated the entire weekend and that nothing worthy of note had actually taken place. I discovered that Wake Forest and the entirety of its campus was still the embodiment of “Pro-Humanitate”.

Ultimately, I discovered that I am out of my mind. After all, there is no way that people could continue about their business as if none of those things affected them—as if they had never happened.

Secure in my knowledge that I had had an incredibly disturbing dream, I went to check my email like any good Wake Forest student only to discover that I am not the one who is out of my mind.

I opened my email to discover that every event that didn’t happened—If they had, there is no way people would be walking around laughing and airily asking how my weekend was—was documented in a series of emails from President Hatch, Penny Rue, Chancellor Robinson from Winston-Salem State University, The University Police, and many more. I opened my email to discover that the nightmare I began having at 12:58 am on January 20th real and that I was still—am still—living it.

I discovered that death and assault and racism are hidden on every corner of this campus and that the majority of this campus’ inhabitants are embracing a moral and emotional numbness to it.

Ultimately, with every class that passed without mention of the person who died on this campus, and with every jubilant greeting, the numbness hanging over Wake Forest seeped into my bones along with another, more violent haze which seems to have settled with a smoldering intensity. That haze, I can only describe as fury. Fury at the lack of reaction. Fury at the lack of action. Fury at the lack of anything on behalf of my peers, most of my professors, and a shocking—or is it shocking? —number of the University’s administrators. That haze molded into the marrow of my bones and left me both perpetually on fire with the need to move, to act, to react and so exhausted that I was left immobilized by the numbness I was experiencing.

I think it is worth saying that the numbness I felt, feel, will continue to feel, is not the same as the numbness afflicting most of the students on this campus. My numbness is the result of debilitating overstimulation caused by my brush with hundreds of people’s open, sore, emotions.

My numbness is the result of overstimulation caused by watching Najee Baker’s family slog through air so saturated with collective grief that the weight of it was a physical thing. My numbness is the result of seeing that, even now, in 2018, a black man’s life, a black woman’s humanity, and another woman’s agency still do not matter enough for people to address their theft.

No, my numbness is not the same numbness that enables people to continue on without a care in the world. My numbness is not indifference—not like theirs. My numbness is a pre-cursor, the calm before the storm. A warning of things to come.

All the same, it is still exhausting and emotionally damaging. I, and many others, can see the way that numbness is splintering into sharp edges—edges which are beginning to pulverize the mask Paul Laurence Dunbar spoke of.

Those of us who look underneath the surface see the “torn bleeding hearts” with which we smile. I see it in the emotional instability of some of my friends, and I see it in the way many people of color fled Wake Forest’s campus that weekend as if the annals of history were dogging their every step. I see it, and so many people continuously choose not to.

I see it as I sit in this chair in campus grounds listening to people discuss trivial problems that pale in comparison to the issues so many people are facing right now. I see it in the way a woman prioritized hooking up with someone over the fact that the object of their desire found it acceptable to call black people negros in 2018. I see it in the fact that this woman felt comfortable exploring such an idea in the lobby of my residence hall. I see it everywhere, and though I burn to combat it, I have no real idea how to do so.

I do, however, know one thing: we cannot let it go. People of color, non-people of color, women, men, those of low Socio-Economic status, those of high socio-economic status—everyone needs to address the realities of the society we live in. Everyone needs to see exactly how the world we live in is balanced on the psychological slavery of the masses. But, I am under no delusions that everyone is willing to do so—it’s painful after all.

All the same as long as the numbing haze of indifference exists in our society—in any society—and as long as people choose to let that numbness anesthetize them instead of letting it incentivize them, Wake Forest won’t ever get to a place where “Pro-Humanitate” is more than just a slogan. The United States will never be “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

I know I said it before, but Wake Up Wake Forest, it's time to be more than a citizen.

It’s time to be truly human.