Jesseca Kusher

As we move forward in our pre-production segment of producing Jon Tazewell‘s “Gotta Get Down to It,” it only feels right to begin exploring the themes and inspiration for the story. Today’s topic is the Kent State shooting of May 4th, 1970.

The first time Jon spoke to me about his feature film we were walking out of his “African American Cinema” class and down Middle Path together. As we left the library I remember him explaining fairly passionately that his script had to do with race relations in a high school classroom — and that it would certainly end in violence. Since then, the script has undergone a series of revisions — and while its location has graduated from high school to college — the theme of racial tension coupled with a final act of violence remains the same.

Now, I feel as though I have been raised as a good liberal arts student. My mother raised me reading Martin Luther King Jr., and my father instilled in me a love of old war protest songs. Growing up at a Montessori school, I learned to love peace and all that non-violent protest/conflict resolution stood for. That said, as I have grown older I believe I have begun to better understand why violence will always exist in our society. While it is evil in its purest form, acts of violence are spurred from ignorance and greed — two roots that cannot ever be truly uprooted from any community. As long as people choose their own knowledge from the preachers that resonate with them most clearly — and as long as there is power to be had, especially over those different than ourselves, violence will continue.

To clarify, I am not asking for a world in which we are all taught the same thing, or brainwashed into some structure of perfect conformity. No, instead, quite the opposite. I know that the value of my Liberal Arts education comes from more than just the privilege to connect to my professors in more meaningful ways, or from the liberty to study what I am most passionate about. Instead, my Liberal Arts education has enabled me to see the world in different perspectives and grow to appreciate the world outside of the context of those “preachers” I have grown up with. Over the course of my time at Kenyon College I have grown to understand that even some of my teachers and mentors in life have been flawed. I have begun to understand what it means to be human in terms of accepting the raw flaws of an imperfect life and the injustice of being a single body in the masses. While I may not be able to influence the world in a large way, I have an understanding that by choosing to actively seek different perspectives I can interact with my community in a more meaningful way. Whether that is in terms of my political decisions on a national scale, or in a much smaller context regarding social protests on my own college campus — there will always be more than one “truth” hidden in the perspectives of others. Part of my role as a well informed citizen should be to seek out those truths and come to my own understandings.