I returned to campus yesterday to teach my first class since spring break. I rarely go anywhere over spring break, but this year, I decided I wanted to spend as much time away from my notifications and indulge my obsession with birding and bird photography. Some of the best birding in the United States is along the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. And as a trans person, I knew there were risks. What if I had to go to the emergency room? Would I be treated? On March 10, Texas introduced a bill that, if passed, could make all transgender people in the state felons. But I had planned this trip some time ago and felt passionately that I should still be able to go birding in my country. So I went. 

I landed in San Antonio and met a friend. We drove to the border along the Rio Grande River. The first stop was at a ranch of more than 800 acres known for its many rare birds. My friend and I pulled up to meet our 17-year-old guide, and I realized I was at “the wall”—the 30-foot high steel monstrosity separating the U.S. from Mexico. Because it cuts across private land, our young guide had a key to open one of its gates and the three of us walked through—my friend and I stunned into silence at both the wall and what lay behind it. I hadn’t prepared myself to be walking through the wall with a key.

I had volunteered in McAllen, Texas, in my twenties. I was prepared for the beauty and the horror of the Rio Grande Valley, though I wasn’t a birder then and there was no wall. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about seeing the wall and needing to pass through it to get a view of the Rio Grande River. In my twenties the river was this gorgeous, ugly symbol of all that connects and divides people from one another. Its visibility always kept me grounded in how to be present to disparate realities—to see the worst and the best of humanity at the same time. That was one of the hardest years of my life. It took an emotional toll to be a 20-something activist and face my limitations, let go of my belief that I could change the world. Perhaps it was that year that had led to this moment 30 years later. I had let myself forget about the wall that was front page news for four years during Trump’s first presidency. I said to my friend, “I feel stupid. Why hadn’t I thought about this ahead of time?” He had been to the Valley the year before, so he was prepared. He had seen the wall. He knew the Rio Grande River was no longer accessible. There is nothing like standing below a looming 30-foot wall to be reminded that walls and borders are illusions to get us to believe our humanity is more important than another’s. I was glad to be able to remember that much.

As I waited in South Station, later that week, I allowed myself a one-hour limited dose of the news of this country’s white supremacist takeover. I came across an article on bathrooms. At first I thought it was another piece of anti-trans legislation, until I looked closer—“Segregated facilities are no longer banned in federal contracts.” Above the headline of this article on the NPR website, the image of a sign, “Waiting Room for Colored Only → BY ORDER  POLICE DEPT” stood.

I looked at that sign like I looked at the key to the border wall. Where was I? What year was this? 1960? I stepped onto Emerson’s campus after break and everything was as it had been. No one was protesting. There were no emails from college leadership to the faculty giving us guidance about how to teach in these circumstances. I have no syllabus for “teaching during a fascist takeover of the country.” I talk with my colleagues and I hear the fear in their voices. They don’t know what to do. “I’m afraid I’ll be fired if I say something” is a response I have heard more than a dozen times in the last few weeks. “Fired for what?” I ask. I gather they mean they fear speaking the unspoken. When silence about reality falls over a college campus, it doesn’t happen without reason.

I went to my class. I am teaching “Developing an Aesthetic Sensibility,” a requirement for the business of creative enterprises major, and a course I designed several years ago. This week the plan was to talk about the color blue, as a way to enter the dream—the possibility of a color that lets us dream. 

I started the class by showing the students the article and the sign. They looked shocked and horrified, like me. Not one of them had seen it. I am not sure they planned to look at the news. I understand why. They are trying, like all of us, to keep going; to segment one reality from another; to put up a wall between the importance of their course work, their dreams, for the future. They are in the process of becoming a more informed version of themselves, prepared to take on new responsibilities using newly learned skills. It should be a hopeful time. I want that for them as much as I have always wanted it for myself. But I keep thinking about the 20-something me, so unprepared to live in the complexity between dreams and aspirations and walls and reality. 

I felt responsible to share the news story with them because my students aren’t all white, they aren’t all citizens of the U.S., they aren’t all cisgender. I know that my course is not about education during dictatorship. I reassured them we would continue to get through the course material. I also said, to teach as if the United States is not being taken over by corrupt politicians and businesspeople who systematically dehumanize the rest of the population is not just me being a professional educator, but a responsible citizen. 

I made it clear my actions were my own—that I had been given no guidance from the college. I also told them, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t integrate this present moment into our classroom. To omit it would be like asking them to go birding with me and driving up to that border wall without mentioning that the Rio Grande River and other human beings exist on the other side.

P Carl is a senior distinguished artist in residence in the Performing Arts department at Emerson College.