Iowa Lakes Community College hosts two convocations every year. They range from being very serious points of topics to some that are more lighthearted and just trying to spread joy to students. This year Iowa Lakes hosted its first convocation of the 2019-2020 school year with a performance by GTC Dramatic Dialogues at both the Emmetsburg and Estherville campuses.
GTC Dramatic Dialogues is a group of actors based out of Minnesota and focuses on high impact training. This basically means that they are looking to portray a certain situation and then have people react and discuss how they felt about it. This year Iowa Lakes had the opportunity to listen to the “You. Me. We.” program. This program centers around a white male, a black male, and a white female. There were so many different things that they were trying to get the audience involved in, from the black male spinning the white female and looking her up and down, to the white male trying to appropriate the black male’s culture. The group performed the same set at both campuses and was able to discuss with Ben McGinley, who was the host of the event, about his reactions between the two campuses.
“I believe the event went very well at both campuses,” said McGinley, “At the Emmetsburg campus we spent a lot of time discussing and debating the question ‘Can black people be racist?’ There was a lot of chatter and we were able to present differentiation of systematic racism versus individual racism and prejudice.”
The next campus is the Estherville campus. This was the one that caused a lot of yelling at multiple sets of people including the actors. People became very passionate, specifically groups that I would not expect to be so passionate about such an issue. Multiple theories were thrown around after the female was spun and looked up and down. McGinley discussed that he believes the participation was helped due to the fact that there were so many athletic teams in attendance.
“Oftentimes, I’ve found that when individuals are there with teammates, they feel energetic support that gives them the confidence to speak their minds,” said McGinley.
The Estherville campus spent a large amount of time talking about an instance where one of the male characters spins the female character and looked her up and down. With this being the first time these two are meeting there was sure to be some pushback. McGinley discussed how the audience spent, “a good deal of energy” trying to confront the female character and saying that it was her fault for not standing up for herself.
“There just are an extremely disproportionate number of sexual assaults on women by men in college,” said McGinley, “This has shaped the collective female experience as involving frequently targeted attempts on their safety. The (difference in) power dynamics between men and women are there and Hannah (the female actor) tried to explain that.”
This program was designed and meant to get students engaged and talking about topics that, by society’s standards, are uncomfortable to discuss. These are hard topics to talk about, and having to confront the fact that there may be a difference in you and the person sitting next to you based on your skin color or gender. Admitting that is the first step to realizing that there is more that can be done.
“Our program reached conclusion with a bit of tension still in the room. In my closing, I told the students that their level of passion and engagement gave me great joy,” said McGinley, “Engaging in complex issues and being able to stay in the conversation- especially when in disagreement- is a really difficult thing to do, and I hope it activated them to continue asking questions and push themselves to engage with others whose experience is different from their own.”
Call of the Lake 
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