 Good morning. My name is Dr. Stephanie Adams. I'm the Associate Director for Academic Engagement through University Housing and I have the distinct pleasure of introducing our keynote speaker for this morning. Her name is Dr. Lisa Corrigan. She is the Associate Professor for Communications and she's also the Director of Gender Studies here at the University of Arkansas. Please give her your individent attention. I want to thank Stephanie Adams for the invitation to speak briefly today before the wall comes down. My remarks focus on the reasons why slurs have no place in the university setting. First, the kinds of words that appear on this wall are used to bully people in a submission so that bullies feel stronger, better, smarter, more competent. It's unacceptable behavior. Second, these kinds of words create a hostile learning environment for all of the people on campus whether the slurs are directed at them or not. Colleges are supposed to be inclusive public spaces where everyone feels respected because we are modeling democracy by learning about perspectives that are different from our own. Finally, words like these are rhetorical violence. They harm people in serious, long-lasting, cultural and personal ways. Colleges are in the business of helping people, not harming them. And campuses should be places where members of the campus community feel safe from harm. Unfortunately, the public climate we're living in right now is anti-intellectual, intolerant, white supremacist, sexist, heterosexist, classist, and ableist. The public culture now cultivates insecurity and feelings of precarity along with unreachable myths about who we should be and what we should be expected to achieve. Students of this generation report higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and paralyzing self-doubt. They are, you are, a wash in a culture that tells you that you're persistently no good and everything about you is flawed. Those cultural messages create fragile children and adults that cannot cope with change, with difference, with new data. Slurs become a way of managing the anxiety caused by uncertainty of other people's experiences. But our culture and popular culture in particular in our politics are totally oriented around rhetorical and physical violence as the response to difference. It's no coincidence that verbal violence often accompanies physical assault. In June, a Delta Utah man was beaten and knocked unconscious after being forced to drink bleach at the pizza place where he worked. When he woke up, the assailants had carved the word fag into his arm. They returned a few nights later to his home where they spray painted slurs all over his house. Even a cursory look at the texts and videos of the killer cops responsible for murdering unarmed black folks in the U.S. demonstrates how frequently those police officers use slurs and how the slurs enable them to view themselves as above the law when they assassinate unarmed civilians. And the data on sexual assault clearly demonstrates that men who use misogynistic slurs against women are more likely to assault them because they view women as animals and objects without humanity or dignity. Ultimately, I think that the goal of an exercise like the wall is a personal transformation where participants recognize the amount of pain they're inflicting on others and choose not to employ or tolerate abusive speech. I'm optimistic that those of you who participated found an outlet to think through how speech influences the camp's community as we continue to build an inclusive space for all people to learn. Thank you.