The Declaration of Independence may comfort us with the promise that all men are created equal, but it failed to warn us that more than 90% of the earth’s population is right-handed.
Being a lefty at Hillsdale is hard, and not in the way you may expect.
Men have climbed Mount Everest. A few have tested the limits of human existence by living in isolation and without modern plumbing for years on end. Still fewer have become philosopher-kings, despite all odds and Plato’s own doubt.
But did the great Achilles ever have to endure a two-hour written exam in an individual desk in Kendall 333, craning his whole body to the right, holding his left elbow unnaturally parallel with the floor for the duration of the test, in order to keep his pencil on the writing surface? Did General Patton ever endure the unique pain of elbowing his right-handed compadres with every forkful he lifted from the dinner table? Did any people in history know the oppression of cutting colored paper with right-handed kindergarten craft scissors in chubby, five-year-old fingers?
Nearly 91.8% of earth’s population will never confront these trials first-hand.
It’s a struggle to find a place where you’re accepted as a lefty. Often, when you enter a room, you begin instinctively to scour the premises for hope, for something that stands athwart the flood of history and the uniform tastes of culture en masse — in other words, a left-handed desk.
At Hillsdale, it’s even harder to be a lefty, and not just because of the politics department’s distinct rightward penchant. There’s nothing worse than walking to your first class of the semester and feeling your stomach drop at the sight of that sea of little chairs which all produce the same effect: a left-side hunchback.
Not only uncomfortable, lefties at Hillsdale are also often isolated: left-handed desks are shoved to the back of the classroom, or worse, removed altogether. Righties complain about the discomfort of being stuck with the one leftward desk in the classroom, though they had at least 30 alternatives available. Must be tough. If you’re one of the 8.2% of people who don’t write with the right hand, you’re often just out of luck.
As a tiny minority, it’s hard to imagine things will ever get much better for lefties, both at Hillsdale and the world writ large. Even in the current era of minority celebration, you can’t get into Harvard on behalf of your motor-skill diversity. There’s no scholarship to support the south-pawed, and no Bernie Sanders of penmanship to rail against the 91.8%.
(You may pride yourself on your knowledge of white privilege, but have you ever heard of right privilege? Stats aren’t even reported on how many lefties die every year due to this egregious discrimination. Which can only mean there must be thousands.)
At every corner, the odds — and the engineering — are against us. Seriously. Ever thought about the fact that all traffic, whether on the road or the sidewalk, encourages you to stay right?
The irony, however, is that some of the greatest men in history never relied on the right. Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Jimi Hendrix, and even Hillsdale’s favorite U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, were all proud members of the lefty contingent. They overcame the odds — and the desks, and the scissors, and the reminders that “we used to burn people like you” — to become great artists, scientists, musicians, and the best U.S. president in the 1980s.
That’s why I like to think there’s hope for us. Perhaps one day students will be able to pick courses based on whether the classroom will have individual desks vs. the comfort of neutral tables, or even arrange to have a lefty desk available in all her classes each semester. Even awareness would help. Or a lefty support group. Or therapy.
Despite these obstacles, lefties have already performed great deeds. Who can imagine what the world looked like if we added to that a true equality of the hands?
If I were to boast, I would only boast to my right-handed colleagues of this: I have learned to use right-handed scissors. Can you use left-handed?
Carmel Kookogey is a senior George Washington Fellow studying politics. She is the editor-in-chief of the Collegian.
