About Timeline
The TIMELINE OF COUNTERSTORIES is a part of the student activism archive which recounts Lehigh’s institutional history from the perspective of marginalized students through a framework of critical race theory.
The way the university tells its own history is integral to how we understand our own college culture and our experiences within it; the framework used to construct of narratives of university history is pivotal to either the replication or disruption of systematic power. What is included and excluded in the university timeline reveals what the institution views as relevant or crucial. Therefore, the TIMELINE of COUNTERSTORIES is meant to preserve and make accessible a history otherwise intentionally erased by the dominant narratives told about the university’s past in order to advance claims of “institutional progress”.
In juxtaposition, the construction of this timeline reveals embedded forms of discrimination/exclusion at the foundation of the institution and throughout time. Thus, this timeline is about refusing to forget institutional violence, because that too is a means of perpetuating power. Moreover, this timeline begins to explore and explain various waves of student organizing and student activism providing context for some of the contents of the larger archive collection dating back to the 1960s. Ultimately, the Timeline of Counter Stories is interested in to honoring the legacy of past student leaders because we, too, are Lehigh.
A Note on Framework
In Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (3rd Edition), critical race scholars, Delgado and Stefancic write that “society constructs the social world through a series of tacit agreements mediated by images, pictures, tales, tweets, blog postings social media and other scripts…” (49). Simultaneously, “stories also serve a powerful additional function for minority communities. Many victims of racial discrimination suffer in silence or blame themselves for their predicament… Stories can give them a voice and reveal that other people have similar experiences. Stories can name a type of discrimination (e.g., microaggressions, unconscious discrimination, or structural racism); once named, it can be combatted…” (50-51). Moreover, counter storytelling is a means of providing another kind of existing reality to undermine the power of dominant/master narratives.