It was a cold, snowy night when I sat down to talk to Joe Walsh. Before the misconceptions start in, I suppose I should frame this entire article as a disclaimer: you may not believe it belongs in the paper, or in this column. But whose problem is that?

Joe and I decided that this is an alright time for discourse on the impasse between so-called liberals (which I’m not) and so-called conservatives (as he is so called). We had a conversation, and this is what it was like. This article is a window into the problems that some of us on different sides of the ideological spectrum share.

So I asked Joe why we were having our conversation. And he shared a couple stories with me. One was about a communications studies class, analyzing the rhetorical strategies of a documentary on an anti-gay ballot initiative in Oregon. The issue wasn’t what bothered Joe; what did was when the class brought up the whole “hate the sin, love the sinner” philosophy that operates for some of the initiative’s supporters and a great many religious people like Joe. The class just laughed at that philosophy, and Joe was offended. But he didn’t feel he had any recourse.

That’s not my problem, it’s his.

So Joe shared another story. He was talking with a friend of his about a class they were taking, Blackness in the Media. His friend said, I bet you hate that class. Joe doesn’t hate that class, even though it fulfills his diversity requirement. It was a clear misconception. Was Joe’s friend calling him racist? Is that my problem?

When does this start to be anyone’s problem other than Joe’s?

I’m not one who debates for the sake of debate; neither Joe nor I really came to Macalester for that. But it’s sort of an added benefit of being here, and what’s important about it is the cost at which that debate comes. The cost of debate on a personal level, the kind that Joe and I can have if we want to, is a lot of rigidity on a higher level. Sure, there are some pretty liberal people at Macalester, and they make a point in their classes to offend Joe. Sometimes it’s malicious. But there are some relatively conservative people pulling the strings at this college; it doesn’t exactly balance out, but neither Joe nor I would think of that if we didn’t know how to talk to each other.

Maybe Macalester draws more than one type of student, and maybe that’s good business. Joe came here because it’s in his home state, in the exciting Twin Cities, and a prestigious school that offers good money. And St. Thomas down the street just doesn’t offer the curriculum he wants. That’s funny, because St. Thomas doesn’t offer the curriculum I want either, but I came here because it offers good money, it expressed a demand for people from my background, and they gave me four years to make up my mind as to what I want to do with the ample resources at my disposal. It’s funny-the college seemed pretty open to me, but doesn’t seem so to Joe, because he’s Catholic and white, he says. Is that because he’s a minority here?

Did Macalester make a mistake when it admitted him, or when it admitted me? Is it really so liberal that it silences people like Joe sometimes, so students can come all out of left field with (relatively, intentionally) offensive comments?

I’ll break the suspense, Macalester is liberal-but liberal only means open, and that means we can take a certain level of debate before no one wants to talk about what’s really going on. Some students feel free to come out of left field in their class discussions (even if it offends Joe), walk out of class and go sit in left field, and camp out in left field for four years. They should feel free-but they shouldn’t operate under the illusion that what they say in left field is going to get heard on the right side of campus. Maybe that’s where they keep all the money. And Joe should feel free to talk about his religion, or dispel stereotypes about Minnesotan white people, or fulfill his diversity requirement without shame-after all, that’s why he’s here-he should feel free but he doesn’t. Is that the same problem?

Well, we talked about that.