I walked into my classroom and saw that many of the female students were sitting there in hijabs.
“OK, I need to stop drinking,” I thought.
Then I remembered that I don’t drink.
Nobody said anything, so I pretended that nothing unusual was happening.
Only later did I find out that an event called “Hijab Challenge” was going on at the university.
What’s the purpose of the challenge? It’s not exactly challenging – the only effort it takes is half a minute in the morning to tie the scarf around your head and you’re done.
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I think the point of the challenge is to let people see how others would react to them wearing the hijab. However, the problem with the exercise is that it has become really really cold here once again, so nobody has much of a reaction to people wrapping anything they can find around themselves.
The organizers should have waited until May.
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I used to wear a thick scarf sometimes when it was cold and a few times I noticed people staring at me as if I was going to eat their children. I also had a woman come up to me once while I was wearing it and demand, “What are you?”
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One time during a really bad cold snap in Victoria, I wrapped a scarf around my hair and neck so that I could keep my head and my ears warm, then went out with my friends to grab some groceries for a house party. On the way there, a group of young men in a car taunted me and called me a “sand n****r” and I didn’t clue in until I got to the house and asked people what the hell that was supposed to mean.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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