This was initially written and has been cross-posted at Red, Brown and Blue, which is the politics blog for Tufts Office of Undergrad Admissions.
Let me know what you think, I'd love to see a debate on this topic.
I know it’s summer and some of us have more important things going on than following politics and reading this blog, but luckily for you all, I don’t. I’m relaxing and mentally preparing to head back to Tufts in the fall for senior year, but politics never fade far from my mind. This summer we’ve seen a very intense health care debate flaring up all over the country (even in liberal suburban Connecticut: check this out).
Commentary from the left and the right persistently asks the question: why are conservatives so passionate, so mobilized, and getting so much publicity, when all of those Obama liberals might as well be invisible? Well, for one, Democratic activists haven’t been silent, health care demonstrations around the country have attracted hundreds and even thousands of participants in support of reform, and amidst the loudest anti-reform voices, there are quiet, more polite liberals in the background. But I digress.
Democrats who supported Obama haven’t been as vocal in support of this reform bill as they could have been. The progressive grass- and netroots that did most of the legwork to elect President Obama have been relatively quiet and laid-back as the health care debate gets going. The energy and excitement coursing through Obama supporters in the campaign of 2008 is nowhere to be found.
Jonathan Cohn calls it “The Enthusiasm Gap” in a recent article in The New Republic. Polls are showing that Americans still largely support the major components of health care reform as proposed by the White House, but…well, no one seems to be doing anything about it. Crazies on the right are up in arms, hanging their representatives in effigy and accusing Obama and Democrats of being everything from socialists to granny-murderers, and the response from the left has been…casual, to say the least. No one seems to know why, but I have a few ideas.
Liberals are ambivalent about the legislation on the table to reform health care because, in essence, they’re worthless, watered-down proposals that won’t have much of an effect. As a proponent of single-payer health care, which would not only reduce costs to the individual but actually cover everybody, the bill Barack Obama is pushing is disappointing, to say the least. Most depressing, we can look back at the Hillary-care effort from 1993 longingly; that proposal included many of the provisions we are losing every day. Now, Obama-care is but a shadow of the long lost reform efforts of the Clinton administration. There is even talk that the public option may be dropped entirely.
Is this change we can believe in? More importantly, the first few months of the Obama administration have disappointed progressives on numerous other levels. One of the President’s first official actions was to bailout corporations like AIG to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars, and he has been slow to act on many campaign issues that got him elected in the first place: Afghanistan is getting worse, not better; the pull-out of Iraq has been slow and with only mixed results; and the Bush-era crimes against humanity have yet to be investigated, let lone prosecuted. The list of disappointents is miles long.
As any self-respecting liberal ought to tell you, we as a movement are far from giving up. The recent Netroots Nation convention of progressive bloggers and activists confirms that there is still energy and excitement on the left for “change we can believe in”. But we’re tired of the endless compromises coming out of the White House and the Democratic caucus in both chambers of Congress. We worked to elect the President, and finally, for the first time in my political life, I expected to have a voice, however small, in the decision-making process in Washington. It hasn’t quite materialized–although I’m not ready to give up yet.
And whenever I get really down about the lack of progress on important issues like health care, I remind myself that it could certainly be worse. Imagine the country under President McCain and–I shudder to think–Vice President Palin. A scary picture indeed.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
The New York Times writes about me
Here's the story: on one of the paper's blogs, The Choice, of which I am relatively frequent reader, they asked for college students who were living at home for the summer to talk about how the recession is affecting them and how the summer is going with internships drying up and parents' largely not being able to afford to support kids doing unpaid work away from home. So, I responded, not expecting anything to come of it, and day or 2 later the writer responds to me, asks a few more questions, and we go back and forth via email. THEN, when I'm out of town for a weekend, I get a call from a photographer for the Times, and she wants to come to my house to take my picture for this article. And now I'm in a huge photo on the cover of the Style section of the Sunday New York Times. check it out
Will Ehrenfeld, right, a Tufts senior, hoped for a White House summer internship but ended up with no job. He’s shown with Josh, his brother, a college graduate who is also jobless.
Say Hello to Underachieving
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: July 2, 2009
ERIN McAULIFFE had a vision for this summer. A 20-year-old junior at Bowdoin College, she had lined up an internship at a New York publishing house and imagined stimulating days leafing through manuscripts, and evenings of sparkling conversation with friends at downtown cafes.
She ended up starring in a real-life version of the movie “Adventureland” instead. In that recent comedy, a recent college graduate is forced by economic hardship to work at a suburban amusement park.
Life is imitating art for Ms. McAuliffe. With her parents unable to help bankroll three months of unpaid work in Manhattan, she gave up the internship offer and moved home to Andover, Mass., where she took the one job she could find: working 12-hour days at an amusement park. For $7.80 an hour, she tends bumper cars and the big swing, and endures the many carny jokes of her friends.
“It’s rain or shine,” Ms. McAuliffe said dryly about her job. “You’d be really surprised how many people go to an amusement park in the pouring rain.”
School’s out for summer 2009, and instead of getting a jump on the boundless futures that parents and colleges always promised them, students this year are receiving a reality check.
The well-paying summer jobs that in previous years seemed like a birthright have grown scarce, and pre-professional internships are disappearing as companies cut back across the board. Recession-strapped parents don’t always have the means or will to bankroll starter apartments or art tours of Tuscany.
So many college students and recent graduates are heading to where they least expected: back home, and facing an unfamiliar prospect: downtime, maybe too much of it. To a high-achieving generation whose schedules were once crammed with extracurricular activities meant to propel them into college, it feels like an empty summer — eerie, and a bit scary.
“Things have changed drastically,” said Ron Alsop, author of “The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace,” a book that only last year portrayed young workers as entitled and in a hurry. “It has to be a huge wake-up call for this generation.”
Numbers provide the backdrop to the story — not just the grimly familiar national unemployment rate, 9.5 percent in June, but the even scarier, less publicized unemployment figure for 16- to 19-year-olds, which has hit 24 percent, up from 16.1 percent two years ago. Internships available to college students have fallen 21 percent since last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Across the country, there are countless tales like that of Morgan Henderson, a student at the University of San Francisco, who, along with friends, planned a big road trip to Las Vegas this summer. With so few of the friends finding jobs, they downgraded plans to a road trip to Reno, then to no road trip at all. They’re spending time watching DVDs at one another’s houses.
Or Kathryn Estrada, a high school senior in Hialeah, Fla., who has no summer job after Circuit City, which employed her during the school year, went out of business. She is finding that even this early in the summer, attempts to while away the hours playing Scrabble and Cranium have grown stale. “We all just wish school would start so we would have something to do,” she said.
Or Will Ehrenfeld, a political science major at Tufts, who worked at a think tank last year and this summer was aiming higher: a White House internship. When the White House didn’t come through, and neither did the State Department or dozens of companies he applied to, Mr. Ehrenfeld, 20, moved back home to Vernon, Conn. Even the local Boston Market had no work.
Mr. Ehrenfeld, a top student who has always held leadership positions in clubs and academic groups, loafs through days, rolling out of bed around 11 and reading or playing trumpet or guitar. Nights, he sometimes meets up with friends who also have nowhere that they have to be in the morning, and they share a few cheap beers. “At worst, misery continues to have company,” he said.
While young people in earlier decades might have cherished the chance to goof off and sleep in for a few months, the current generation, experts like Mr. Alsop are apt to point out, “have always been told they can achieve anything they can put their mind to.”
“They were always given trophies just for showing up,” he said. “Now, they’re being told ‘no’ when they really want a job or an internship.”
To them, a staycation at Mom and Dad’s can feel more like house arrest.
If the only problem were tedium, students might find a recessionary summer unpleasant but endurable. But some expressed concern that the economic gloom might be a preview of harsh career realities that await.
“The worst thing about this summer is the lack of hope felt by so many kids,” Lydia Wiledon, a Barnard undergraduate, wrote in an e-mail message. “College students ready to thrust themselves into work find nothing, and those most in need are edged out by older, more skilled individuals who are overqualified for such foot-in-the-door opportunities. I worry about how this employment drought will affect my generation in the future.”
There may be reason for concern. Students who enter the job market during a recession can see their wages lag behind comparable students who graduated in better times for as long as 15 years, according to a recent study by Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management.
Even for students who remain optimistic about their long-term career prospects, an unexpected move home — back under the roof of Mom and Dad, where many had barely alighted in years except for brief Thanksgiving breaks — can require an attitude adjustment.
“Communication patterns are different when students come back from college,” said Roni Cohen-Sandler, a clinical psychologist in Weston, Conn., specializing in adolescent issues. “Kids may not be as interested in sharing who they’re hanging out with and why. The level of disclosure is different, and parents have not made the shift in their mind. They’re asking a lot of questions, and students are chafing.”
When students try to stave off the boredom by watching television, parents may wonder aloud if there is not a more productive use of their time. Curfews and household chores that seemed natural at 16 can seem oppressive at 20.
This has been the experience of Kelly Fabian, an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, who hoped to study art history in Rome this summer, but returned home to Orange County, Calif., instead, when her family asked her to work to help pay her tuition.
It’s an adjustment, she said. Living on her own for two years, including summers, she got used to doing chores like washing dishes and taking out the recycling — but not when instructed to.
“It’s not weird doing them, it’s weird having someone tell you to do them,” she said.
Ms. Fabian said she was close to her parents and valued the time spent together, but the new proximity did take getting used to, on all sides. Ms. Fabian, 20, found work at a cable-television company, and with four family members sharing two cars, she commutes for nearly an hour each way with her father, Jim Fabian.
The opportunity to bond is, in theory, delightful, she said — but does it have to be at 7 a.m.? “My Dad is a morning person and I most certainly am not,” she said. She needs a second cup of coffee just to make her lips move. When they reach for the radio knobs to pass the time, father and daughter encounter a generation gap: He likes sports talk radio; she would rather listen to the New Pornographers.
“I’m a relic of the ’70s — I still listen to the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac,” said Mr. Fabian, a financial consultant. “Her music, I’ll just describe it as different.“
Some other college students unexpectedly back home described frictions with their families that were less amusing and more fraught. Daniel Bortz, a junior at Syracuse University who was unable to find a summer job for the first time in five years, told of unpleasant friction in his household over money.
In the short term, the lost summer of 2009 might actually be a blessing, some psychologists said, especially because members of this generation have lived their lives like track stars trying to run a marathon at the pace of a 100-meter dash — their parents typically waiting at every turn with a stopwatch.
“Parents have really put a lot of pressure on the kids — everything has been organized, they’re all taking A.P. courses, then summer hits and they’re going to learning camps,” said Peter A. Spevak, a psychologist in Rockville, Md. Now, he said, with opportunities for achievement at a minimum this summer, “there is something to be said about sitting out on a warm evening and looking at the stars — they need more of this contemplation and self-evaluation.”
Sara Germano, a senior at Fordham University who was hoping to find a journalism internship in New York, ended up moving home to Albany, where she found part-time work as a research assistant. And she has gotten to know her family again after an educational career that usually led her off on one adventure or another during vacations, so that, she said, “I come home on Thanksgiving, they don’t even know who I am.”
Now she has time to watch Yankees games with her younger brother and sister, and in the evenings, she sometimes drops in to the bar that her father owns. At 21, she is now able to share a drink with him and to talk sports and politics with the regulars.
“I think he enjoys having a child who’s matured and can talk about adult things and enjoy adult pastimes,” she said. “Since I’ve been gone so long, it’s all new territory.”
Her father, Phil Germano, agreed. “She completes the family,” he said.
Will Ehrenfeld, right, a Tufts senior, hoped for a White House summer internship but ended up with no job. He’s shown with Josh, his brother, a college graduate who is also jobless.
Say Hello to Underachieving
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: July 2, 2009
ERIN McAULIFFE had a vision for this summer. A 20-year-old junior at Bowdoin College, she had lined up an internship at a New York publishing house and imagined stimulating days leafing through manuscripts, and evenings of sparkling conversation with friends at downtown cafes.
She ended up starring in a real-life version of the movie “Adventureland” instead. In that recent comedy, a recent college graduate is forced by economic hardship to work at a suburban amusement park.
Life is imitating art for Ms. McAuliffe. With her parents unable to help bankroll three months of unpaid work in Manhattan, she gave up the internship offer and moved home to Andover, Mass., where she took the one job she could find: working 12-hour days at an amusement park. For $7.80 an hour, she tends bumper cars and the big swing, and endures the many carny jokes of her friends.
“It’s rain or shine,” Ms. McAuliffe said dryly about her job. “You’d be really surprised how many people go to an amusement park in the pouring rain.”
School’s out for summer 2009, and instead of getting a jump on the boundless futures that parents and colleges always promised them, students this year are receiving a reality check.
The well-paying summer jobs that in previous years seemed like a birthright have grown scarce, and pre-professional internships are disappearing as companies cut back across the board. Recession-strapped parents don’t always have the means or will to bankroll starter apartments or art tours of Tuscany.
So many college students and recent graduates are heading to where they least expected: back home, and facing an unfamiliar prospect: downtime, maybe too much of it. To a high-achieving generation whose schedules were once crammed with extracurricular activities meant to propel them into college, it feels like an empty summer — eerie, and a bit scary.
“Things have changed drastically,” said Ron Alsop, author of “The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace,” a book that only last year portrayed young workers as entitled and in a hurry. “It has to be a huge wake-up call for this generation.”
Numbers provide the backdrop to the story — not just the grimly familiar national unemployment rate, 9.5 percent in June, but the even scarier, less publicized unemployment figure for 16- to 19-year-olds, which has hit 24 percent, up from 16.1 percent two years ago. Internships available to college students have fallen 21 percent since last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Across the country, there are countless tales like that of Morgan Henderson, a student at the University of San Francisco, who, along with friends, planned a big road trip to Las Vegas this summer. With so few of the friends finding jobs, they downgraded plans to a road trip to Reno, then to no road trip at all. They’re spending time watching DVDs at one another’s houses.
Or Kathryn Estrada, a high school senior in Hialeah, Fla., who has no summer job after Circuit City, which employed her during the school year, went out of business. She is finding that even this early in the summer, attempts to while away the hours playing Scrabble and Cranium have grown stale. “We all just wish school would start so we would have something to do,” she said.
Or Will Ehrenfeld, a political science major at Tufts, who worked at a think tank last year and this summer was aiming higher: a White House internship. When the White House didn’t come through, and neither did the State Department or dozens of companies he applied to, Mr. Ehrenfeld, 20, moved back home to Vernon, Conn. Even the local Boston Market had no work.
Mr. Ehrenfeld, a top student who has always held leadership positions in clubs and academic groups, loafs through days, rolling out of bed around 11 and reading or playing trumpet or guitar. Nights, he sometimes meets up with friends who also have nowhere that they have to be in the morning, and they share a few cheap beers. “At worst, misery continues to have company,” he said.
While young people in earlier decades might have cherished the chance to goof off and sleep in for a few months, the current generation, experts like Mr. Alsop are apt to point out, “have always been told they can achieve anything they can put their mind to.”
“They were always given trophies just for showing up,” he said. “Now, they’re being told ‘no’ when they really want a job or an internship.”
To them, a staycation at Mom and Dad’s can feel more like house arrest.
If the only problem were tedium, students might find a recessionary summer unpleasant but endurable. But some expressed concern that the economic gloom might be a preview of harsh career realities that await.
“The worst thing about this summer is the lack of hope felt by so many kids,” Lydia Wiledon, a Barnard undergraduate, wrote in an e-mail message. “College students ready to thrust themselves into work find nothing, and those most in need are edged out by older, more skilled individuals who are overqualified for such foot-in-the-door opportunities. I worry about how this employment drought will affect my generation in the future.”
There may be reason for concern. Students who enter the job market during a recession can see their wages lag behind comparable students who graduated in better times for as long as 15 years, according to a recent study by Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management.
Even for students who remain optimistic about their long-term career prospects, an unexpected move home — back under the roof of Mom and Dad, where many had barely alighted in years except for brief Thanksgiving breaks — can require an attitude adjustment.
“Communication patterns are different when students come back from college,” said Roni Cohen-Sandler, a clinical psychologist in Weston, Conn., specializing in adolescent issues. “Kids may not be as interested in sharing who they’re hanging out with and why. The level of disclosure is different, and parents have not made the shift in their mind. They’re asking a lot of questions, and students are chafing.”
When students try to stave off the boredom by watching television, parents may wonder aloud if there is not a more productive use of their time. Curfews and household chores that seemed natural at 16 can seem oppressive at 20.
This has been the experience of Kelly Fabian, an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, who hoped to study art history in Rome this summer, but returned home to Orange County, Calif., instead, when her family asked her to work to help pay her tuition.
It’s an adjustment, she said. Living on her own for two years, including summers, she got used to doing chores like washing dishes and taking out the recycling — but not when instructed to.
“It’s not weird doing them, it’s weird having someone tell you to do them,” she said.
Ms. Fabian said she was close to her parents and valued the time spent together, but the new proximity did take getting used to, on all sides. Ms. Fabian, 20, found work at a cable-television company, and with four family members sharing two cars, she commutes for nearly an hour each way with her father, Jim Fabian.
The opportunity to bond is, in theory, delightful, she said — but does it have to be at 7 a.m.? “My Dad is a morning person and I most certainly am not,” she said. She needs a second cup of coffee just to make her lips move. When they reach for the radio knobs to pass the time, father and daughter encounter a generation gap: He likes sports talk radio; she would rather listen to the New Pornographers.
“I’m a relic of the ’70s — I still listen to the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac,” said Mr. Fabian, a financial consultant. “Her music, I’ll just describe it as different.“
Some other college students unexpectedly back home described frictions with their families that were less amusing and more fraught. Daniel Bortz, a junior at Syracuse University who was unable to find a summer job for the first time in five years, told of unpleasant friction in his household over money.
In the short term, the lost summer of 2009 might actually be a blessing, some psychologists said, especially because members of this generation have lived their lives like track stars trying to run a marathon at the pace of a 100-meter dash — their parents typically waiting at every turn with a stopwatch.
“Parents have really put a lot of pressure on the kids — everything has been organized, they’re all taking A.P. courses, then summer hits and they’re going to learning camps,” said Peter A. Spevak, a psychologist in Rockville, Md. Now, he said, with opportunities for achievement at a minimum this summer, “there is something to be said about sitting out on a warm evening and looking at the stars — they need more of this contemplation and self-evaluation.”
Sara Germano, a senior at Fordham University who was hoping to find a journalism internship in New York, ended up moving home to Albany, where she found part-time work as a research assistant. And she has gotten to know her family again after an educational career that usually led her off on one adventure or another during vacations, so that, she said, “I come home on Thanksgiving, they don’t even know who I am.”
Now she has time to watch Yankees games with her younger brother and sister, and in the evenings, she sometimes drops in to the bar that her father owns. At 21, she is now able to share a drink with him and to talk sports and politics with the regulars.
“I think he enjoys having a child who’s matured and can talk about adult things and enjoy adult pastimes,” she said. “Since I’ve been gone so long, it’s all new territory.”
Her father, Phil Germano, agreed. “She completes the family,” he said.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
SIT Ireland
When I was studying abroad in Ireland during the fall semester of 2008, I composed a lengthy research paper which, turns out, was pretty ok. It was one of three that was posted by the program on World Learning's website.
Here's the link. Check it out.
Here's the link. Check it out.
Last Regular Column
This is the final "Stuff Tufts People Like" column published in the Tufts Daily during the Spring semester of 2009. There is a commencement issue, to be published May 17 (commencement), with one more column from yours truly in it, but this is the last thing most readers will see from me.
The Bubble
Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
If you spend most of your time at Tufts and rarely venture off campus for anything more than a latte at Starbucks or a movie in Davis Square, you might become convinced that there no longer is a world outside the gates of our Medford/Somerville campus. Even if you regularly visit, shop and dine all around the Boston area, it’s easy to forget what real life away from Tufts is like. It happens to me on occasion. I get stuck in a routine: wake up, go to class, club meetings, anti-bias rallies, party on the weekend, then repeat ad nauseum. It can be difficult to keep in touch with what happens in the “real world” when we’re so insulated inside the Tufts Bubble.
Likewise, people can forget societal norms and the way things tend to work elsewhere when they are at Tufts for long stretches. When I go home for a weekend or for break, I’m often surprised that my friends do, in fact, say words like “fag” without a second thought about the impact it might have. After freshman year, I got in a serious argument with a good friend of mine over his use of that word because after living at Tufts, I knew that it promoted societal bigotry and heteronormativity (a word that, honestly, I have never heard outside of Tufts).
Then, as I became re-attuned to the norms of my hometown, I started thinking that if he wanted to use “fag” as an insult after I had laid out my arguments against it, I really had no place to tell him otherwise. Unlike Tufts, the real world — in my experience, at least — doesn’t have a bias awareness team; there is no thought police, and so slurs which really hurt people are occasionally uttered.
I’m not sure that I made the right decision to overlook future uses of the word, but I was concerned that I was starting arguments for the wrong reasons — I was never personally offended by the word “faggot,” but I still thought I should try to stop it from being used, for whatever reason. Doesn’t it feel good to accuse someone of bigotry? I enjoyed it, I really did. The moral indignation and self-righteousness just flowing through your veins — you feel empowered, like you’ve grabbed the higher ground and you’re not giving it up. In that moment, it feels good to be angry because you’re right, the “other” is wrong, and you’re fighting the good fight.
This is what occurred with many of those at the anti-bias, anti-drunk-freshman rally on Thursday. Even people from outside Tufts came and basked in the glow of righteous indignation emanating from people at the rally who take any and every opportunity to get angry and offended, regardless of whether they themselves have been specifically targeted. It becomes like an addiction — if you’re not decrying racism or sexism or whatever the -ism of the day is, you start to feel adrift and without direction. But that doesn’t justify the idiotic behavior being exhibited.
The real anger we have all seen in the pages of the Daily and at the rally wasn’t, in my opinion, over the alleged racial violence that occurred two weeks ago. It was about puncturing the Bubble. Let’s admit: Most of us are very proud to tell people that we go to Tufts, and when something like this happens, it betrays the image most of us have of our school. We think we go to a progressive, unbiased university that is not only not racist, it’s anti-racist.
So, when I write a column that questions the campus’ reaction to a particular incident that seems extremely clear-cut to some, I become a target. I’ve been ridiculed for my opinions in any number of ways and called terrible names that I won’t repeat in print, but the only comments that bothered me were those that suggested that there must be some unknown reason belying my opinions, whether it was my own race, my lack of education or sheer ignorance. I was told to take classes, read books, and even invited to meet by some readers, all in the interest of enlightening me and/or converting me to buy into every bit of liberal orthodoxy that Tufts represents to these individuals.
Want to know a secret? I have read books. I’ve taken classes that deal very explicitly with racism and discrimination, and I can’t control my whiteness any more than the Korean Students Association students who were involved in the fight can control their race. The fact that I have a different point of view doesn’t mean that I don’t know or understand the issues, and this assumption that I must be unaware of critical race theory because I don’t buy into it really bothers me.
This punctured my Tufts Bubble. I foolishly thought that, while Tufts has many viewpoints and a variety of backgrounds represented on campus, mutual respect exists which makes discussing and acknowledging our differences so fruitful and beneficial. I also was under the (apparently ridiculous) impression that no one’s view would be disregarded or given less credence because of his or her background — even if that background is straight, white and male. It turns out that I was wrong.
The Bubble
Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
If you spend most of your time at Tufts and rarely venture off campus for anything more than a latte at Starbucks or a movie in Davis Square, you might become convinced that there no longer is a world outside the gates of our Medford/Somerville campus. Even if you regularly visit, shop and dine all around the Boston area, it’s easy to forget what real life away from Tufts is like. It happens to me on occasion. I get stuck in a routine: wake up, go to class, club meetings, anti-bias rallies, party on the weekend, then repeat ad nauseum. It can be difficult to keep in touch with what happens in the “real world” when we’re so insulated inside the Tufts Bubble.
Likewise, people can forget societal norms and the way things tend to work elsewhere when they are at Tufts for long stretches. When I go home for a weekend or for break, I’m often surprised that my friends do, in fact, say words like “fag” without a second thought about the impact it might have. After freshman year, I got in a serious argument with a good friend of mine over his use of that word because after living at Tufts, I knew that it promoted societal bigotry and heteronormativity (a word that, honestly, I have never heard outside of Tufts).
Then, as I became re-attuned to the norms of my hometown, I started thinking that if he wanted to use “fag” as an insult after I had laid out my arguments against it, I really had no place to tell him otherwise. Unlike Tufts, the real world — in my experience, at least — doesn’t have a bias awareness team; there is no thought police, and so slurs which really hurt people are occasionally uttered.
I’m not sure that I made the right decision to overlook future uses of the word, but I was concerned that I was starting arguments for the wrong reasons — I was never personally offended by the word “faggot,” but I still thought I should try to stop it from being used, for whatever reason. Doesn’t it feel good to accuse someone of bigotry? I enjoyed it, I really did. The moral indignation and self-righteousness just flowing through your veins — you feel empowered, like you’ve grabbed the higher ground and you’re not giving it up. In that moment, it feels good to be angry because you’re right, the “other” is wrong, and you’re fighting the good fight.
This is what occurred with many of those at the anti-bias, anti-drunk-freshman rally on Thursday. Even people from outside Tufts came and basked in the glow of righteous indignation emanating from people at the rally who take any and every opportunity to get angry and offended, regardless of whether they themselves have been specifically targeted. It becomes like an addiction — if you’re not decrying racism or sexism or whatever the -ism of the day is, you start to feel adrift and without direction. But that doesn’t justify the idiotic behavior being exhibited.
The real anger we have all seen in the pages of the Daily and at the rally wasn’t, in my opinion, over the alleged racial violence that occurred two weeks ago. It was about puncturing the Bubble. Let’s admit: Most of us are very proud to tell people that we go to Tufts, and when something like this happens, it betrays the image most of us have of our school. We think we go to a progressive, unbiased university that is not only not racist, it’s anti-racist.
So, when I write a column that questions the campus’ reaction to a particular incident that seems extremely clear-cut to some, I become a target. I’ve been ridiculed for my opinions in any number of ways and called terrible names that I won’t repeat in print, but the only comments that bothered me were those that suggested that there must be some unknown reason belying my opinions, whether it was my own race, my lack of education or sheer ignorance. I was told to take classes, read books, and even invited to meet by some readers, all in the interest of enlightening me and/or converting me to buy into every bit of liberal orthodoxy that Tufts represents to these individuals.
Want to know a secret? I have read books. I’ve taken classes that deal very explicitly with racism and discrimination, and I can’t control my whiteness any more than the Korean Students Association students who were involved in the fight can control their race. The fact that I have a different point of view doesn’t mean that I don’t know or understand the issues, and this assumption that I must be unaware of critical race theory because I don’t buy into it really bothers me.
This punctured my Tufts Bubble. I foolishly thought that, while Tufts has many viewpoints and a variety of backgrounds represented on campus, mutual respect exists which makes discussing and acknowledging our differences so fruitful and beneficial. I also was under the (apparently ridiculous) impression that no one’s view would be disregarded or given less credence because of his or her background — even if that background is straight, white and male. It turns out that I was wrong.
Shout out? What what!?
So, in the wake of the previous column, I got called out in an "anti-bias rally" that happened a few days later (in response to the original incident, not my column--at least ostensibly). See below the article from the Tufts Daily.
Rally goers: We will not be silenced
Ben Gittleson
Published: Friday, April 17, 2009
Around 200 people gathered on the Tisch Library patio and steps midday yesterday, decrying hate crimes and bias incidents against all groups and demanding that the administration take substantive action to prevent racism and hatred from continuing to pervade the Hill.
Under a sunny sky, students, administrators, faculty members and others spoke against the prevalence of discrimination, stereotyping of and biases against Asian-Americans and other minority groups. A large percentage of attendees wore red clothing to mark the rally, which had the goal of raising awareness of what many presenters said were often seemingly invisible acts of hate.
An altercation in the early-morning hours last Thursday between members of the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a freshman spurred the organization of the event. The administration is conducting a judicial investigation into the alleged bias incident, which many rally participants yesterday labeled a hate crime.
"If this was truly an isolated incident, we wouldn't have given it too much thought," said Jenny Lau, the incoming president of the Asian American Alliance, during a speech yesterday. Lau, a junior, explained the rally's aims and said the incident was representative of a much greater problem.
"As students, we have the right to feel respected and safe on ... campus," she said, calling on the administration to include the study of Asian-Americans in the curriculum. "The Asian-American voice is only one example of many voices of people who have been ... marginalized."
Last Thursday morning, a drunken freshman shouted racial slurs at a group of 13 Korean students practicing in the main lounge of Lewis Hall for their weekend culture show, KSA members at the scene said; the freshman told the Daily in a statement that he yelled obscenities, but he did not mention uttering racial epithets or being drunk.
The racially charged alleged remarks came after violence broke out between the KSA members and the freshman, according to KSA members. Both parties said the other side started the scuffle.
The Daily is withholding the freshman's name because the administration has not taken any action against him.
Yesterday's rally did not focus primarily on the details of the event itself, but rather on the wider implications of what many speakers called hate incidents that occur too frequently.
KSA Co-President Young Jeong spoke on behalf of two members of his group who were in the Lewis Hall lounge on Thursday morning.
"'F--k you ... Go back to your country,'" he told attendees the freshman had said that night. "Imagine these words being thrown at you."
"We are not here to ask for retaliation or revenge or any kind of punishment," Jeong, a senior, said. "We are here to raise awareness ... to give voice to those who have been silenced."
Senior Lecturer of American Studies Jean Wu denounced certain online discourse, including comments on TuftsDaily.com, that suggested rally organizers and supporters are "addicted" to reacting to bias incidents and hate crimes, she said.
The remarks the freshman allegedly made, she explained, cut deep.
"For Asian-Americans, these words are not the garden-variety putdown," she said.
University President Lawrence Bacow's chief of staff, Michael Baenen, attended the meeting in Bacow's place.
"Expressions of bias are insidious ... they are always hurtful, they erode community and they are not what we want Tufts to be about," he said. "I don't think any of us, especially those in Ballou, thinks we are where we want to be."
But later during yesterday's event, Lau chastised Bacow for sending a representative in his place and Baenen for not using a stronger term than "bias."
Reached later for comment, Baenen said that Bacow had been on the Boston campus attending meetings with overseers of the School of Medicine. Those meetings had been planned months in advance, Baenen added.
Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon, the city's first Asian-American councilor, spoke at the rally, too. He said that he had experienced hateful speech when he was on the campaign trail.
"This is not an isolated incident," said Yoon, who is running for mayor of Boston. "It's something that's endemic in our society."
Asian-Americans have long had to face stereotypes of them as passive, defenseless members of society, although other groups have had to endure hate, as well, Yoon said.
"When injustice or racial hatred happens to one of us," he said, "it happens to all of us."
Seniors Sofia Nelson and Jen Bailey told the crowd about similar incidents that have occurred in the past few years, saying the fact that they were attending yet another rally against bias was disappointing.
Nelson also railed against what she called "unacceptable" media coverage of the incident, particularly calling out Daily columnist and junior Will Ehrenfeld's Tuesday article, "Stuff Tufts People Like: Alleging bias." She criticized the piece in an op-ed she co-authored with senior Sarah Robbins that appeared in yesterday's Daily.
Nelson expressed anger at a decision by Daily editors to insert the word "allegedly" at certain points in her article that dealt with the particulars of last Thursday morning's events.
"Nothing about this incident is alleged," Nelson said yesterday. "I know what happened."
Two students delivered spoken-word pieces during the latter half of yesterday's presentation, poetically expounding on race and stereotypes in America. A Harvard University lecturer and a lawyer from the University of Massachusetts Boston also spoke.
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin, who delivered a short speech, said that he was proud of yesterday's rally, even though it came during the biannual diversity-focused Telescope event that yesterday brought admitted students to campus.
"I want prospective students to see Tufts in action," he said.
Over 40 student groups co-sponsored the event, which was organized by members of the KSA and other students encouraged to act after last week's incident, according to Kim. Part of its title, "We will not be silenced," became a refrain during the rally.
A number of Greek organizations came out for the event, including a couple Alpha Omicron Pi sisters who handed out stickers reading, "Hate is not a Greek value."
Estelle Davis, a senior, wore red and stayed on the patio after the event. She said she attended yesterday because the conversation that arose after last week's incident was "an incredibly emotional, personal experience" for her.
"This points to ... a lack of understanding about the way race and power structures work at Tufts," she said, calling on the administration to act by altering the curriculum and hiring more diverse faculty. "It's more than just talking about it ... Not just saying racism is bad, but saying that we understand that this is part of a deeper issue."
Rally goers: We will not be silenced
Ben Gittleson
Published: Friday, April 17, 2009
Around 200 people gathered on the Tisch Library patio and steps midday yesterday, decrying hate crimes and bias incidents against all groups and demanding that the administration take substantive action to prevent racism and hatred from continuing to pervade the Hill.
Under a sunny sky, students, administrators, faculty members and others spoke against the prevalence of discrimination, stereotyping of and biases against Asian-Americans and other minority groups. A large percentage of attendees wore red clothing to mark the rally, which had the goal of raising awareness of what many presenters said were often seemingly invisible acts of hate.
An altercation in the early-morning hours last Thursday between members of the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a freshman spurred the organization of the event. The administration is conducting a judicial investigation into the alleged bias incident, which many rally participants yesterday labeled a hate crime.
"If this was truly an isolated incident, we wouldn't have given it too much thought," said Jenny Lau, the incoming president of the Asian American Alliance, during a speech yesterday. Lau, a junior, explained the rally's aims and said the incident was representative of a much greater problem.
"As students, we have the right to feel respected and safe on ... campus," she said, calling on the administration to include the study of Asian-Americans in the curriculum. "The Asian-American voice is only one example of many voices of people who have been ... marginalized."
Last Thursday morning, a drunken freshman shouted racial slurs at a group of 13 Korean students practicing in the main lounge of Lewis Hall for their weekend culture show, KSA members at the scene said; the freshman told the Daily in a statement that he yelled obscenities, but he did not mention uttering racial epithets or being drunk.
The racially charged alleged remarks came after violence broke out between the KSA members and the freshman, according to KSA members. Both parties said the other side started the scuffle.
The Daily is withholding the freshman's name because the administration has not taken any action against him.
Yesterday's rally did not focus primarily on the details of the event itself, but rather on the wider implications of what many speakers called hate incidents that occur too frequently.
KSA Co-President Young Jeong spoke on behalf of two members of his group who were in the Lewis Hall lounge on Thursday morning.
"'F--k you ... Go back to your country,'" he told attendees the freshman had said that night. "Imagine these words being thrown at you."
"We are not here to ask for retaliation or revenge or any kind of punishment," Jeong, a senior, said. "We are here to raise awareness ... to give voice to those who have been silenced."
Senior Lecturer of American Studies Jean Wu denounced certain online discourse, including comments on TuftsDaily.com, that suggested rally organizers and supporters are "addicted" to reacting to bias incidents and hate crimes, she said.
The remarks the freshman allegedly made, she explained, cut deep.
"For Asian-Americans, these words are not the garden-variety putdown," she said.
University President Lawrence Bacow's chief of staff, Michael Baenen, attended the meeting in Bacow's place.
"Expressions of bias are insidious ... they are always hurtful, they erode community and they are not what we want Tufts to be about," he said. "I don't think any of us, especially those in Ballou, thinks we are where we want to be."
But later during yesterday's event, Lau chastised Bacow for sending a representative in his place and Baenen for not using a stronger term than "bias."
Reached later for comment, Baenen said that Bacow had been on the Boston campus attending meetings with overseers of the School of Medicine. Those meetings had been planned months in advance, Baenen added.
Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon, the city's first Asian-American councilor, spoke at the rally, too. He said that he had experienced hateful speech when he was on the campaign trail.
"This is not an isolated incident," said Yoon, who is running for mayor of Boston. "It's something that's endemic in our society."
Asian-Americans have long had to face stereotypes of them as passive, defenseless members of society, although other groups have had to endure hate, as well, Yoon said.
"When injustice or racial hatred happens to one of us," he said, "it happens to all of us."
Seniors Sofia Nelson and Jen Bailey told the crowd about similar incidents that have occurred in the past few years, saying the fact that they were attending yet another rally against bias was disappointing.
Nelson also railed against what she called "unacceptable" media coverage of the incident, particularly calling out Daily columnist and junior Will Ehrenfeld's Tuesday article, "Stuff Tufts People Like: Alleging bias." She criticized the piece in an op-ed she co-authored with senior Sarah Robbins that appeared in yesterday's Daily.
Nelson expressed anger at a decision by Daily editors to insert the word "allegedly" at certain points in her article that dealt with the particulars of last Thursday morning's events.
"Nothing about this incident is alleged," Nelson said yesterday. "I know what happened."
Two students delivered spoken-word pieces during the latter half of yesterday's presentation, poetically expounding on race and stereotypes in America. A Harvard University lecturer and a lawyer from the University of Massachusetts Boston also spoke.
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin, who delivered a short speech, said that he was proud of yesterday's rally, even though it came during the biannual diversity-focused Telescope event that yesterday brought admitted students to campus.
"I want prospective students to see Tufts in action," he said.
Over 40 student groups co-sponsored the event, which was organized by members of the KSA and other students encouraged to act after last week's incident, according to Kim. Part of its title, "We will not be silenced," became a refrain during the rally.
A number of Greek organizations came out for the event, including a couple Alpha Omicron Pi sisters who handed out stickers reading, "Hate is not a Greek value."
Estelle Davis, a senior, wore red and stayed on the patio after the event. She said she attended yesterday because the conversation that arose after last week's incident was "an incredibly emotional, personal experience" for her.
"This points to ... a lack of understanding about the way race and power structures work at Tufts," she said, calling on the administration to act by altering the curriculum and hiring more diverse faculty. "It's more than just talking about it ... Not just saying racism is bad, but saying that we understand that this is part of a deeper issue."
Alleging Bias
This article discusses the issues surround an altercation, the events of which can be learned about here. This is the one that made me famous (sort of), and also probably the most hated guy on campus, for a little while at least. Check out the comments (and myriad op-eds in response).
Published: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By now, everyone on campus has heard about the alleged “bias incident” that occurred in Lewis Hall last week involving a dance group from the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a drunk freshman. Personally, I got multiple e-mails from friends and one from Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, and an invitation to a Facebook group (which at last count had 1,824 members), and I came across multiple Facebook “notes” about the situation.
I’m not going to rehash the story. It’s been told many times, with input from both sides. My question, though, is this: What makes this a bias incident? Was there “bias” when the drunk kid started imitating the dance the KSA was doing? Maybe — they were, after all, practicing a dance for a cultural show and not just an average, mainstream dance for an average, mainstream show; if TDC were rehearsing and the incident proceeded similarly, I don’t think it would be called a bias incident, and I doubt people would be quite so up in arms about the situation in general, but I’ll get to that.
Was it a bias incident because of what the kid said? He allegedly employed racial slurs to verbally abuse the dancers after the physical altercation had ended, calling them names and telling them to “go back to China.” I suppose this makes what up until then would have been considered merely a fight or, depending on which side you fall, assault, into an incident of racial bias. I know what you’re thinking: Well, duh. But think — what do the kid’s words after a fight have to do with the apparent motivations for the fight?
Before the violence began — we’re not sure who made the situation physical, although I’m inclined to believe the KSA members as they corroborate each others’ stories and they were sober — there was no mention of race or ethnicity. According to the Daily, the freshman allegedly called the dance “gay,” but most of us have been in groups where using that word as a placeholder for “stupid” or “bad” is common. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but it happens all the time, and the student body doesn’t get up in arms over something like that. In any event, no epithets were uttered, and no racial threats or comments were made before the violence began.
With these facts in mind, I find it hard to call what happened a bias incident; there was bias, and there was a conflict, but they seem somewhat disjointed. I’m really disconcerted by the focus on comments that were made at the tail end of the incident as a whole when a lot occurred beforehand that’s worthy of our attention. All signs point to serious physical violence with injuries sustained on both sides. And then — afterward — a drunk freshman allegedly said something stupid and yes, offensive, inappropriate, “biased” and totally unacceptable. I’m not here to defend this kid who, for the record, I don’t know and have never met. I don’t know any of the people involved, for that matter.
The real issue here isn’t racial insensitivity. It’s not “bias,” no matter how you define the word. We should be talking about violence and resorting to violence as a solution to our problems. My biggest worry is not a stupid comment that was obviously hurtful enough to raise a ridiculous furor at Tufts. Tufts people love an uproar, but apparently we also like overlooking the real issue. There’s no evidence the attack was motivated by racial anger or “bias,” but it’s obvious that both the freshman student and the five KSA members thought it totally acceptable to use violence to solve their dispute. I don’t want to discount the danger and perniciousness of racism, but it’s more worrisome to me that violence has so pervaded our school and our society that we find a racial slur more notable than a serious violent conflict.
Published: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By now, everyone on campus has heard about the alleged “bias incident” that occurred in Lewis Hall last week involving a dance group from the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a drunk freshman. Personally, I got multiple e-mails from friends and one from Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, and an invitation to a Facebook group (which at last count had 1,824 members), and I came across multiple Facebook “notes” about the situation.
I’m not going to rehash the story. It’s been told many times, with input from both sides. My question, though, is this: What makes this a bias incident? Was there “bias” when the drunk kid started imitating the dance the KSA was doing? Maybe — they were, after all, practicing a dance for a cultural show and not just an average, mainstream dance for an average, mainstream show; if TDC were rehearsing and the incident proceeded similarly, I don’t think it would be called a bias incident, and I doubt people would be quite so up in arms about the situation in general, but I’ll get to that.
Was it a bias incident because of what the kid said? He allegedly employed racial slurs to verbally abuse the dancers after the physical altercation had ended, calling them names and telling them to “go back to China.” I suppose this makes what up until then would have been considered merely a fight or, depending on which side you fall, assault, into an incident of racial bias. I know what you’re thinking: Well, duh. But think — what do the kid’s words after a fight have to do with the apparent motivations for the fight?
Before the violence began — we’re not sure who made the situation physical, although I’m inclined to believe the KSA members as they corroborate each others’ stories and they were sober — there was no mention of race or ethnicity. According to the Daily, the freshman allegedly called the dance “gay,” but most of us have been in groups where using that word as a placeholder for “stupid” or “bad” is common. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but it happens all the time, and the student body doesn’t get up in arms over something like that. In any event, no epithets were uttered, and no racial threats or comments were made before the violence began.
With these facts in mind, I find it hard to call what happened a bias incident; there was bias, and there was a conflict, but they seem somewhat disjointed. I’m really disconcerted by the focus on comments that were made at the tail end of the incident as a whole when a lot occurred beforehand that’s worthy of our attention. All signs point to serious physical violence with injuries sustained on both sides. And then — afterward — a drunk freshman allegedly said something stupid and yes, offensive, inappropriate, “biased” and totally unacceptable. I’m not here to defend this kid who, for the record, I don’t know and have never met. I don’t know any of the people involved, for that matter.
The real issue here isn’t racial insensitivity. It’s not “bias,” no matter how you define the word. We should be talking about violence and resorting to violence as a solution to our problems. My biggest worry is not a stupid comment that was obviously hurtful enough to raise a ridiculous furor at Tufts. Tufts people love an uproar, but apparently we also like overlooking the real issue. There’s no evidence the attack was motivated by racial anger or “bias,” but it’s obvious that both the freshman student and the five KSA members thought it totally acceptable to use violence to solve their dispute. I don’t want to discount the danger and perniciousness of racism, but it’s more worrisome to me that violence has so pervaded our school and our society that we find a racial slur more notable than a serious violent conflict.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Cliques (a lousy title, I'll admit)
This column definitely got the...most interesting reaction on the Daily website. Check out the comments here.
Published: Tuesday, April 7, 2009
As a resident assistant in a freshman residence hall last year, I had to make and put up name tags on each door before freshmen moved in. As move-in day approached and more upperclassmen arrived to help with orientation, I noticed that a few doors had something else posted next to the name tags that I had painstakingly created. On my floor these included welcome and invitation messages for international students, African-Americans, and Hispanics. The messages included encouragements for students to stop by the Africana Center or other locations for the respective groups and contact information for a potential mentor of a similar background.
At the time, I was curious but not really bothered by these messages. My thought was that it’s really not my place to pass judgment on overtures from and within communities that I don’t belong to and can’t identify with. Tufts people, including those mentioned above, have this need to belong — naturally. But the need here is more than just membership in a group of friends or even in a larger group with which they can identify.
Tufts people love belonging to a minority group or, at the very least, a group that at one point has been discriminated against. I’m going to call this a thirst for victimhood. Me? I tried pretty hard to find a maligned group that I could be a part of, but I’m a straight white male from Connecticut, I don’t identify with any religious sect, nor do I have particularly outrageous political views (although I have conservative friends who might disagree). I also wonder if there are some Republicans on this campus who are really moderates in disguise — political affiliation or beliefs can be an outlet for the thirst for victimhood too.
The interesting thing isn’t wanting to belong to a group of similar peers; psychologically and sociologically, it makes sense for a minority individual to seek out other minority group members within a larger group with whom they can identify. My concern is the self-segregation of these cliques, where groups typically don’t mix and “outsiders” aren’t welcome. We can have diversity, but it’s meaningless without social interaction.
I’m not talking about affirmative action or anything to do with admissions — it’s the orientation process and the Dean of Students’ Office’s explicit focus on encouraging cliques that concerns me. The Group of Six is comprised of the Africana Center, Asian American Center, International Center, Latino Center, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center, and Women’s Center. The centers are under the auspices of Dean Reitman’s office and also receive funding directly from his office. In their defense, the Group of Six houses mainly hosts events that are at least nominally open to all members of the Tufts community regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Sometimes this is true in practice, too — I’ve availed myself of the delicious food at several barbecues at the Africana and LGBT centers. But that isn’t really the point, is it?
Why is the Dean of Student Affairs pushing self-segregation within the student body? I applaud efforts from the Group of Six to make Tufts a welcoming environment for students from groups that have faced historical and often current discrimination, and I’m not trying to make an attack on these groups individually or the students involved. My problem, instead, is the compartmentalization and yes, segregation, albeit voluntary. What’s the benefit of diversity if everyone is separated?
Published: Tuesday, April 7, 2009
As a resident assistant in a freshman residence hall last year, I had to make and put up name tags on each door before freshmen moved in. As move-in day approached and more upperclassmen arrived to help with orientation, I noticed that a few doors had something else posted next to the name tags that I had painstakingly created. On my floor these included welcome and invitation messages for international students, African-Americans, and Hispanics. The messages included encouragements for students to stop by the Africana Center or other locations for the respective groups and contact information for a potential mentor of a similar background.
At the time, I was curious but not really bothered by these messages. My thought was that it’s really not my place to pass judgment on overtures from and within communities that I don’t belong to and can’t identify with. Tufts people, including those mentioned above, have this need to belong — naturally. But the need here is more than just membership in a group of friends or even in a larger group with which they can identify.
Tufts people love belonging to a minority group or, at the very least, a group that at one point has been discriminated against. I’m going to call this a thirst for victimhood. Me? I tried pretty hard to find a maligned group that I could be a part of, but I’m a straight white male from Connecticut, I don’t identify with any religious sect, nor do I have particularly outrageous political views (although I have conservative friends who might disagree). I also wonder if there are some Republicans on this campus who are really moderates in disguise — political affiliation or beliefs can be an outlet for the thirst for victimhood too.
The interesting thing isn’t wanting to belong to a group of similar peers; psychologically and sociologically, it makes sense for a minority individual to seek out other minority group members within a larger group with whom they can identify. My concern is the self-segregation of these cliques, where groups typically don’t mix and “outsiders” aren’t welcome. We can have diversity, but it’s meaningless without social interaction.
I’m not talking about affirmative action or anything to do with admissions — it’s the orientation process and the Dean of Students’ Office’s explicit focus on encouraging cliques that concerns me. The Group of Six is comprised of the Africana Center, Asian American Center, International Center, Latino Center, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center, and Women’s Center. The centers are under the auspices of Dean Reitman’s office and also receive funding directly from his office. In their defense, the Group of Six houses mainly hosts events that are at least nominally open to all members of the Tufts community regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Sometimes this is true in practice, too — I’ve availed myself of the delicious food at several barbecues at the Africana and LGBT centers. But that isn’t really the point, is it?
Why is the Dean of Student Affairs pushing self-segregation within the student body? I applaud efforts from the Group of Six to make Tufts a welcoming environment for students from groups that have faced historical and often current discrimination, and I’m not trying to make an attack on these groups individually or the students involved. My problem, instead, is the compartmentalization and yes, segregation, albeit voluntary. What’s the benefit of diversity if everyone is separated?
Column 3/31: Wingnuttery
Wingnuttery
Published: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
People at Tufts love thinking that they are the first to have an idea or hold a particular position, but if that’s not a tenable stance, Tufts people act this out by staking out extreme positions. This is particularly popular when it comes to politics. There aren’t a lot of moderate Democrats or conservative leaners, but there are lots of people who could be called radical. Conservatives at Tufts especially like to venture into wingnut territory.
Enter David Horowitz, wingnut extraordinaire, who came to campus on Monday to discuss ... well, since this column was submitted before his speech, I’m going to make up what he said, and feel free to fact-check me when I exaggerate or blatantly fabricate things (which is possible, but probably unnecessary given the subject matter*). The planned topic of his talk, given in Barnum 008 at 8:30 last night, was academic freedom. As a liberal peace and justice studies major, I have an odd feeling that he’s not that worried about my academic freedom.
You might remember Horowitz’s name from Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, organized by Horowitz, which brought Daniel Pipes to campus. The gist of the week was not only to raise awareness of Islamic terrorism itself, but also to highlight what he perceived as leftist support for terror.
Besides nobly raising consciousness of the threat from Islamo-Fascism — a term that I don’t quite understand, to be honest — Horowitz has been working on academic freedom for years. When I hear “academic freedom,” I picture unfettered class discussions and a general atmosphere of open and unconditional exchange of ideas. Horowitz’s conception of the term is a bit different. In addition to blaming them for terrorism, he derides left-leaning academics for indoctrinating students rather than teaching them. For Horowitz, academic freedom means hewing to a strict conservative ideology.
To prove his claims of liberal bias in higher education, Horowitz probably told a story about a student at the University of Northern Colorado who was supposedly failed for refusing to write a paper arguing that George W. Bush was a war criminal. Well, as it turns out, the story is pure fantasy. The university disputes each piece of the story, including the assignment, the grade, and the reasons for the grade. He may have also talked about a Penn State biology class which showed Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) before the 2004 elections, with the professor hoping to influence his students’ votes. Later, he admitted that this story couldn’t be verified and maybe could be untrue — which is the best we can hope for from Horowitz.
Unlike him, I have no problem with anyone speaking on campus — academic freedom, what it actually means, allows Horowitz to have a voice here. Good for him. But maybe we should warn him: His arch-nemesis Noam Chomsky was here this past Friday, speaking to a peace conference. In April 2005 at Columbia University, Horowitz distributed pamphlets portraying Chomsky, a linguistics professor at MIT, with a turban and long beard and the heading “The Ayatollah of Anti-American Hate.” I’ve met Noam Chomsky — he has extreme political views, certainly, but he’s really a nice, mild-mannered guy, and he’s certainly not a Muslim — not that there’s anything wrong with that. What point is Horowitz trying to make by dressing his foe in Middle Eastern garb? Unlike Horowitz, Chomsky doesn’t rely on theatrics or overblown rhetoric to make a point, and he doesn’t engage in attacks based on race or ethnicity — something else I bet you heard from Horowitz on Monday. That kind of “academic freedom” has no place at Tufts
Published: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
People at Tufts love thinking that they are the first to have an idea or hold a particular position, but if that’s not a tenable stance, Tufts people act this out by staking out extreme positions. This is particularly popular when it comes to politics. There aren’t a lot of moderate Democrats or conservative leaners, but there are lots of people who could be called radical. Conservatives at Tufts especially like to venture into wingnut territory.
Enter David Horowitz, wingnut extraordinaire, who came to campus on Monday to discuss ... well, since this column was submitted before his speech, I’m going to make up what he said, and feel free to fact-check me when I exaggerate or blatantly fabricate things (which is possible, but probably unnecessary given the subject matter*). The planned topic of his talk, given in Barnum 008 at 8:30 last night, was academic freedom. As a liberal peace and justice studies major, I have an odd feeling that he’s not that worried about my academic freedom.
You might remember Horowitz’s name from Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, organized by Horowitz, which brought Daniel Pipes to campus. The gist of the week was not only to raise awareness of Islamic terrorism itself, but also to highlight what he perceived as leftist support for terror.
Besides nobly raising consciousness of the threat from Islamo-Fascism — a term that I don’t quite understand, to be honest — Horowitz has been working on academic freedom for years. When I hear “academic freedom,” I picture unfettered class discussions and a general atmosphere of open and unconditional exchange of ideas. Horowitz’s conception of the term is a bit different. In addition to blaming them for terrorism, he derides left-leaning academics for indoctrinating students rather than teaching them. For Horowitz, academic freedom means hewing to a strict conservative ideology.
To prove his claims of liberal bias in higher education, Horowitz probably told a story about a student at the University of Northern Colorado who was supposedly failed for refusing to write a paper arguing that George W. Bush was a war criminal. Well, as it turns out, the story is pure fantasy. The university disputes each piece of the story, including the assignment, the grade, and the reasons for the grade. He may have also talked about a Penn State biology class which showed Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) before the 2004 elections, with the professor hoping to influence his students’ votes. Later, he admitted that this story couldn’t be verified and maybe could be untrue — which is the best we can hope for from Horowitz.
Unlike him, I have no problem with anyone speaking on campus — academic freedom, what it actually means, allows Horowitz to have a voice here. Good for him. But maybe we should warn him: His arch-nemesis Noam Chomsky was here this past Friday, speaking to a peace conference. In April 2005 at Columbia University, Horowitz distributed pamphlets portraying Chomsky, a linguistics professor at MIT, with a turban and long beard and the heading “The Ayatollah of Anti-American Hate.” I’ve met Noam Chomsky — he has extreme political views, certainly, but he’s really a nice, mild-mannered guy, and he’s certainly not a Muslim — not that there’s anything wrong with that. What point is Horowitz trying to make by dressing his foe in Middle Eastern garb? Unlike Horowitz, Chomsky doesn’t rely on theatrics or overblown rhetoric to make a point, and he doesn’t engage in attacks based on race or ethnicity — something else I bet you heard from Horowitz on Monday. That kind of “academic freedom” has no place at Tufts
Column 3/24
Organic food
Published: Tuesday, March 24, 2009
With Michael Pollan coming to campus today to give the Richard E. Snyder lecture, I decided it was time to address a glaring gap in knowledge that many Tufts people seem to have. It's about food. Organic food. Michael Pollan will almost certainly shed some light on this issue, and more intelligently than I ever could, but since the Daily comes out before the lecture, I get first dibs.
Lots of people assume that organic food is healthier, more ethical, better for the environment and, in nearly every way, superior to food without that organic label. But what does organic really mean? If you're walking through Shaw's or any other grocery store, how do you make a decision between the bananas with the organic sticker and those without? They look the same and taste the same to me; to most consumers, the only noticeable difference is the price and that sticker.
Organic food, according to the USDA, is free of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, does not contain genetically modified ingredients and is free of hormones and antibiotics. Well, mostly. In fact, food that carries the USDA organic label is only required to be 95 percent organic; that is, a product can display the label if everything in it is organic except a small amount. Products with between 70 and 95 percent organic ingredients can display an alternate label that promises "made with organic ingredients."
This still sounds good, right? Organic food is good for a number of purposes -- if you want your food to be friendlier to the environment, for example, organic seems like the way to go. No pesticides or insecticides means organic food must be great for the environment, right? Sort of. If you really hope to reduce the carbon footprint from your diet, experts agree that locally grown food is the best way to go. Likewise, a vegetarian or vegan diet would have a significantly lower impact on the environment than even an organic, locally grown omnivore diet.
Perhaps you eat organic food because you're concerned about the way animals are treated before they are slaughtered. I'm not a vegetarian, but it occurs to me that if you are concerned about cruelty to animals, you probably shouldn't be eating steak at all -- even if the beef is organic. But organic meat isn't necessarily raised in a more humane way than other types of meat. Animals must be given time outdoors; how much time is left up to the farmers. And, interestingly enough, much controversy has arisen over the organic labeling process itself. Inspections are contracted out by the USDA, and oversight is minimal at best.
This begs the question: Is organic food safer or better for you? This is the third and arguably final potential reason for selecting organic products. Around the beginning of February, there was an outbreak of salmonella in peanut products. The contamination was traced back to factories in Texas and Georgia that were found to be totally unsanitary but, according to the USDA, organic. Some of your favorite organic companies like Clif Bar and Cascadian Farm had items that were contaminated with salmonella and pulled from shelves.
So should you buy organic? Sure, if you can afford it. Organic food is generally safer, though not always, and the label does require all-natural fertilizers and pesticides, which is good. But if you have the choice, buy local AND organic. Try to limit the meat you eat in order to improve health and reduce your carbon footprint. And lastly, as Michael Pollan will surely explain, stop eating processed food-like substances and stick to fresh produce as much as possible.
Being Busy
Next column
Being busy
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
OMG! It's the week before spring break, and I can't believe how much work I have to do in one week! This is so ridiculous; I don't even understand how any five professors in the world could assign so much work in such a short period of time. Don't they know that I have 32 club meetings and a study group to go to this week? I am crazy busy and it's out of control!
Just kidding. I'm only a little busy, but as a Tufts student, I feel this strange urge to act busy all the time. Don't get me wrong, I often have a lot of work and meetings and rehearsals and -- you know -- other stuff, and my life gets as hectic as anyone's ... but I deal with it. I have a hard time understanding how so many of my friends and acquaintances at this school manufacture ways to keep busy. It's shocking, really, because I love having free time. I was busy this weekend, though. Between waking up at noon, watching television, playing online poker, picking up dinner and stopping by a few parties, Saturday was an extremely full day. But you don't hear me complaining.
My housemate Kevin is a perfect example. He is up and out of the house before me every morning -- not a difficult feat by any stretch of the imagination -- and he's never home before 9 p.m. He doesn't sleep, either. I don't know exactly what classes he takes or all the clubs he's involved in; we talk about being busy more than anything substantive. What does he do all day and night? I can't figure it out exactly, but my guess is that he's either a drug mule or a horse whisperer (what a great movie), or possibly a combination of the two. The point is that he, like so many of our peers, invents ways to be busy and fill all 24 hours of the day with activity, even if it's meaningless -- not that drug smuggling and horse whispering aren't worthwhile pursuits.
Tufts people are also excellent at one-upping each other about the amount of work they have. I have stopped talking to other students entirely about my workload, because it just makes me feel like I'm not working very hard (and I've always taken 4.5 to 5.5 credits).
Oh, you've got a test and a 20-page paper due this week? Well, your friend has three tests and an Arabic composition. And that's not all: I know a girl who has two 15-page papers, a math test and a quiz in econometrics. I imagine Kevin has twice that much work anyway, so she shouldn't get a big head about her workload, either.
I'm not sure if it's some sort of sadistic characteristic or just the underground competitiveness of Tufts shining through in a curious way, but this is a ridiculous part of this school that I can't wrap my head around. Is it a coping mechanism? Maybe if you keep running around like a chicken with your head cut off, you won't actually have to worry about the real problems you have. Perhaps talking about having a lot of work is another method for procrastination -- if you're talking about midterms, you certainly aren't studying for them. Of course, this is counterproductive and, in fact, exacerbating the problems of constantly being busy because you're wasting time talking about being busy. It's ironic, really. I have a feeling, though, that this is one part of most students' schedules that won't get skipped over in favor of more work or studying.
Being busy
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
OMG! It's the week before spring break, and I can't believe how much work I have to do in one week! This is so ridiculous; I don't even understand how any five professors in the world could assign so much work in such a short period of time. Don't they know that I have 32 club meetings and a study group to go to this week? I am crazy busy and it's out of control!
Just kidding. I'm only a little busy, but as a Tufts student, I feel this strange urge to act busy all the time. Don't get me wrong, I often have a lot of work and meetings and rehearsals and -- you know -- other stuff, and my life gets as hectic as anyone's ... but I deal with it. I have a hard time understanding how so many of my friends and acquaintances at this school manufacture ways to keep busy. It's shocking, really, because I love having free time. I was busy this weekend, though. Between waking up at noon, watching television, playing online poker, picking up dinner and stopping by a few parties, Saturday was an extremely full day. But you don't hear me complaining.
My housemate Kevin is a perfect example. He is up and out of the house before me every morning -- not a difficult feat by any stretch of the imagination -- and he's never home before 9 p.m. He doesn't sleep, either. I don't know exactly what classes he takes or all the clubs he's involved in; we talk about being busy more than anything substantive. What does he do all day and night? I can't figure it out exactly, but my guess is that he's either a drug mule or a horse whisperer (what a great movie), or possibly a combination of the two. The point is that he, like so many of our peers, invents ways to be busy and fill all 24 hours of the day with activity, even if it's meaningless -- not that drug smuggling and horse whispering aren't worthwhile pursuits.
Tufts people are also excellent at one-upping each other about the amount of work they have. I have stopped talking to other students entirely about my workload, because it just makes me feel like I'm not working very hard (and I've always taken 4.5 to 5.5 credits).
Oh, you've got a test and a 20-page paper due this week? Well, your friend has three tests and an Arabic composition. And that's not all: I know a girl who has two 15-page papers, a math test and a quiz in econometrics. I imagine Kevin has twice that much work anyway, so she shouldn't get a big head about her workload, either.
I'm not sure if it's some sort of sadistic characteristic or just the underground competitiveness of Tufts shining through in a curious way, but this is a ridiculous part of this school that I can't wrap my head around. Is it a coping mechanism? Maybe if you keep running around like a chicken with your head cut off, you won't actually have to worry about the real problems you have. Perhaps talking about having a lot of work is another method for procrastination -- if you're talking about midterms, you certainly aren't studying for them. Of course, this is counterproductive and, in fact, exacerbating the problems of constantly being busy because you're wasting time talking about being busy. It's ironic, really. I have a feeling, though, that this is one part of most students' schedules that won't get skipped over in favor of more work or studying.
Monday, March 9, 2009
First Post @ Red, Brown & Blue
I'm the newest addition to the Tufts University admissions office's politics blog, and I'll cross-post my entries from there right here for your enjoyment.
Hello and Introduction
After realizing that this blog has quickly turned into Mike Hawley’s private soapbox for his crazy rantings, I decided that I have to get on here, if only for a brief post. Also, I suppose I should introduce myself as that new guy on the Left of the banner (the good-looking one). I’m Will Ehrenfeld, class of 2010, and as you may have guessed, I’ll be representing the Democratic point of view here. A little more about myself: I’m twenty years old and originally from Vernon, Connecticut, which is a town of about 27,000, located in Eastern Connecticut, about halfway between Hartford and the University of Connecticut. Vernon is home to another famous Democratic Jumbo (in addition to me); 2nd district congressman and family friend Joe Courtney is a Tufts Alum (A75) and neighbor. I’m a double-major in political science and peace & justice studies (ask me about it!) and I’m involved in a bunch of clubs on campus, including the Tufts Democrats. I blog occasionally at a few other sites–some you may have heard of, like Daily Kos and MyDD, others are a bit less prominent, like MyLeftNutmeg.com, which focuses on Connecticut politics, and one I’m sure you’ve never heard of: my personal blog, which among other things will contain cross-posts from here and from my column in the Tufts Daily–always an interesting, if rabble-rousing addition to campus news.
I will briefly get in to my political background and, yes, philosophy, although Mike certainly knows after taking Western Political Thought II with me a year ago that he’s much more knowledgeable and interested about that subject than I am. I first got seriously involved in Democratic politics in the leadup to the 2006 cycle, just before my freshman year at Tufts. At this point, my now-congressman Joe Courtney was an up-and-coming challenger to incumbent Republican Rob Simmons. I volunteered for the campaign a few times over the summer, but when I got to school I was quickly distracted by the million and one things going on during the first few weeks of anyone’s freshman year. One day I fortuitously saw a flyer advertising a Tufts Democrats’ campaign trip to Connecticut to campaign for the Courtney campaign, and I eagerly attended the first meeting and ended up going on a few trips to my home district to campaign. We were able to attend the results-watching party, held right in my hometown, but it ended up not being much of a party at all. The results were agonizingly close, and it was only weeks later that Courtney pulled out a razor-thin 83-vote margin of victory.
After this, I was hooked. I started to follow political news more closely, reading mainstream newspapers, watching cable news and reading and contributing to a few blogs. And then, one thing led to another, I led the charge at Tufts for President Barack Obama’s primary victory, and here we are today. In the hopes of not boring you all too much with my first post (and also getting back to writing that mid-term…), I think I’ll leave it at that. Look forward to future posts on issues such as education reform and NCLB, healthcare, and whatever else comes up in the news.
Hello and Introduction
After realizing that this blog has quickly turned into Mike Hawley’s private soapbox for his crazy rantings, I decided that I have to get on here, if only for a brief post. Also, I suppose I should introduce myself as that new guy on the Left of the banner (the good-looking one). I’m Will Ehrenfeld, class of 2010, and as you may have guessed, I’ll be representing the Democratic point of view here. A little more about myself: I’m twenty years old and originally from Vernon, Connecticut, which is a town of about 27,000, located in Eastern Connecticut, about halfway between Hartford and the University of Connecticut. Vernon is home to another famous Democratic Jumbo (in addition to me); 2nd district congressman and family friend Joe Courtney is a Tufts Alum (A75) and neighbor. I’m a double-major in political science and peace & justice studies (ask me about it!) and I’m involved in a bunch of clubs on campus, including the Tufts Democrats. I blog occasionally at a few other sites–some you may have heard of, like Daily Kos and MyDD, others are a bit less prominent, like MyLeftNutmeg.com, which focuses on Connecticut politics, and one I’m sure you’ve never heard of: my personal blog, which among other things will contain cross-posts from here and from my column in the Tufts Daily–always an interesting, if rabble-rousing addition to campus news.
I will briefly get in to my political background and, yes, philosophy, although Mike certainly knows after taking Western Political Thought II with me a year ago that he’s much more knowledgeable and interested about that subject than I am. I first got seriously involved in Democratic politics in the leadup to the 2006 cycle, just before my freshman year at Tufts. At this point, my now-congressman Joe Courtney was an up-and-coming challenger to incumbent Republican Rob Simmons. I volunteered for the campaign a few times over the summer, but when I got to school I was quickly distracted by the million and one things going on during the first few weeks of anyone’s freshman year. One day I fortuitously saw a flyer advertising a Tufts Democrats’ campaign trip to Connecticut to campaign for the Courtney campaign, and I eagerly attended the first meeting and ended up going on a few trips to my home district to campaign. We were able to attend the results-watching party, held right in my hometown, but it ended up not being much of a party at all. The results were agonizingly close, and it was only weeks later that Courtney pulled out a razor-thin 83-vote margin of victory.
After this, I was hooked. I started to follow political news more closely, reading mainstream newspapers, watching cable news and reading and contributing to a few blogs. And then, one thing led to another, I led the charge at Tufts for President Barack Obama’s primary victory, and here we are today. In the hopes of not boring you all too much with my first post (and also getting back to writing that mid-term…), I think I’ll leave it at that. Look forward to future posts on issues such as education reform and NCLB, healthcare, and whatever else comes up in the news.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
My Column, 3/3/09
Trying to hide their wealth
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Recently, TCU President Duncan Pickard wrote a really interesting letter to the editor, attempting to bring up issues of class on campus and encouraging conversations about the subject at Tufts. I wholeheartedly agree with his idea in this case and am grateful that the topic has been raised. Yet there are some pretty serious flaws in his letter, and I need, on one hand, to correct him and on the other, to discuss a few ideas that are not explicitly related.
At our great university, as with many of its peers, the student body comes from a primarily upper-class background. That’s just a factual statement. Only 41 percent of undergraduates receive financial aid from Tufts, and usually financial aid comes at least partially in the form of loans and work study jobs rather than direct grants. And, to be ineligible for financial aid, you either need to have a lot of money in the bank or parents who are taking in a very significant income — or more likely both. If you’re not getting financial help from Tufts, you’re not middle class. There might be a bit of debate about that term, middle class, and what it really means. Part of it is cultural and social, sure, but there are numbers here to look at. What do you think is middle class? Where do we draw the lines delineating upper middle class and simply rich?
Maybe for an average household, a $100,000 annual income is roughly middle class. That sounds right, doesn’t it? Well, in 2006, the top quintile (20 percent) of households made $91,705 or above, so that could hardly put someone in the proverbial (not to mention literal) middle. Let’s try $60,000; I know, you couldn’t afford that new Lacoste polo or spring break in Europe for your whole entire family with that amount, but some people can survive on $60,000. In fact, 60 percent of American households manage to scrape by with $60,000 or less. It gets worse: Lots of people barely have enough money to afford the rent and the grocery bill, let alone private school tuition or that new car. The median household income in the United States as recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007 was $50,223. That’s barely enough to cover a year at Tufts.
With those numbers in mind, let’s look at Tufts. Most people at Tufts are clearly not middle class, no matter how you slice it. Whether the middle class is defined as the middle 20 percent or 60 percent, Tufts students are well outside the national average. You could consider yourself middle class — a large majority of Americans do — but we as a student body are on the whole extremely wealthy and from privileged backgrounds. If only 41 percent of students here receive Tufts financial aid, that means the other 59 percent must come from places where money really is no object. You need to be in the top quintile in terms of income to even come close to being above the threshold for financial aid. That’s a lot of money.
Also, the way somebody dresses is typically not correlated with class. Maybe that Louis Vuitton bag sticks out, but most Tufts people, even if they can afford those bags, won’t carry them on campus. The same goes for many other ostentatious articles of clothing. In fact, I find anecdotally that wealth and clothing are generally negatively correlated — that is, only rich students dress like they are homeless, and poorer ones spend more money than they can afford in order to appear wealthier. It’s the reverse of what you might expect because people don’t want to be identified as rich. Well, to these people, I have only one thing to say: You go to Tufts. In the rest of the country and world, you’re already considered rich.
So Duncan, sorry to say it, but if you don’t qualify for financial aid here, you’re not in the middle class. And to you, average reader, odds are that your friends are probably better off than average, too. We can discuss socioeconomic status and class at length, and I know that I could learn a lot as well as teach others a few things, but where does that get us? The amount of mutual learning that can take place is limited by the fact that one end of the income spectrum is heavily, heavily overrepresented here.
We can’t entirely blame the university for the situation. Tufts does offer fairly substantial financial aid, even to those in the upper class. And while going here is very expensive, it isn’t far outside of its peer group in terms of tuition or general expenses.
What to do? For one, Tufts could really be need-blind in its admissions instead of maybe-kinda-sorta need-blind. Or Tufts could lower tuition, or at the very least not raise it every year. But in a relatively small way, Tufts’ exorbitant price tag helps redistribute wealth, at least in theory, because only very wealthy people pay the full price while less privileged students get financial aid, some of which comes from money paid in the form of rich kids’ tuition.
The Senate is doing excellent work in trying to eliminate ticket costs for most on-campus events, and I really hope that effort succeeds. It isn’t enough when rents around campus are astronomical — still cheaper than living on campus though, at least sometimes — and one meal block costs over $10. A great effort needs to be targeted to recruiting more students from the actual middle class and the working and lower classes as well. If we are going to talk about class, which I think we should, we need to start from the same set of facts and realities. And the fact is, most Tufts people are not in the middle class, no matter how you define that term.
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Recently, TCU President Duncan Pickard wrote a really interesting letter to the editor, attempting to bring up issues of class on campus and encouraging conversations about the subject at Tufts. I wholeheartedly agree with his idea in this case and am grateful that the topic has been raised. Yet there are some pretty serious flaws in his letter, and I need, on one hand, to correct him and on the other, to discuss a few ideas that are not explicitly related.
At our great university, as with many of its peers, the student body comes from a primarily upper-class background. That’s just a factual statement. Only 41 percent of undergraduates receive financial aid from Tufts, and usually financial aid comes at least partially in the form of loans and work study jobs rather than direct grants. And, to be ineligible for financial aid, you either need to have a lot of money in the bank or parents who are taking in a very significant income — or more likely both. If you’re not getting financial help from Tufts, you’re not middle class. There might be a bit of debate about that term, middle class, and what it really means. Part of it is cultural and social, sure, but there are numbers here to look at. What do you think is middle class? Where do we draw the lines delineating upper middle class and simply rich?
Maybe for an average household, a $100,000 annual income is roughly middle class. That sounds right, doesn’t it? Well, in 2006, the top quintile (20 percent) of households made $91,705 or above, so that could hardly put someone in the proverbial (not to mention literal) middle. Let’s try $60,000; I know, you couldn’t afford that new Lacoste polo or spring break in Europe for your whole entire family with that amount, but some people can survive on $60,000. In fact, 60 percent of American households manage to scrape by with $60,000 or less. It gets worse: Lots of people barely have enough money to afford the rent and the grocery bill, let alone private school tuition or that new car. The median household income in the United States as recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007 was $50,223. That’s barely enough to cover a year at Tufts.
With those numbers in mind, let’s look at Tufts. Most people at Tufts are clearly not middle class, no matter how you slice it. Whether the middle class is defined as the middle 20 percent or 60 percent, Tufts students are well outside the national average. You could consider yourself middle class — a large majority of Americans do — but we as a student body are on the whole extremely wealthy and from privileged backgrounds. If only 41 percent of students here receive Tufts financial aid, that means the other 59 percent must come from places where money really is no object. You need to be in the top quintile in terms of income to even come close to being above the threshold for financial aid. That’s a lot of money.
Also, the way somebody dresses is typically not correlated with class. Maybe that Louis Vuitton bag sticks out, but most Tufts people, even if they can afford those bags, won’t carry them on campus. The same goes for many other ostentatious articles of clothing. In fact, I find anecdotally that wealth and clothing are generally negatively correlated — that is, only rich students dress like they are homeless, and poorer ones spend more money than they can afford in order to appear wealthier. It’s the reverse of what you might expect because people don’t want to be identified as rich. Well, to these people, I have only one thing to say: You go to Tufts. In the rest of the country and world, you’re already considered rich.
So Duncan, sorry to say it, but if you don’t qualify for financial aid here, you’re not in the middle class. And to you, average reader, odds are that your friends are probably better off than average, too. We can discuss socioeconomic status and class at length, and I know that I could learn a lot as well as teach others a few things, but where does that get us? The amount of mutual learning that can take place is limited by the fact that one end of the income spectrum is heavily, heavily overrepresented here.
We can’t entirely blame the university for the situation. Tufts does offer fairly substantial financial aid, even to those in the upper class. And while going here is very expensive, it isn’t far outside of its peer group in terms of tuition or general expenses.
What to do? For one, Tufts could really be need-blind in its admissions instead of maybe-kinda-sorta need-blind. Or Tufts could lower tuition, or at the very least not raise it every year. But in a relatively small way, Tufts’ exorbitant price tag helps redistribute wealth, at least in theory, because only very wealthy people pay the full price while less privileged students get financial aid, some of which comes from money paid in the form of rich kids’ tuition.
The Senate is doing excellent work in trying to eliminate ticket costs for most on-campus events, and I really hope that effort succeeds. It isn’t enough when rents around campus are astronomical — still cheaper than living on campus though, at least sometimes — and one meal block costs over $10. A great effort needs to be targeted to recruiting more students from the actual middle class and the working and lower classes as well. If we are going to talk about class, which I think we should, we need to start from the same set of facts and realities. And the fact is, most Tufts people are not in the middle class, no matter how you define that term.
Posted here without any sort of permission
Today, much to my...what's the opposite of chagrin? Delight? Much to my delight, I opened today's Tufts Daily to see an angry, hilarious, and all-around outrageous op-ed written about yours truly and my column. It's posted below, in its entirety. Enjoy.
--
How’s this for offensive?
Will Nichols
Published: Tuesday, March 3, 2009
This is now the fourth week in a row that I’ve read Will Ehrenfeld’s column, “Stuff Tufts People Like.” Coincidentally, this is also the fourth week in a row that I’ve been wholly unimpressed and vaguely annoyed with said column. Last week, his topic of choice for stuff that Tufts people like was “Getting offended too easily.”
As a decidedly cynical fellow, I was satisfied to see that the Daily had picked up a weekly column that pokes fun at the sometimes overly reactionary culture that exists here at Tufts. I was also pleased to see that the column’s author had taken a cue from StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, the very funny blog that highlights some of the more comical aspects of white culture (i.e., adopting markedly non-white children from war-torn nations and giving them names like Pomegranate, Biloxi or Kanye). But I was soon aggravated to learn that in trying to copy the well-known humor blog’s style, Mr. Ehrenfeld had tragically omitted one key component: humor. Mr. Ehrenfeld has effectively taken the “humor” out of “humor column” with this poorly written attempt at cynicism.
So, Mr. Ehrenfeld, please consider this my answer to your call for readers to write an “indignant op-ed in the Daily.” I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that this is not quite the sort of indignation you hoped to stir up. No, I’m not offended by your (unfunny) attacks on the Jumbo Janitor Alliance or by your disdain for “self-righteous liberals” on campus. Instead, sir, I am offended by the tragic lack of humor in your humor column. (It is supposed to be funny, right?) I am offended by the glaring shortage of witty cynicism in your wannabe-subversive weekly piece. Are we also suffering from a humor recession? Your words have as much bite as my grandmother when she spits out her dentures. Your topics are as bland as a stale matzo cracker. Your “inflammatory” accusations are softer than a pudgy ZBT brother. I know you’d like to think otherwise, but your column is offensive only in its mediocrity.
To your credit, however, you did hit the nail on the head in your most recent column. I, as an overly sensitive member of the Tufts community, am highly offended by your excruciatingly uninteresting writing. You asked, “What will happen if I start saying truly inflammatory things?” I’m more curious to see what will happen if you start saying truly interesting things. If you’re aiming for “truly inflammatory,” I’d advise you to take a page from Daily sex columnist Logan Crane’s playbook and write a piece about queefing noisily while engaging in public intercourse on the Joey. Until then, I’m not entertained.
I respond to your call for an “indignant op-ed” with another challenge: Try to make me laugh with your next column. Write something truly cynical — and funny! — and stop giving cynics everywhere a bad name. If that doesn’t work out, you might consider enrolling in a freshman writing seminar; I think there’s one called “Humor for the Non-Humorist.” And if that still doesn’t pan out for you, I’d suggest making amends with whomever you offended at the Jumbo Janitor Alliance. Maybe they’ll hire you to write their press releases; that probably won’t require humor.
--
How’s this for offensive?
Will Nichols
Published: Tuesday, March 3, 2009
This is now the fourth week in a row that I’ve read Will Ehrenfeld’s column, “Stuff Tufts People Like.” Coincidentally, this is also the fourth week in a row that I’ve been wholly unimpressed and vaguely annoyed with said column. Last week, his topic of choice for stuff that Tufts people like was “Getting offended too easily.”
As a decidedly cynical fellow, I was satisfied to see that the Daily had picked up a weekly column that pokes fun at the sometimes overly reactionary culture that exists here at Tufts. I was also pleased to see that the column’s author had taken a cue from StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, the very funny blog that highlights some of the more comical aspects of white culture (i.e., adopting markedly non-white children from war-torn nations and giving them names like Pomegranate, Biloxi or Kanye). But I was soon aggravated to learn that in trying to copy the well-known humor blog’s style, Mr. Ehrenfeld had tragically omitted one key component: humor. Mr. Ehrenfeld has effectively taken the “humor” out of “humor column” with this poorly written attempt at cynicism.
So, Mr. Ehrenfeld, please consider this my answer to your call for readers to write an “indignant op-ed in the Daily.” I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that this is not quite the sort of indignation you hoped to stir up. No, I’m not offended by your (unfunny) attacks on the Jumbo Janitor Alliance or by your disdain for “self-righteous liberals” on campus. Instead, sir, I am offended by the tragic lack of humor in your humor column. (It is supposed to be funny, right?) I am offended by the glaring shortage of witty cynicism in your wannabe-subversive weekly piece. Are we also suffering from a humor recession? Your words have as much bite as my grandmother when she spits out her dentures. Your topics are as bland as a stale matzo cracker. Your “inflammatory” accusations are softer than a pudgy ZBT brother. I know you’d like to think otherwise, but your column is offensive only in its mediocrity.
To your credit, however, you did hit the nail on the head in your most recent column. I, as an overly sensitive member of the Tufts community, am highly offended by your excruciatingly uninteresting writing. You asked, “What will happen if I start saying truly inflammatory things?” I’m more curious to see what will happen if you start saying truly interesting things. If you’re aiming for “truly inflammatory,” I’d advise you to take a page from Daily sex columnist Logan Crane’s playbook and write a piece about queefing noisily while engaging in public intercourse on the Joey. Until then, I’m not entertained.
I respond to your call for an “indignant op-ed” with another challenge: Try to make me laugh with your next column. Write something truly cynical — and funny! — and stop giving cynics everywhere a bad name. If that doesn’t work out, you might consider enrolling in a freshman writing seminar; I think there’s one called “Humor for the Non-Humorist.” And if that still doesn’t pan out for you, I’d suggest making amends with whomever you offended at the Jumbo Janitor Alliance. Maybe they’ll hire you to write their press releases; that probably won’t require humor.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
My favorite so far
Getting offended too easily
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
This is a column that I’m really excited to write. On Friday, if you didn’t see it, senior Kevin Dillon (no, not Johnny Drama) wrote an op-ed in the Daily called “Things Tufts’ Campus Needs,” which basically criticized me and my column, specifically the one titled “Unnecessary activism.” As an apparent necessary activist, I am not surprised Kevin took issue with some of the ideas from my column.
But that’s not (directly) what this column is about. With Dillon’s passionate and somewhat jumbled response piece as exhibit A, I’m hoping to discuss that characteristic of Tufts that everyone surely is intimately aware of: the proclivity to get offended. I can’t imagine how those at Tufts who commonly get offended — so offended, in fact, that they may write an angry letter to the Daily — will fare in the future. I really worry about people like Dillon who seem to get worked up very quickly and often, even about things that really aren’t a big deal. This column? Not a big deal. The Jumbo Janitor Alliance, of which Mr. Dillon is the founder, is not the biggest deal in the world, either — although, after mentioning them in a column, several people have defended them, both in person and in print, so I’ll leave that alone.
I don’t want to focus on one person, though. Dillon isn’t the only one who gets irrationally offended by irrelevant things. Ben Silver, author of the infamous Feb. 5 op-ed attacking the Primary Source for their cover featuring President Obama as the messiah, also appears to be offended very easily. I worked with Silver on the Obama campaign, so I realize this is an issue close to his heart, but ... really? Of all the offensive things the Source does, this is what you pick out to criticize? And then the editors of the Primary Source, not to be outdone in the easily offended department, were eager to respond in similar fashion, nitpicking and attacking Silver’s letter. Is that what the Daily’s op-ed section has become — a forum for silly flame wars?
Why do people do this? Think of the boy who cried wolf. But I suppose this is more like the upper-middle-class white kid who cried, “That’s offensive!” What will happen if I start saying truly inflammatory things? It could happen. The activists who would lead an uprising have already used their primary weapon, the sanctimonious letter to the editor — so what next? After my next “offensive” column, will there be rallies and demonstrations on the quad, replete with signs featuring creative slogans?
It actually seems like people at Tufts enjoy getting worked up and offended, so much so that they invent things to get upset about. Why? Illogically, Tufts people often seem to seek out things that are unrelated to themselves to get offended by. Take the Primary Source, for example. One would think that the primary offend-ees of the Source would be the groups it tends to attack — Muslims, African Americans, peace and justice studies students — the list goes on and on. But who do we see writing angry letters to the editor about the offenses the Source commits? Self-righteous liberals — a sad trend, especially because I am a proud liberal, although apparently my level of self-righteousness is not quite up to par.
While I work on that, I have an assignment for the (surely myriad) readers of this column. I want this column to be participatory. I know I’m not the only one with ideas about stuff Tufts people like; in fact, this column was partially inspired by a suggestion from a reader. So e-mail me your ideas! Or, better yet, write an indignant op-ed in the Daily. Even if it’s not always complimentary, I want to hear from you.
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
This is a column that I’m really excited to write. On Friday, if you didn’t see it, senior Kevin Dillon (no, not Johnny Drama) wrote an op-ed in the Daily called “Things Tufts’ Campus Needs,” which basically criticized me and my column, specifically the one titled “Unnecessary activism.” As an apparent necessary activist, I am not surprised Kevin took issue with some of the ideas from my column.
But that’s not (directly) what this column is about. With Dillon’s passionate and somewhat jumbled response piece as exhibit A, I’m hoping to discuss that characteristic of Tufts that everyone surely is intimately aware of: the proclivity to get offended. I can’t imagine how those at Tufts who commonly get offended — so offended, in fact, that they may write an angry letter to the Daily — will fare in the future. I really worry about people like Dillon who seem to get worked up very quickly and often, even about things that really aren’t a big deal. This column? Not a big deal. The Jumbo Janitor Alliance, of which Mr. Dillon is the founder, is not the biggest deal in the world, either — although, after mentioning them in a column, several people have defended them, both in person and in print, so I’ll leave that alone.
I don’t want to focus on one person, though. Dillon isn’t the only one who gets irrationally offended by irrelevant things. Ben Silver, author of the infamous Feb. 5 op-ed attacking the Primary Source for their cover featuring President Obama as the messiah, also appears to be offended very easily. I worked with Silver on the Obama campaign, so I realize this is an issue close to his heart, but ... really? Of all the offensive things the Source does, this is what you pick out to criticize? And then the editors of the Primary Source, not to be outdone in the easily offended department, were eager to respond in similar fashion, nitpicking and attacking Silver’s letter. Is that what the Daily’s op-ed section has become — a forum for silly flame wars?
Why do people do this? Think of the boy who cried wolf. But I suppose this is more like the upper-middle-class white kid who cried, “That’s offensive!” What will happen if I start saying truly inflammatory things? It could happen. The activists who would lead an uprising have already used their primary weapon, the sanctimonious letter to the editor — so what next? After my next “offensive” column, will there be rallies and demonstrations on the quad, replete with signs featuring creative slogans?
It actually seems like people at Tufts enjoy getting worked up and offended, so much so that they invent things to get upset about. Why? Illogically, Tufts people often seem to seek out things that are unrelated to themselves to get offended by. Take the Primary Source, for example. One would think that the primary offend-ees of the Source would be the groups it tends to attack — Muslims, African Americans, peace and justice studies students — the list goes on and on. But who do we see writing angry letters to the editor about the offenses the Source commits? Self-righteous liberals — a sad trend, especially because I am a proud liberal, although apparently my level of self-righteousness is not quite up to par.
While I work on that, I have an assignment for the (surely myriad) readers of this column. I want this column to be participatory. I know I’m not the only one with ideas about stuff Tufts people like; in fact, this column was partially inspired by a suggestion from a reader. So e-mail me your ideas! Or, better yet, write an indignant op-ed in the Daily. Even if it’s not always complimentary, I want to hear from you.
Column 4
Will Ehrenfeld | Stuff Tufts People Like
Trying, and failing, to change the world
Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Following last week’s column about unnecessary activism, I want to focus more directly on activism and its role on campus and in a Tufts education. “Civic engagement” is one of the big buzzwords that admissions and public relations spout relentlessly; the university depicts itself as a socially active institution that is heavily involved in community issues and service. Tufts people especially like working with poor or disadvantaged people who “need our help,” and this becomes more central to our time at Tufts than any other ideas about education that might follow a more traditional path.
Those of us (I include myself here) who came to Tufts expecting to change the world immediately upon arrival in Medford have likely been disappointed in the progress so far. You (we) have almost certainly failed rather miserably in your (our) attempts to change the world and impact humanity in a positive way. And, sorry to burst your bubble, but your immediate prospects don’t look too good, either. I’m not chastising you for your idealistic beliefs and outlandish ambition — I have those things, too — but I think you’re confused.
Matthew Arnold, a 19th century English writer, once suggested that “poetry can save us.” In this time of relatively deep unrest and growing economic turmoil, every prescription for salvation must be reviewed, so let’s examine Arnold’s idea in a larger context. Everyone need not read copious amounts of poetry, although Robert Frost never hurt anyone. Instead, poetry here is a metaphor for the humanities in general and education in its purest form, which is sadly lacking at our potentially great institution.
I believe that Tufts students are some of the smartest people I have ever met, and the potential here for deep engagement with education and learning is great, yet what many of us have been doing here is wasting our time. Stanley Fish, a professor and occasional blogger at the New York Times Web site, calls his column “The Last Professor” in a not-so-subtle jab at current academics that focus on changing the world instead of learning. One of his books on higher education, “Save the World on Your Own Time” (2008), pretty well describes his opinion on civic engagement and its role inside the classroom.
In multiple columns, Fish has argued that higher education, understood properly, can be distinguished by the lack of a relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world around us. I can only bemoan the absence of this type of learning and engagement here. Tufts people seem more interested in appearing compassionate and involved than focusing on their own education. We are missing out on schooling for schooling’s sake — poetry, philosophy and literature for example — where the goal is specially focused on understanding, comprehension and enlarging the mind; it is individual rather than instrumental.
You can spend hours, days or even weeks volunteering at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen or, if you’re lucky, traveling to Africa to help refugees. In fact, you ought to, if you have the opportunity — but that’s not really an education. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you are getting educated and learning how to create change as you do it. You might be helping a few people, but you are missing out on something wonderful if you avoid learning for your — and its — own sake.
Trying, and failing, to change the world
Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Following last week’s column about unnecessary activism, I want to focus more directly on activism and its role on campus and in a Tufts education. “Civic engagement” is one of the big buzzwords that admissions and public relations spout relentlessly; the university depicts itself as a socially active institution that is heavily involved in community issues and service. Tufts people especially like working with poor or disadvantaged people who “need our help,” and this becomes more central to our time at Tufts than any other ideas about education that might follow a more traditional path.
Those of us (I include myself here) who came to Tufts expecting to change the world immediately upon arrival in Medford have likely been disappointed in the progress so far. You (we) have almost certainly failed rather miserably in your (our) attempts to change the world and impact humanity in a positive way. And, sorry to burst your bubble, but your immediate prospects don’t look too good, either. I’m not chastising you for your idealistic beliefs and outlandish ambition — I have those things, too — but I think you’re confused.
Matthew Arnold, a 19th century English writer, once suggested that “poetry can save us.” In this time of relatively deep unrest and growing economic turmoil, every prescription for salvation must be reviewed, so let’s examine Arnold’s idea in a larger context. Everyone need not read copious amounts of poetry, although Robert Frost never hurt anyone. Instead, poetry here is a metaphor for the humanities in general and education in its purest form, which is sadly lacking at our potentially great institution.
I believe that Tufts students are some of the smartest people I have ever met, and the potential here for deep engagement with education and learning is great, yet what many of us have been doing here is wasting our time. Stanley Fish, a professor and occasional blogger at the New York Times Web site, calls his column “The Last Professor” in a not-so-subtle jab at current academics that focus on changing the world instead of learning. One of his books on higher education, “Save the World on Your Own Time” (2008), pretty well describes his opinion on civic engagement and its role inside the classroom.
In multiple columns, Fish has argued that higher education, understood properly, can be distinguished by the lack of a relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world around us. I can only bemoan the absence of this type of learning and engagement here. Tufts people seem more interested in appearing compassionate and involved than focusing on their own education. We are missing out on schooling for schooling’s sake — poetry, philosophy and literature for example — where the goal is specially focused on understanding, comprehension and enlarging the mind; it is individual rather than instrumental.
You can spend hours, days or even weeks volunteering at a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen or, if you’re lucky, traveling to Africa to help refugees. In fact, you ought to, if you have the opportunity — but that’s not really an education. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you are getting educated and learning how to create change as you do it. You might be helping a few people, but you are missing out on something wonderful if you avoid learning for your — and its — own sake.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
New Column...on newsstands now
Unnecessary activism
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, February 10, 2009
How many times have you been walking into or out of Dewick when some overly aggressive freshman shoves a pamphlet in your face or asks you to complete a survey on the merits and/or drawbacks of bottled water, for instance? At Tufts, we are all simply unable to steer clear of nervy volunteers looking for signatures for a petition, more volunteers or, worst of all, donations. This campus is absolutely saturated with volunteerism and activism, which isn’t a bad thing in a vacuum.
The problem at Tufts isn’t the energetic and vehement spirit of activism coursing through campus, but rather the target of that activism. The campus and our world face huge, seemingly insurmountable issues that need just this energy and activism. Poverty, hunger, safe and affordable housing, public safety in general, especially around the Tufts campus: All of these are significant issues deserving of the voluminous energy that has recently been targeted at “problems” like bottled water and the Primary Source.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m no defender of the Source. I actually hate it, but I have better things to do than get all worked up about something that, if I choose not to read, has absolutely no effect on my life. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they make fun of me personally sometimes — I’m a peace activist, a pretty staunch liberal, and I’m not afraid to speak my mind — but who cares? My mom always used to tell me that the best way to deal with something (or someone) that upsets you is to just ignore it. I think it’s good advice, particularly when that thing doesn’t really affect you … or anyone else.
Also, when it comes down to it, I tend to agree with the Think Outside the Bottle campaign that was all the craze at Tufts last year. I realize that bottled water contributes to fossil fuel use and pollution, empowers the corporate elite, blah blah blah. But when it comes down to it, I think I speak for a rather large majority of students here when I say that I don’t really care.
In the interest of constructive criticism, let me offer the Think Outside the Bottle folks some advice: A campaign against bottled water when millions of people have no access to clean water, from the tap or a bottle, really isn’t good for your image. It isn’t particularly useful, either. If people do in fact drink a little bit less bottled water, is that the glorious endpoint of your campaign? Will you celebrate, I mean really rejoice at, a moderate reduction in plastic usage? Get real.
You might be wondering if what I’m complaining about is all that prevalent at Tufts. Let’s look at TuftsLife.com for supporting evidence. A cursory review of this week’s event listings is especially revelatory on this topic. There are daily encouragements to “Find Out More About Vaginas,” something I’ve always meant to do, really; a meeting of the Friends of Israel group, which is obviously gratuitous at a campus as saturated with Jews as Tufts is; and the Jumbo Janitor Alliance, which I support in principle but similarly don’t care about.
Am I just apathetic? Perhaps, but I maintain that the activism we see at Tufts is, for the most part, poorly designed and ultimately misguided. If I’ve convinced you, and you want to reform, it’s very easy. Work on real problems; there’s a real litany of options to choose from. Against the Primary Source? Join the Tufts Democrats or write for its magazine, The Forum. Against bottled water? Advocate for clean water for all and improvements to international infrastructure. Work on real problems, don’t construct new ones.
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, February 10, 2009
How many times have you been walking into or out of Dewick when some overly aggressive freshman shoves a pamphlet in your face or asks you to complete a survey on the merits and/or drawbacks of bottled water, for instance? At Tufts, we are all simply unable to steer clear of nervy volunteers looking for signatures for a petition, more volunteers or, worst of all, donations. This campus is absolutely saturated with volunteerism and activism, which isn’t a bad thing in a vacuum.
The problem at Tufts isn’t the energetic and vehement spirit of activism coursing through campus, but rather the target of that activism. The campus and our world face huge, seemingly insurmountable issues that need just this energy and activism. Poverty, hunger, safe and affordable housing, public safety in general, especially around the Tufts campus: All of these are significant issues deserving of the voluminous energy that has recently been targeted at “problems” like bottled water and the Primary Source.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m no defender of the Source. I actually hate it, but I have better things to do than get all worked up about something that, if I choose not to read, has absolutely no effect on my life. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they make fun of me personally sometimes — I’m a peace activist, a pretty staunch liberal, and I’m not afraid to speak my mind — but who cares? My mom always used to tell me that the best way to deal with something (or someone) that upsets you is to just ignore it. I think it’s good advice, particularly when that thing doesn’t really affect you … or anyone else.
Also, when it comes down to it, I tend to agree with the Think Outside the Bottle campaign that was all the craze at Tufts last year. I realize that bottled water contributes to fossil fuel use and pollution, empowers the corporate elite, blah blah blah. But when it comes down to it, I think I speak for a rather large majority of students here when I say that I don’t really care.
In the interest of constructive criticism, let me offer the Think Outside the Bottle folks some advice: A campaign against bottled water when millions of people have no access to clean water, from the tap or a bottle, really isn’t good for your image. It isn’t particularly useful, either. If people do in fact drink a little bit less bottled water, is that the glorious endpoint of your campaign? Will you celebrate, I mean really rejoice at, a moderate reduction in plastic usage? Get real.
You might be wondering if what I’m complaining about is all that prevalent at Tufts. Let’s look at TuftsLife.com for supporting evidence. A cursory review of this week’s event listings is especially revelatory on this topic. There are daily encouragements to “Find Out More About Vaginas,” something I’ve always meant to do, really; a meeting of the Friends of Israel group, which is obviously gratuitous at a campus as saturated with Jews as Tufts is; and the Jumbo Janitor Alliance, which I support in principle but similarly don’t care about.
Am I just apathetic? Perhaps, but I maintain that the activism we see at Tufts is, for the most part, poorly designed and ultimately misguided. If I’ve convinced you, and you want to reform, it’s very easy. Work on real problems; there’s a real litany of options to choose from. Against the Primary Source? Join the Tufts Democrats or write for its magazine, The Forum. Against bottled water? Advocate for clean water for all and improvements to international infrastructure. Work on real problems, don’t construct new ones.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Column 2
Here it is, the moment you've been waiting for, my second column in the Tufts Daily (link).
Seeing their names in print
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, February 3, 2009
This week’s topic is one close to my heart. As a freshly minted columnist in this fine paper, it should be obvious that I, as much as anybody, really enjoy seeing my name in print. And I’m especially lucky: My beautiful picture also gets printed every Tuesday along with this column. I am not alone, though, in my enthusiastic support of, well ... myself.
Tufts students, more so than students from other schools, appreciate seeing their names in print — be it in The New York Times, The Tufts Daily, or even The New Bedford Standard Times. A friend of mine at Tufts recently sent an e-mail to a large number of friends, asking us to read an article his local newspaper at home wrote about his internship at the White House. “It looks at the experience in a more comprehensive way, not just focusing on my time in the office, but the complete Washington experience,” he wrote, taking himself far too seriously. “I hope you will take the time to read the article.”
That’s one example; I’m sure most Tufts people could add similar anecdotes from their social circles. This e-mail wasn’t particularly off-putting, and the article was moderately interesting — but it’s indicative of a broader issue. Tufts people urgently self-promote like few others. Any publication that has even a very narrow readership (see Source, Primary) attracts many writers, photographers and people with no interest in journalism, so long as they are assured of seeing their name somewhere in print. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a largely ignored magazine or newspaper or if it’s only for serving as assistant copy editor for The Public Journal.
By my count, Tufts has more than ten separate, (relatively) regularly produced publications, ranging from this paragon of journalism, The Tufts Daily, to the lowly, rarely published Forum, a project of the Tufts Democrats (and for which I occasionally write). The vast majority of these projects are funded by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate through the student activities fund, and I suppose the publications are fulfilling the purpose of this fund that the Senate, in its unrivaled wisdom, allots to various student groups. One of the greatest desires of Tufts students is to see their names in print, so maximizing the outlets for this desire is really the ideal use for the money.
Speaking of the TCU Senate ... I’m convinced that the only reason people run for Senate is so that they can enjoy excessive publicity from the Daily. The notoriety attached to such glorious, glorious coverage is not only a big ego boost, but it gives the person being interviewed — let’s say TCU Treasurer Matt Shapanka — the pleasure of feeling superior to the lowly Daily staff writer who has to call Matt on a Sunday night to ask him about the latest development in the saga over the recovered funds. By the way, I’m looking forward to a lengthy thank-you note from Shapanka for the excellent publicity I’m giving him. Don’t forget the little people, Matt.
With this interviewer-interviewee dynamic factored in, I’m a relative bottom-feeder in the publicity scheme, but at least my notoriety is guaranteed. I can write whatever I want in this column, really, and my ugly mug will keep showing up at the top of the page once a week. And here you are, slaving away in the MAB lab to perfect the photo layout in the forthcoming issue of Tufts Traveler. I almost feel bad.
Want to see your name right here in this very column? Contact me with something that you think Tufts people like, and you could provide the topic of an upcoming column.
Seeing their names in print
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, February 3, 2009
This week’s topic is one close to my heart. As a freshly minted columnist in this fine paper, it should be obvious that I, as much as anybody, really enjoy seeing my name in print. And I’m especially lucky: My beautiful picture also gets printed every Tuesday along with this column. I am not alone, though, in my enthusiastic support of, well ... myself.
Tufts students, more so than students from other schools, appreciate seeing their names in print — be it in The New York Times, The Tufts Daily, or even The New Bedford Standard Times. A friend of mine at Tufts recently sent an e-mail to a large number of friends, asking us to read an article his local newspaper at home wrote about his internship at the White House. “It looks at the experience in a more comprehensive way, not just focusing on my time in the office, but the complete Washington experience,” he wrote, taking himself far too seriously. “I hope you will take the time to read the article.”
That’s one example; I’m sure most Tufts people could add similar anecdotes from their social circles. This e-mail wasn’t particularly off-putting, and the article was moderately interesting — but it’s indicative of a broader issue. Tufts people urgently self-promote like few others. Any publication that has even a very narrow readership (see Source, Primary) attracts many writers, photographers and people with no interest in journalism, so long as they are assured of seeing their name somewhere in print. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a largely ignored magazine or newspaper or if it’s only for serving as assistant copy editor for The Public Journal.
By my count, Tufts has more than ten separate, (relatively) regularly produced publications, ranging from this paragon of journalism, The Tufts Daily, to the lowly, rarely published Forum, a project of the Tufts Democrats (and for which I occasionally write). The vast majority of these projects are funded by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate through the student activities fund, and I suppose the publications are fulfilling the purpose of this fund that the Senate, in its unrivaled wisdom, allots to various student groups. One of the greatest desires of Tufts students is to see their names in print, so maximizing the outlets for this desire is really the ideal use for the money.
Speaking of the TCU Senate ... I’m convinced that the only reason people run for Senate is so that they can enjoy excessive publicity from the Daily. The notoriety attached to such glorious, glorious coverage is not only a big ego boost, but it gives the person being interviewed — let’s say TCU Treasurer Matt Shapanka — the pleasure of feeling superior to the lowly Daily staff writer who has to call Matt on a Sunday night to ask him about the latest development in the saga over the recovered funds. By the way, I’m looking forward to a lengthy thank-you note from Shapanka for the excellent publicity I’m giving him. Don’t forget the little people, Matt.
With this interviewer-interviewee dynamic factored in, I’m a relative bottom-feeder in the publicity scheme, but at least my notoriety is guaranteed. I can write whatever I want in this column, really, and my ugly mug will keep showing up at the top of the page once a week. And here you are, slaving away in the MAB lab to perfect the photo layout in the forthcoming issue of Tufts Traveler. I almost feel bad.
Want to see your name right here in this very column? Contact me with something that you think Tufts people like, and you could provide the topic of an upcoming column.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
First Column
The first column (of 13) in the series called Stuff Tufts People Like is included in its entirety below. You can also read it in hard copy of the Tufts Daily or at the Daily's website.
Bragging about their awesome adventures
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, January 27, 2009
As the semester -- and this column -- gets started up, I hope you'll enjoy reading. This column will focus on the Tufts community and things that students really enjoy.
To get started, I think everybody here knows how much Tufts people love service-learning and active citizenship. But there's something that I have found that rivals the enthusiasm people have about their volunteerism: spreading the word about their adventures abroad, especially those related to saving the world. I'm sure you have overheard people talking -- before class, in the dining hall and when they obnoxiously ask ten-minute questions during your political science lecture -- about meeting the First Minister of Northern Ireland, working with the Red Cross in Sudan or that time they built an outhouse in El Salvador.
The important part isn't the actual trip to El Salvador at all, or even anything unique to El Salvador -- they definitely didn't go for the pupusas, anyway. (Pupusas are thick, handmade tortillas popular in El Salvador; they're delicious, and you can actually get them in Somerville.)
Obviously, you traveled to El Salvador so you could impress people at Tufts with your stories about using an outhouse and talking to "real" Salvadorans. You went so you could tell your friends about the life-changing experience you had talking to guerillas in the jungle, convincing them in your broken Spanish to lay down their weapons and pursue their goals through peaceful means. It makes you different, perhaps better even, and Tufts people love making themselves look different and better than their peers.
In addition, Tufts people work hard to accumulate articles of clothing from unique locales all around the world. Forget that really cool hat you bought at the Guinness factory in Dublin -- the new fashion is the one with sequins spelling out "Guinea-Bissau" on the front. Really, the less well-known a location is, the better -- and, consequently, the more Tufts people like it.
Traveling to Ireland is a lot of fun, but it's almost routine at a school like Tufts. If you want to impress your friends, tell them about your trip to Suriname. (It's in South America.) On several occasions, I have been tempted to follow up a story about their time in Togo or Laos with my own story about a totally made-up place. I'm convinced I could get away with it (though now I suppose the word is out).
Location isn't the only important part of Tufts peoples' stories about their adventures. Ask someone about their semester abroad and you're sure to be regaled with stories about the "amazing people" and how things are so different -- and invariably better -- than in the United States. Even people who traveled to a place as ordinary and uninteresting as Ireland can't stop talking about how the people are so nice and it's just nothing like where they're from.
After spending Fall 2008 in Ireland, I can confidently tell you that Irish people are a lot like Americans and most actually think they are American. Dublin is extremely similar to Boston, which I was reminded of by plenty of locals.
And here I go, talking about my adventures and trying to impress you with my awesome experiences. I acquired a taste for a local type of alcohol (the stout in America is not the same) and really did meet a lot of nice people, just like everyone else. I even brought home a cool T-shirt.
Bragging about their awesome adventures
Will Ehrenfeld
Published: Tuesday, January 27, 2009
As the semester -- and this column -- gets started up, I hope you'll enjoy reading. This column will focus on the Tufts community and things that students really enjoy.
To get started, I think everybody here knows how much Tufts people love service-learning and active citizenship. But there's something that I have found that rivals the enthusiasm people have about their volunteerism: spreading the word about their adventures abroad, especially those related to saving the world. I'm sure you have overheard people talking -- before class, in the dining hall and when they obnoxiously ask ten-minute questions during your political science lecture -- about meeting the First Minister of Northern Ireland, working with the Red Cross in Sudan or that time they built an outhouse in El Salvador.
The important part isn't the actual trip to El Salvador at all, or even anything unique to El Salvador -- they definitely didn't go for the pupusas, anyway. (Pupusas are thick, handmade tortillas popular in El Salvador; they're delicious, and you can actually get them in Somerville.)
Obviously, you traveled to El Salvador so you could impress people at Tufts with your stories about using an outhouse and talking to "real" Salvadorans. You went so you could tell your friends about the life-changing experience you had talking to guerillas in the jungle, convincing them in your broken Spanish to lay down their weapons and pursue their goals through peaceful means. It makes you different, perhaps better even, and Tufts people love making themselves look different and better than their peers.
In addition, Tufts people work hard to accumulate articles of clothing from unique locales all around the world. Forget that really cool hat you bought at the Guinness factory in Dublin -- the new fashion is the one with sequins spelling out "Guinea-Bissau" on the front. Really, the less well-known a location is, the better -- and, consequently, the more Tufts people like it.
Traveling to Ireland is a lot of fun, but it's almost routine at a school like Tufts. If you want to impress your friends, tell them about your trip to Suriname. (It's in South America.) On several occasions, I have been tempted to follow up a story about their time in Togo or Laos with my own story about a totally made-up place. I'm convinced I could get away with it (though now I suppose the word is out).
Location isn't the only important part of Tufts peoples' stories about their adventures. Ask someone about their semester abroad and you're sure to be regaled with stories about the "amazing people" and how things are so different -- and invariably better -- than in the United States. Even people who traveled to a place as ordinary and uninteresting as Ireland can't stop talking about how the people are so nice and it's just nothing like where they're from.
After spending Fall 2008 in Ireland, I can confidently tell you that Irish people are a lot like Americans and most actually think they are American. Dublin is extremely similar to Boston, which I was reminded of by plenty of locals.
And here I go, talking about my adventures and trying to impress you with my awesome experiences. I acquired a taste for a local type of alcohol (the stout in America is not the same) and really did meet a lot of nice people, just like everyone else. I even brought home a cool T-shirt.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Welcome
This effort, aptly titled "Whatever You Like," in honor of my wrongly imprisoned comrade TI, represents my 5th effort at maintaining a blog since, well, since blogs have been around. I hope this is more successful (and less embarrassing) than some of my previous efforts, and I will make every effort to keep it clean, interesting, and perhaps educational (more likely, it will be a huge joke and not serious at all. Well, one or the other).
Principally, this blog will serve as an outlet to promote and preserve the column that I will be writing for the Tufts Daily this semester, called "Stuff Tufts People Like." Every Tuesday this column will be published both in the online and print versions of the Tufts Daily, and I will try to post it here Tuesdays (or soon after) as well. I'll post random thoughts as they occur as well, and you may even get a glimpse into my personal life if I keep this up (but hopefully not too close a look).
Read, enjoy, and wish me luck.
Principally, this blog will serve as an outlet to promote and preserve the column that I will be writing for the Tufts Daily this semester, called "Stuff Tufts People Like." Every Tuesday this column will be published both in the online and print versions of the Tufts Daily, and I will try to post it here Tuesdays (or soon after) as well. I'll post random thoughts as they occur as well, and you may even get a glimpse into my personal life if I keep this up (but hopefully not too close a look).
Read, enjoy, and wish me luck.
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