Abandoned Spaces in Asia

Economic development has left monuments to prosperity all over China. High rises sweep over the dusty streets as a whole country struggles to reinvent itself.

But the growth is uneven. The changes have been so fast and so intense that whole cities have been left behind. The crowded streets of Beijing or Shanghai are balanced by the quiet rural streets and empty factories.

After rural housing is demolished but before the highrises go up, there is a moment where the land is only potential. This feeling of possibility is what I was looking for across Asia.

As we traveled through four countries, I was looking for the other side of development; the places that are abandoned in the quest for ever greater prosperity. These places are important because neglect is as much a statement of priorities as construction is. It says, “This is not worth saving.”

Organic Farming in Beijing

This is a piece I made about a farm I visited on the outskirts of Beijing.

Exploring Downtown on a Saturday Night

A video I made from footage collected during my brief stay in Hanoi. For some reason, that night I was taking lots of movies so I had plenty of footage for this clip.

Three Months, Four Countries, 100 Photos

In the Spring of this year, I spend three months living out of a suitcase, traveling through Asia with a group of American college students. Our academic program was hectic, stopping in no one location for more than a few days. Wherever I went, I took had my camera in my pocket. Click on the photos to see the Flickr photoset.

Beijing

Thailand

Myanmar

Vietnam

Shanxi Province, China

Last Thoughts Before I Go Abroad

Tomorrow I leave on a bus at 6:15AM, and don’t stop until I reach Thailand. Over the next year I’ll be traveling in Asia, and I won’t be back to Carleton until Spring term next year. I’ve given up my positions on campus and finished my classes, I just need to pack up my bags and go.

I thought it would be nice to make a brief list of things I’ve learned while writing this blog.

• There are people who know all kinds of things and are just waiting to be asked. There’s also a wealth of information hidden in the internet.
• It’s better to pick classes based on professors, not content. It doesn’t matter how interested you are in the title of the course; the professor makes or breaks the class.
• Blogs with pictures are more interesting.
• People care more about a good blog post every couple days than a shallow post every day.
• Effort and cool ideas don’t always equal good outcomes. Sometimes a project just ends as a waste of time.
• But, some catastrophes are fun.
• Simple answers are hard to come by, but that shouldn’t paralyze the school.
• School life is short. Your projects will go farther if you create organizations instead of doing everything yourself.
• Professors are humans.
• Carleton has high points and low points. It’s unhealthy to focus too much on either.
• A small number of students speak for the whole student body. This situation is not just a tragic feature of college life. Blaming “student apathy” is an excuse for ineffective organizing. It is our fault that we are not communicating better with the student body and creating venues to discuss college life.

I’ll post when I can.

Spree of Vandalism

Tempting?

On the subject of students being obnoxious, there has been a recent string of vandalism across campus. This has include, among other things, four vending machines vandalized, five fire-alarms pulled, and a radiator ripped from the wall. Someone even urinated in Sevy Tearoom during a party.

This idiocy has cost the college more than $10,000. At a recent CSA Senate meeting, Cat McMurtry recommended that CSA foot the bill. If you know who did it, please tell the deans. $10,000 is roughly equivalent one third of the money for Spring Concert.

The Environmental Science Major

Last week at the Education and Curriculum Committee, science and humanities faculty described their proposal for an Enivironmental Science major. The proposal is interesting not only because the subject matter is so fascinating, but because the major proposal struggles to find a way to uniquely combine the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences in the study of the environment.

A drawing of the Arb by Alice Newman '11. It was drawn for Field Drawing, one of the ENVS classes.

The Environmental Science major is laid out as follows:

• An introductory course in biology or geology.
• A methods course (Intro to Geospatial Analysis or Intro to Statistics)
• Three core courses that all of the majors will take: Ecosystems Ecology, Environmental Economics and Policy, and American Environmental History
• Four classes in one of the four foci. The foci each hone in on a different aspect of environmental science. They are:
  • Food and Agriculture
  • Conservation and Development
  • Landscapes and Perceptions
  • Water Resources
• Comps

The comps proposal itself is exciting in its ambition. All the ENVS majors for a single year will be focused on some enormously broad interdisciplinary subject. For example: Biodiversity. Under this topic there will be small groups of students focusing on some aspect of the topic (for example: ethical implications of using Amazon rain forest for medicinal purposes). The small groups approach their specific topic in an interdisciplinary way, so every small group would have natural science ENVS majors, social science ENVS majors and humanities ENVS majors all working together. At the end all the groups come together and present a symposium and a unified paper.

Photo from the arb website.

The whole thing sounds amazing. It takes the individual major (toiling in obscurity on comps) and makes her part of a greater effort. Of course it won’t be everything I imagine during the first year of comps, but the program will grow and evolve.

There are some concerns about the major, but I am confident they will be put to rest and Environmental Science will become a major. I believe that this kind of interdisciplinary work presents a unique angle that a liberal arts college can offer that other institutions cannot.

When Students Hurt Students

The Carletonian editorial page has recently featured a line-up of articles that remind us how human we are. These are the kinds of things we want to believe don’t happen, students hurting students. Here is a brief summation:

Some unthinking student took Samir Bhala’s helmet which protects him from sunlight. Bhala has a severe allergy to sunlight and has had to make due without his helmet because even in the face of a campus-wide search (including an email to every student from Dean Baggot), it has not been returned.

One student wrote a searing attack on Robert Stephens during the CSA elections (read the response here). The attack was not only deeply slanderous, but based completely on hearsay. This editorial, which should have immediately raised red flags for anyone reading it, was approved by the editors of the Carletonian and printed.

Most disturbing of all, an anonymous student went to great lengths to threaten an African-American male student. The threats were terrifying in their open hostility and hatred.

What are we supposed to make of this? Max Davidson responded in the Carletonian:

“The less representative the student body is of the world that surrounds us, the more it sees itself as an alternate reality. On a Friday night at Carleton, the most basic human instincts are displayed because we know that by Sunday morning, we gain immunity by hitting the books on the first floor of the library.”

This Friday I went to the final hockey game of the season, where we defeated our rival St. Olaf in an upset victory. The game was exciting and fun, but it was also a public venue for the “basic human instincts” Davidson is speaking about. The crowd was intoxicated and violent. As we won, Carleton students chanted about having better SAT scores.

All of this is adds up to the Campus Climate Survey in anecdotal form. A reminder that although we’re proud of our school and our community, we cannot pretend that our problems are external. Animosity and indifference among the student body are the most important factors making campus life difficult.

Karimba Recital

Today I went to a  relaxing karimba performance in the Libe athenaeum. A karimba is an African instrument consisting of a wood component and metal tongs that are strummed. Here’s a brief video I took at the event, which shows some of the thumbwork and music.

Trayless Dilemma

Waiting to be served at Burton Dining Hall.

This week’s Carletonian featured two editorials arguing that Carleton should not go trayless. The first was by German Professor Anne Ulmer who writes of her concern that going trayless will cause the dining halls to be more chaotic and dangerous. The issue this editorial raises is a valid one, will going trayless make the dining hall less handicapped accessible? I don’t know the answer.

The second, more detailed editorial by Kyle Kramer makes a number of arguments that going trayless isn’t the best way to reduce food waste. He writes, “The effort to change peoples’ habits of taking too much food is much more likely to be successful if it does not hinge on making their lives more difficult.”

But I think this too narrow a view. It’s important to view the issue in context. Carleton students live some of the easiest lives on the planet. Imagine that you were offered the chance to switch places with a random 20-year-old somewhere on earth. You would be a fool to accept.

Furthermore, we live in country that is struggling with a food waste epidemic:

According to the U.N. World Food Programme, the total U.S. food surplus could satisfy “every empty stomach in Africa”.

If, by making this relatively small change, we can save a lot of food (and no one seems to disagree with that) then it is our obligation to do so. Humans are flexible and Carleton students are no exception. Most students make two trips to get food already.

I am a perfect example of why we should go trayless. I try not to waste food, but when I’m holding a tray it’s just so easy to take more. The huge size of the tray almost begs me to fill up the whole thing with food, and as a result I end up throwing out leftovers or stuffing myself.

I haven’t heard anybody make a better suggestion on how we can decrease our food waste. If there are no better solutions, I support going trayless without reservation.