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At the Carleton Student Association Senate tonight, senators struggled with the implications of the Campus Climate Survey, and wondered out loud what the next step was. The results confirmed that racism, sexism, elitism and heterosexism are definitely problems on campus.
The survey also showed students know little about CSA and don’t believe it is addresssing the issues of equity and justice on campus. This is an issue that CSA must address, survey showed that the vast majority of harassment on campus is by students, against students.
How should the CSA respond when 300 students report that they are the victims of harassment?
There is no clear line of action. CSA is full of student leaders, but this doesn’t imbue them with the ability to lead the whole campus. There is a fundamental lack of discussion about Carleton specific issues.
The survey recommended mandatory First Year classes focusing critically on minority issues, but students have been lobbying for this requirement for years. CSA sometimes holds Townhall Meetings in an effort to involve the wider community, but they are inevitably met with low turnout.
Hopefully the CSA can organize further discussion about the discrimination on campus, and publicize some of the less known results of the survey. All over campus I hear, “Why did we spend so much money on that survey?” which is absolutely the worst thing someone could take away from results.
Last week’s convocation speaker was Harvard anthropologist James L. Watson. Watson spoke about the importance of meat in human societies, as well as the the pursuit of ethnography.
Watson is a short bald man who speaks quickly and is often carried away on tangents. He is visibly healthy and energetic, traits which he considers essential to anthropologists doing field work. “Languages have peculiar trajectories,” he says. “People who learn languages have peculiar biographies.”
Watson has been studying China for 40 years, and he wrote one of the books we’re reading in my Introduction to Anthropology class. For many years he lived with his wife, who is also an accomplished anthropologist, in rural China. He explained that all of his molars have been replaced because there are tiny pebbles in the rice that Chinese villagers eat, and over time they destroyed his teeth.
On one trip to China, his god-children dragged him to McDonald’s against his wishes. He realized then that as an anthropologist, it was his calling to follow the interests of the people, so he began researching McDonalds. The result was Golden Arches East, a study of McDonalds in South East Asia.
The book shows how McDonalds adapts to the local territory in order to define itself as a gathering place for different groups in society. During the day, a Hong Kong McDonalds is a quiet, spacious place for senior citizens to gather in peace. In the afternoon, it becomes a place for teens to gather, protected from local gangs by ex-military thugs that McDonalds hires to keep the premises safe.
Watson believes strongly that only by focusing on the traditions and interests of today can we understand the world as it is today. “Ethnography never stops because people never stop,” Watson declares, and it is his life work to keep up with it.
Speaking of the future of anthropology, Watson says, “I feel kind of stuck in the mud. Anthropology is reinventing itself.” Just as societies and individuals are continually changing, so too are the social sciences. Watson’s generation went to a village and studied it. The current generation does urban case studies about the different dynamics of an institution. Time will tell what the next generation will deem the key to understanding a society.
Students woke up Thursday to find chalkings all over the campus sidewalks. One student I talked to said “I wasn’t really paying attention and I just assumed they said ‘Go Carleton!”
Far from the pep-rally cheers they resembled, the messages were attacks on Carleton’s policy regarding sexual assault. Among others, “Carleton Coddles Rapists. Get Angrry!” was written in giant letters in front of Sayles and “Do YOU Feel Safe at Carleton?” appeared in front of the town houses.
The Carletonian today featured a scathing response by an anonymous student who was the victim of sexual assault. He/she writes:
I have been coping with these terrors for the good majority of my time at Carleton. I can’t even describe the alienation or degradation I’ve suffered. But I believe I speak for almost all victims of rape when I say that the chalk messages around campus put up on Thursday are inappropriate, humiliating, and incredibly cruel.
It’s unclear exactly who wrote the messages on campus, but they were not well-received. Although obviously well-intentioned, they seem like a cheap gimmick which drags into public an intensely personal issue.
Sexual assualt is without a doubt one issue on campus that needs to be taken more seriously. But because of truly personal nature of the topic, it has to be approached with more tact than chalk bubble-lettered shock statements.
Today the results of the Campus Climate survey were presented. Sue Rankin presented the results of campus wide survey focusing on minority/majority issues. She described the four main challenges on campus as: “Racism, Elitism, Sexism, Heterosexism.”
Like many other students, my first reaction was “Well, duh.” It’s obvious that any institution like Carleton grapples with these issues. I walked away from the initial presentation wondering why the administration spends such exorbitant amounts of money for such forgone conclusions.
However, there was a Q and A session with Rankin tonight where a group of maybe 30 students discussed the results with Rankin and talked about where to go from here. This meeting was much straight-forward and ultimately more powerful.
“You can’t help but be racist because you grow up in a racist culture,” Rankin told the crowd of students, many of them leaders on campus. “Your behavior is shaped by the values instilled by you.”
One student pointed out that 45% of students surveyed said they have seen instances of harassment, but around 80% said they were “satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the campus climate. What does this tell us? It’s good that a high percentage of students recognize harassment, but many of them don’t care or don’t think it’s effecting the campus climate.
Why do so many students of color and queer students are seriously consider leaving Carleton? Why do they describe a a difference in the image Admissions projects and the reality when they arrive on campus?
If you want to look at Elitism on campus, just look at who works campus jobs and who doesn’t. If you’re paying full price for Carleton, you don’t need to work a campus job because its not part of your scholarships.
How do we address these problems institutionally?
Rankin recommends a class for freshmen in which they read Critical Race Theory and books about white privilege. A class which can be a venue for these kinds of discussions to take place among the students who will be part the campus body for the next four years. (This point echoed the discussions Carleton has about its Recognition and Affirmation of Difference requirement.)
These are just a few scattered thoughts that came up, but the real question was, where do we go from here?
How do we address these problems individually?
Rankin urged those in the room to take the message into social circles. “You want to know the scary thing?” Rankin asked. “You’re doing it to yourselves,” meaning that harassment against students is carried out most often by students.
“Why discuss these issues at student groups where everyone already gets it?” Discussions of privilege and power are harder to ignore when trusted peers bring them up.
Rankin made an even clearer call to action against sexual violence. As Rankin said, “We have a rape culture on college campuses.” 34 students (2% of respondents) in the survey reported that they had been the victims of sexual assault.
Today I woke up to find the sidewalk covered in chalk denouncing the administration’s response to reported sexual violence. There are many groups on campus trying to raise the issue, but the concerns often fall on deaf ears. Students out partying don’t take the issue seriously.
It’s easy to speak sincerely about these issues but much harder to act on them. Today I was sitting in the lounge and a student who was exhausted after coming up the stairs said, “The stairs are racist against white people.” How am I supposed to respond to that? I didn’t say anything. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed it had it been said yesterday.
I feel like I’ve got a lot on my plate, but I plan to read as much as I can of the full report. Please visit the site and take a look at the summary.
Tonight at the CSA Senate, Treasurer Sam Ritter announced that due to conservative budget estimates, the Carleton Student Association has a $58,000 budget surplus. Any money in the Capital Reserves account over $65,000 is “discretionary,” meaning the CSA Senate can pretty much give it out at will. Ritter estimates that there will be $30,000 this year in discretionary funds.
Last year also saw a budget surplus, and the CSA Senate took the opportunity to fund the Sustainability Revolving Fund. This year the only suggested use so far has been $5,000 to replace broken pool tables.
I’m sure the funds will be used in some kind of exciting and intriguing way, but it strikes me as odd that CSA Senate keeps raising the Student Activity Fee (currently $200) if there’s so much money in the discretionary fund.
One topic that’s been on everyone’s tongue for the past few days is the bank failures and credit crunch. I just read an article which simplifies and explains the financial crisis. Below I will distill some of the key points, but here I’d like to speak a bit about the discussion on campus.
From my view at Carleton, it’s easy to disregard concerns about the future of the larger economy. I find myself puzzled and fascinated by the financial crisis, but not truly troubled. I worry about global warming, and so when I hear about higher gas prices, my first thought is that consumption will decrease, a good thing. I don’t understand the serious financial burden that gas is to many Americans.
Similarly, when I read about the financial crisis I imagine a desperately needed restructering of a broken financial system. This may well be correct, but its not complete. I can’t understand what these loses mean to the people who really feel them.
There are certainly some groups on campus who know a lot about world economics. I once visited the Carleton Capital Management club and was very impressed by their complex discussion of current economic trends. I think most students, however, are probably unconcerned and uninformed about the current financial crisis. There are so many topics of interest, it’s impossible to keep up on everything going on in the world. I too focus only on what’s interesting to me.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past couple days thinking about the most trivial economics imaginable. Why does Carleton have two fake currencies? And why won’t they switch my meal plan? As mundane as these topics are, they consume much more of time than impending global economic worries.
One of my favorite parts of Carleton College is studying multiple disciplines simultaneously. Right now I am taking two languages, Introduction to Anthropology, and Statistics.
In Anthropology we are studying linguistic traditions and their ability to shape perceptions of the world.
Think of languaging as an endless social process of orienting and reorienting ourselves and each other to a constantly changing environment.
Language serves not only to communicate but also to fundamentally interpret and construct the world as we know it. In other words, our language and thoughts are able to shape reality.
In statistics we’re reading about a related effect, the placebo concept. Scientists sometimes struggle to prove that antidepressants are more reliable than sugar pills in curing depression. My textbook grudgingly admits “The power of suggestion is somehow able to affect the result,” as if this is an unfortunate side effect we must try to do away with. But if we recognize the ability of thoughts to shape reality, isn’t it natural to assume that one’s beliefs about their health can actually effect it?
Besides the classes I’m taking I also visit past professors from time to time to discuss things that I’ve been thinking about. I always ask about the elections, because I’m particularly interested in them. Steve Sarvi is coming to the activity fair today.
“I love new beginnings,” said Deborah Bial at opening convocation today. Bial is founder and president of the Posse Foundation. Posse recruits youth leaders from urban neighborhoods and forms “Posses” which then attend top tier colleges together. Carleton has been part of the Posse since 2005; the class of 2012 includes the 8th group of Posse students to attend the college.
After describing a number of pressing social concerns throughout the US, Bial told the packed chapel, “You need to do better than we’ve done in the past, and we need your leadership.”
Tonight the Carleton Student Association Senate held its first meeting. More informal than usual, the senate discussed plans for this term. President Caitlin Fleming outlined the agenda for the senate this term. Senate will be actively involved in the reviews of the Wellness Center and freshmen experience. Additionally, it plans to focus on the Campus Climate survey and various issues raised by the transition from SODEXHO to Bon Appetit.
The members and officers of senate (and me) also went through a brief privilege simulation where we anonymously identified ourselves for various social factors (traveled abroad, depend on financial aid, etc.).
Given the high turnover rate of senators and fast pace of life on campus, senate can be a hectic place. It was certainly a good team-building exercise to spend some time with the other senators in a less formal environment. I’m very much looking forward to this term.
Among the announcements in the All Campus Email, several of Carleton’s local transportation options have been altered. Carleton will no longer be subsidizing Northfield Transit, while the Love Bus and the Co-op Bus which are run in conjunction with St. Olaf, will have decreased hours. A new service, the Northfield Connection, will run Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.
There was discussion of decreasing services like the Lovebus last year during Spring Allocations, because they were not especially popular among Carleton students. The question was “Why are we paying for empty buses to make trips to Target?” I think its a great idea to decrease the number of trips while still offering th service.
I just arrived on campus and things are back in full swing. As I went to buy textbooks, I heard several people playing violin in their rooms. The staircase leading to Burton Dining Hall has been vandalized, there’s ducktape covering it. Ah, Carleton.
Tomorrow, Monday September 15th
Deborah Bial, founder and director of the Posse Foundation, will be giving opening convocation at 3PM in the chapel. This is definitely a must see.
CSA Senate is meeting at 7PM in Sayles 251. It sounds like it will be a long meeting. Check here for a summary afterwards.
