college 2.0

Dear Diane,

I MADE IT

here's a playlist to commemorate this

I'll keep this short but I want to address the murder-suicide in Prattville which has put one of our classmates front and center. I didn't personally know Mitch, but I recognized his face at school. I feel detached from the entire situation beyond discovering posts about him via Facebook.

There's something about Facebook and death that just doesn't seem to mix very well; it's as if suddenly a Facebook profile is transformed into a memorial page, which is so impersonal... and like you said, they come off sounding like yearbook comments ("I miss you!" and an impersonal "rip mitch" rather than "hags mitch" RIP IS EVEN AN ACRONYM and feels lazy and devoid of true sympathy). But beyond being simply a space for condolences to be publicly seen, it puts the person in question in the spotlight, and in this case, I can't imagine any good coming out of it. Two families are now in the process of grieving and trying to make sense of why this tragedy could possibly happen... but then so is Facebook. People have been posting news updates via his Facebook page, almost nonchalantly.

This case is particular because of the implications of how they died and the mystery behind why Mitch might have stabbed Wellesley, but two of my friends both learned of the death of a classmate through Facebook last semester. I remember one of my friends actually went to prom with the boy in question and the accident really tore her apart. I guess what it comes down to is the weird juxtaposition of pictures and posts commemorating him next to posts of memes and just now "I need to cut my nails" ... I need to start deleting friends.

Huffington Post addressed this problem, the fact 2.8 million people's Facebook profile outlives them. Facebook has recognized this and has provided the family the ability to change a profile into a commemorative page. But for those profiles that remained un-updated after death, people still post casual things like "happy birthday" without the knowledge of the person's passion. How fucked up is that? It's seriously symbolic of how Facebook may NOT be the right place for celebration or commemoration. I don't know though.

Huffington says that Facebook keeps the person alive, at least for a temporary amount of time following the person's death. But I hope the Warren family can make peace with his death and the same for the Owen family. I cannot imagine the grief and confusion they are all going through, and I imagine they are only beginning the process of grieving, beginning with denial. Facebook in many ways is good for this conversation, to imagine he is still alive and up and running. But eventually, I hope they can make peace with their deaths. I hope they can press stop and move on... and perhaps deleting their Facebook profiles can be a step to moving on, just as a family cleans an empty room of the deceased.

miss you already.
Elina

!!!how to be more interesting in 10 easy steps!!!!!! (GUARANTEED) (FREE DVD IF YOU CLICK HERE NOW)

Dear Diane,

I have these scenes playing through my head like movie stills of memories I have never had -- camping out on a beach, complete darkness but the stars, lying on the sand and fireflies blinking; or sitting on top of a car wrapped in blankets, watching the sunset. Or hitchhiking on the highway and riding with strangers, wandering from town to town. I imagine conversations I have never had, people I have fallen in love with. On the flight home from Malaysia, I fell in love with a graduate student reading Socrates in the dim reading light two seats in front of me, dressed in a kempt suit. He caught my suitcase from baggage claim, let me ahead during security check. I jumped rooftops in Lin'An, China, drank cheap fruity liqueur bought from the convenience store, laying out a blanket to sit and play music from a boombox.

I become obsessed with these almost manic pixie dream girls I could create myself into: buying vinyls from old record stores and riding on a bike with a basket full of wild flowers. Reading brainy books… developing obsessions with singular things, like memorizing weird last words of dead people or collecting old bottle caps from glass sodas. Quirky but singular and somewhat… useless beyond being "interesting."

My life and my personality is elaborate and crazy and unexpected… it cannot ever be simplified into movie tropes and spontaneous whimsies. But when life does seem to imitate these 90's movie tropes… it's as equally wonderful as I could ever imagine it. I'll never forget when Ashley, you and I sat on that field right before sunset (my favorite time of day) and read sonnets. Or the one time you came over and we literally sat in your trunk talking for a hour or so. It was even more wonderful and oddly hilarious when your car trunk's top kept coming down and we literally had to hold it up.

We're allowed to imitate art right? Is there anything wrong with that? I suppose only if this art becomes a serious preoccupation, especially when men expect something of women e.g. the manic pixie dream girl trope. I love the movie Ruby Sparks which is exactly about that: when this one guy writes up this girl and she becomes alive but he ends up developing this control over her when she begins to transform into a real human girl with complicated problems. Somebody three-dimensional. 

Zoe Kazan talks about this for Huffington Post: “I think defining a girl and making her lovable because of her music taste or because she wears cute clothes is a really superficial way of looking at women. I did want to address that. Everybody is setting out to write a full character. It's just that some people are limited in their imagination of a girl.”

The problem with most movie tropes, from falling in love for the first time and going to school dances where people are equidistantly apart and even losing your virginity, is that art creates unrealistic expectations for reality. Expectations about the people we fall in love with and the friends we make. These stills I was talking about, we are bombarded by them, by chemically manipulated, filtered, beautiful images of how life could potentially be. I love seeing these images because they do give a sense of immense beauty and awe for the world we inhabit, but then I feel like my life inadequately measures up to these landscapes.

from moonrise kingdom

from perks of being a wallflower

from submarine

So I'm working on making my life my interesting. I have no unrealistic expectations about who I am and the life I live and I think my experience in high school can testify for that. I was super focus-y in high school -- I spent most of my weekends cramming for tests and completing poetry responses. The moments of reprieve I had were wondrous, although I didn't fall in love with a high school sweetheart I would eventually marry but I made some incredible girlfriends and I am still cultivating these friendships to this day. These moments are stills that reappear regularly in my mind as well, from sitting in the rain at Town Creek eating croissants and Nutella to buying ice cream at the gas station while Ajitan and Alex took a smoke in the back of Amsterdam Café. But I have no regrets for throwing my life into getting into college because I am at an amazing college. I'm looking for greater adventures now, in Auburn and in little Brunswick, ME… I wanna set off fireworks and ride my bike at 5am to see the sunrise tomorrow. And make breakfast with ice cream. Doing all three before I go to Maine. 

xoxo,

Elina

the world spins madly on

Dear Diane,

today will be short and sweet. 

Helen showed me this fantastic intellectual classy version of ChaCha / Yahoo answers called Quora. I highly recommend it because the ppl who answer your questions seem to have mental facilities you and I may lack. It answers self-help questions like "how to gain self-confidence" and "what is the worst argument in the world" (answer: my God is better than your god).

Here's one that really resonated with me: link and scroll to #3

It talks about the "Overview Effect," or an effect astronauts experience when viewing the Earth from orbit, seeing it like this:

I feel like I've almost grown immune to this image because I've seen it repeatedly across textbook covers and in science classes... but wow. Pretty awe-inspiring if you really imagine this tiny little planet just spinning madly around the sun.

The Overview Effect (n): While viewing the Earth from orbit or from a lunar space, some astronauts reported the belief that national boundaries vanished, the conflicts between people became less important, and the need for a planetary society with a united imperative to protect Earth becomes obvious or apparent.

Rusty Schweikart:

You look down there and you can't imagine how many borders and  boundaries you cross, again and again and again, and you don't even see  them. There you are -- hundreds of people in the Middle East killing  each other over some imaginary line that you're not even aware of, that  you can't see. And from where you see it, the thing is a whole, the  earth is a whole, and it's so beautiful. You wish you could take a  person in each hand, one from each side in the various conflicts, and  say, ‘Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's  important?'"

It's a kind of empathy like no other, to empathize with this entire planet, this planet that has born all humanity. It looks so vulnerable from the distance and yet so much depends on it. It's an empathy we really have to practice too because it gives us a common purpose: to appreciate our time allotted on this planet and to leave it as it collectively breathes for all of us. 

I can see where the birth place of every environmentalist and every treehugger's world view emerges... in this intense love and gratitude... gratitude I haven't even begun to fully grasp. It's SO INTENSE I can feel it beginning to permeate through my body and my brain. Wow.



Here's Carl Sagan's words in whole:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Elina

birds and the bees

Dear Diane,

Whenever I talk to Bonny about how unfair the world is, she responds by sadly shaking her head and saying "the bees are dying." It's kinda her catch-all for the pile of shit shitted upon us by bureaucrats and politicians but yeah it's TRUE the bees are dying, and this trend has been on a downward spiral since the winter of 2006.

When they say bees, they mean the European honeybees, which account for 80% of all insect pollination (convenient list of crops pollinated here), literally pollinating one-third of all the yummy foods you eat.

 In $$$$ that's more that's $200 billion a year in the states alone. Einstein even maybe possibly (Snopes says unknown but perhaps a political ploy) said, "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left." Dun dun dun. Pretty prophetic if you ask me.

In the winter of 2006, North American beekeepers suddenly started reporting 30-90 percent in losses of their hives. Typical losses? Usually 17-20%, which is considered stable loss due to mites or diseases or stress. So an average of 1/3 of all bees lost during the winter? Crazy and drastic. These bees are just disappearing, thus the term colony collapse disorder, or CCD. In response to both the drastic winter losses in 2006 and 2007, the USDA released its "CCD Action Plan" to come up with a solution to these disappearing bees, thus beginning surveys and data collection with the beekeepers and beginning serious research.

Here's how they look for CCD:

• Low / no adult honey bees left in the hive but a live queen and no dead honey bee bodies

• Still honey and an immature brood
• Often there are Varroa mites (virus-transmitting parasites) found in the hives

Thus far, no truly effective solutions have been implemented. Here's a really aesthetically displeasing graph (o m g the font / color coordination) to show the drastic losses that have continued up to 2013:

source

As you can see, winter of 2012 looked pretty ok. 22% losses!!!! But then this year, mortality went up to 31%.

According to the USDA, scientists have four categories of causes:

• Pathogens (Nosema or other unknown pathogens)
• Parasites (Varroa mites)
• Management stressors  (transportation of bees to different locations)
• Environmental stressors (e.g. pollen/nectar scarcity, limited access to water)

However, there's much speculation about the impact of pesticides, namely neonicotinoids, the most effective and wide used insecticides. The European Commission recently banned this class of pesticides for two years in an attempt to create time to take a breather and come up with a solution. Pesticide companies naturally responded lividly, saying "the proposal was based on poor science." This statement may be true, given recent research has suggested more study is needed:

In general, the few reported residue levels of neonicotinoids in nectar (average of 2 μg kg−1) and pollen (average of 3 μg kg−1) were below the acute and chronic toxicity levels; however, there is a lack of reliable data as analyses are performed near the detection limit. 

However, two studies done in 2012 by the journal Science suggest that these pesticides have a significant effect on bee colonies. 

It's definitely a serious challenge to scientists to pinpoint where to even begin solving this upheaval of bees. I read one (idk if sarcastic) commentator who said "why not just put video cameras and see where they go / what happened to them?"

The name colony collapse disorder itself sounds horrifying, as if a whole society is collapsing. Agriculture so readily depends on bee pollination and bees are such a positive externality: working to generate honey to feed their mini bee society and at the same time unintentionally HOLDING UP MANKIND. That's a lot of weight for one little bee to carry and yet they are such efficient little creatures and do their job so generously. In northern China, bees have already declined so significantly that apple farmers are doing what bees typically do and pollinating by hand.

job of the year

So is this how far we've sank? Or should I say risen? Society is so anthropocentric that humans are replacing the bees. It's hard to imagine society in the eyes of anybody but the humans, but when we take a step back, this PLANET is not ours to rampage. We are here only to preserve the planet we have been generously given an allotted time to roam and discover its wonders and beauties. We can only hope to leave behind something just and good for the future generations.

That said, another poem. 

xoxo, 

Elina

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the center of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round. 

Margaret Atwood

P.S.

swear I saw this after I began researching this topic. can anybody say "TRENDSETTER" 

next week's cover

a sense of wonder and gratitude

Dear Diane,

Recently Mr. Thompson posted via Facebook this article called "The Ideal English Major" by Mark Edmundson and I was immediately reminded of this "Who Ruined the Humanities?" essay by Lee Siegel published only a two weeks before. 

I remember considering the English major in 10th grade, proudly announcing this to my English class one day, perhaps unfazed by the prospects of living in a cardboard box. It's of course ironic that Mr. Thompson posted this article that idolizes the English major in that he was the one who truly swayed me from choosing the English major -- he warns all his students of the woes that behold English major grads when searching for a job and a comfortable salary to live on. 

I like these two articles because both authors have an unadulterated love for language itself and for the true experience of reading. 

Siegel: My parents might have fought as their marital troubles crashed into divorce, but Chekhov's stories sustained me with words that captured my sadness, and Keats's language filled me with a beauty that repelled the forces that were making me sad.

Edmundson: Real reading is reincarnation. There is no other way to put it. It is being born again into a higher form of consciousness than we ourselves possess. When we walk the streets of Manhattan with Walt Whitman or contemplate our hopes for eternity with Emily Dickinson, we are reborn into more ample and generous minds. "Life piled on life / Were all too little," says Tennyson's "Ulysses," and he is right. 

Siegel: The literary classics are a haven for that part of us that broods over mortal bewilderments, over suffering and death and fleeting happiness. They are a refuge for our secret self that wishes to contemplate the precious singularity of our physical world, that seeks out the expression of feelings too prismatic for rational articulation. They are places of quiet, useless stillness in a world that despises any activity that is not profitable or productive.

Both understand the true value of reading, but they contrast in their intent: Siegel argues the diminishing number of English majors is something to be applauded whereas Edmundson argues all students should consider the English major:

Edmundson: But students ought to resist the temptation of those purportedly money-ensuring options and even of history and philosophy, marvelous though they may be. All students—and I mean all—ought to think seriously about majoring in English. Becoming an English major means pursuing the most important subject of all—being a human being.

Siegel: It is hardly a surprise that in this atmosphere, college students choose to major in fields that are most relevant to the life around them. What a blessing that is on literature. Slipping out from behind ivied prison doors, where they have been forced to labor as evaluative "texts," the great thoughts and feelings made permanent by art can resume their rightful place as a unique phase of ordinary experience.

As to where I stand, I too agree that language should not be beaten with a hose but then I hesitate to completely dismiss the English major and the academization of the English language.

Siegel: Every other academic subject requires specialized knowledge and a mastery of skills and methods. Literature requires only that you be human. It does not have to be taught any more than dreaming has to be taught. 

Edmundson: The English major knows that the water we humans swim in is not any material entity. Our native habitat is language, words, and the English major swims through them with the old fin's enlivening awareness. But all of us, as the carp's remark suggests, live in a different relation to language. I'll put it a little tendentiously: Some of us speak, others are spoken. "Language speaks man," Heidegger famously said. To which I want to reply, Not all men, not all women: not by a long shot. Did language speak Shakespeare? Did language speak Spenser? Milton, Chaucer, Woolf, Emerson? No, not even close.

Again, we wander back to DFW's speech and retelling of the fish-in-water parable. I believe that not all readers are good readers. As if all readers of Shakespeare experience reincarnation. I don't believe in Siegel's claim that being human means you can appreciate literature. English majors are a new kind of breed, a breed that worships language like no other and perhaps understands life far greater than the average college student. The reader should have permission to examine and over-examine language so it neatly aligns with the metaphors she lives her life by and the words she needs to feel whole, even if it were not so much the reader's intent.

What Siegel writes reminds me of JD Salinger's acknowledgements in For Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction:

“If there is an amateur reader still left in the world—or anybody who just reads and runs—I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.”

Siegel advocates this - reading and running. But he fails to realize that those who choose to read and carefully examine the grooves and hills of language… to feel their way through the words slowly… what's so wrong with that? What more, to publish anything is to give the world permission to interpret it as the world pleases, as the readers need the words to mean. 

xoxo,

Elina

ground rules

Dear Diane,

Apparently we both decided to take a five day (or more) hiatus -- that's cool, we can listlessly scroll through miles of facebook posts and wander into the elusive corners of the internet and chew on peach pits all while naked -- but I don't want to let this blog to decompose and become a part of that really shitty compost project that we had to do with Ajitan...

So since this punishment sys hasn't been working so smoothly bc you have been ruthlessly dodging my attempts at guilting you and my whiny texts and you have yet to provide me a smoothie / go skinny dipping with me… we need new rules.

1. Alternating day schedule: I have August's odd numbers, you the evens. Starts today.

2. One extensively researched post per week: writing well-researched / solid commentary on the social/political media happenings is time-consuming and exhausting, especially in the summer haze, and the stress of where to even begin just makes you want to not do anything. So once a week babe. You got this.
3. The rest should be at min 100 words: they can be just as simple as your reaction to a photo / video / a song / a pop culture phenomena that should not go unacknowledged. Or even a diary entry about your day. Either way, I don't want to give up on our daily posts.
4. I'm leaving the deadline as 11pm: but obviously the time stamp is flexible. So long as it's up before the sunrises and/or is made up, anything goes.
5. Our posts can be responses to the other person's post or it can be simply a comment: I think it would be a cool thing to simply comment on the post. Our emotions, how we feel differently, etc. It's a good way to feel like there's true reciprocal thinking going on and you're not alone with these stressful emotions -- and also to know that we are actually reading each other's posts.
6. If you feel like you don't understand a topic of interest as well as the other person, you can assign it to them at the end of your post: That takes off the pressure of having to find a topic.
7. This is a tough bill during college (which for me is in exactly two weeks). But can we try to hold onto this schedule for now? I know it's a commitment, but I'm going to be truly tough on you now: I really really look forward to your posts and it's disappointing to get on the blog and not see something up. WE CAN'T GIVE UP ON THIS. Seeing you post encourages me to post. Blogging shouldn't be a solitary experience which is why this experiment is so exciting and gratifying.

Blogging is definitely a selfish, Millennialist's project -- it's a presentation of the self, as if I, myself, have something worthy of being  published. Honestly though, I have a great fear of ever ever showing my chops off to the world. I am constantly trying to submit something to my school paper but I'm simply too chicken. I cannot deal with public judgment, and I have been infuriated for DAYS because of a dumbass Youtuber comment which had NO GROUNDS AND MADE NO SENSE gah what a dumbass that bastard was. So doing this is a great way to practice and really have a medium to at least pretend the world is at your doorstep.

Let's see if we can commit to this for two more weeks. Then I'll be in college (alone) and we'll just wing it from there. I NEED YOU DIANE. My real post (not this one) will be tonight.

Kisses,

Elina

are you there diane? it's me, your forsaken friend ;_;

^I hope I'm guilt-ing you enough l o l

Dear Diane,

So transitioning into a personal post, another edition of ~elina tries to eloquently communicate her thoughts~ 

so here we go

[feeling guilty bc I already go to you in real life to voice my insecurities and now I've discovered a new medium to do so; how resourceful I have become]

This post is about envy, an emotion that comes with guilt and a lot of sadness and regret. Usually in that order. I guess I feel like my chest is thrust open and all my reservations about myself and my life are revealed. When I feel it, I'm not sure I can hide it on my face because it's such an intense moment of vulnerability. 

Here's Ze Frank, an amazing youtuber and funny astoundingly deep human being, and his take on envy:

I don't know what I even envy. Rarely do I envy money, but I envy stories and experiences people have had, I envy success, I envy fame, I envy beauty, I have even come to envy power, because at times I feel so powerless to act upon any of the politics/justice I feel so strongly about. I envy ability - particularly articulate-ness and intelligence.

This extensive list reminds me then of part of DFW's speech (where all my thoughts are pulled toward as if it has a gravitational pull to it):

"Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping ..If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on."

 I worship these things subconsciously and frequently when I'm feeling insecure about my own self -- and I do this because I believe these are the answers to the person I want to become, the ideal me. But obviously having this ideal me in my head is the construction of SOCIETY AND ITS EVIL CAPITALISTIC WAYS and SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE etc etc hmm I wonder if ehow has a 10 step way to becoming my ideal me.

So it think this idle worship of such abstract things and to our ideas of our success really drive envy and the reasons behind why we become envious of people. But Alain de Botton discussed the concept of envy as well, and how envy is driven by equality.

He says:

"The closer two people are, in age, in background, in the process of identification, the more there is a danger of envy -- which is incidentally why none of you should ever go to a school reunion -- because there is no stronger reference point than people one was at school with. But the problem, generally, of modern society, is that it turns the whole world into a school. Everybody is wearing jeans, everybody is the same. And yet, they're not. So there is a spirit of equality, combined with deep inequalities. Which makes for a very -- can make for a very stressful situation."

(Also this is so great:

Oedipus Rex: Sex with Mom was Blinding

Madame Bovary: Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic After Credit Fraud)

It's so true right? We envy our peers. I envy Fred for his classy gf, I envy Mimi for her sassy hair, I envy my friend Maggie for her quirky stories, and I totally envy you for your combination of divine beauty and searing intelligence / insightfulness. I don't envy celebrities because they are so inaccessible, so unrelateable… and what more, I do not worship their form of fame which seems to come with the never-ending scrutiny of the fickle media and fangirls. But I envy Tavi Gevinson because she is only 16, so close to my age, and for her fame, which comes for wit and writing and brilliant taste in style.

I think the greatest comfort to myself in the bubble of envy I become entrapped in at times is simply reminding myself this: 

everybody I know, my peers, my dearest friends, are living the life they need to obtain the success they need. I do not define success like they do and no matter what, I should always remember to focus on the person I want to become (be selfish like that). As for the milestones, whether it's they've been accepted to this program / they obtained something I tried to but wasn't capable of being accepted, I have remind myself just to work harder next time, and that things are meant to be.

I should read that to myself on a regular, because it's true. Like Ze Frank said, it's terrible to focus on "oh so you have so much money, BUT NO SOCIAL LIFE" which is definitely instinctive. 

I know this isn't my greatest post, but I feel really good about posting it. Envy is such a MODERN emotion, one that comes with growing up with social media constantly mumbling into your ear (and watching you as you sleep O.O). Because I have no beautiful conclusion I have a poem. It's a good one. 

We Are Many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography. 

Pablo Neruda

Love,

Elina

P.S. I learned how to embed a ted vid! MAGIC / WITCHCRAFT 

baby come back

Dear Diane,

So I found this University of Michigan website that provides a very comprehensive summary of a whole archive of scholarly articles on "Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action." It then proceeded to categorize and define each argument, from defending affirmative action to opposing it.

Needless to say, I felt overwhelmed and proceeded to crawl up into a ball on my bed and play ten rounds of tetris. But at last, I carefully went through each argument so you don't have to and here they are. My goal is to summarize each point of view in under 25 words to make this post as accessible as possible.

IN FAVOR OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

FOR JUSTICE

• Compensation for past injustices (past)
• generalized compensation to the group comes closer to the ideal of compensatory justice than a refusal to compensate at all.

• Help block current mechanisms of discrimination (present)
• Discrimination is current

• Promotes integration, and thereby helps dismantle the continuing causes of race-based disadvantage (future)
• Forward-looking rather than looking to the past; dismantle disadvantages of racial groups,  democratic civil society

• Break correlation between class and race
• Stigmatized underclass racial groups

FOR DEMOCRACY

• Colleges and universities work to create the "the capacity to regard oneself from the perspective of the other, the foundation of critical interaction..."

• Race-neutral attempts to secure integration either fatally compromise academic standards or fail to generate significant black and Hispanic enrollment in selective schools. 
• "The most important objective of . . . [affirmative action policies] is to bring about greater ethnic integration of society's elite, on the reasonable premise that society functions more efficiently, more equitably, more democratically, and more harmoniously if its professional, managerial, academic, and political elite is ethnically well integrated." (Weisskopf)
• (I have NYTimes charts! yay!)

In California, particularly at Berkeley, blacks and Hispanic enrollment has significantly dropped, despite Hispanic population increasing. 

Florida, including U of Florida, contradicts this because it has fared okay, especially with Hispanic enrollment. 

FOR SOCIAL UTILITY (where diversity is seen as a benefit to the group vs just the individual)

• "The diverse whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  Diverse groups are more effective at solving problems than relatively homogeneous groups, even if the average individually-measured merit of the homogeneous group is higher than the average individually-based merit of the diverse group. "

IN OPPOSITION OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

ON MORAL PRINCIPLE

• Reverse racism: goes against equal protection of laws, thus turning the tables in favor of certain races is equally unjust as original discrimination
• Reverse racism is a really shitty argument in all circumstances, and the best comeback you can come up with is "you're a dumbass bonehead" but I've finally discovered an educated rebuttal:
• "The hostility [toward the oppressors] is the result of these [oppressive, segregated] actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the ideological hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed."
• Here's my planned rebuttal when anyone says "reverse racism": you are being a little narrow-minded. When minorities express what you call "reverse racism," they are expressing anger and frustration at their history of being oppressed. This is not racism because racism is ideological hostility and oppression of somebody because of their race for no fucking good reason. 

• Violates principle of merit: individual with merits should be accepted or hired
• opens opportunities to minorities and women at the expense of the least advantaged white men

• Violates principles of compensatory justice
• Comes up with these problems: (a) benefits individuals who have not suffered discrimination; (b) burdens individuals who have not engaged in discrimination; (c) fails to adjust the size and kind of compensation to the specific discriminatory harms each individual suffered.

ON SOCIAL UTILITY

• Hurts intended beneficiaries
• Stigmatizes beneficiaries by saying less competent, can't compete on equal playing field
• Abolishing affirmative action would allow black students to attend less competitive schools, closer in qualifications; there is a disparity in minorities versus everybody else's merits 
• Creates white resentment against blacks (I was talking to Dr. Ketring, who used this argument)
• Relatively higher dropout rates of minorities because too challenging

• Socially divisive, creates fragmented country
• Gives incentive to minorities to identify with aggrieved group in order to claim special privileges
• This divides the nation as a whole

• Inefficient remedy to unconscious bias (see above as well)

• Diversity defense  cannot bear the weight put on it
• Same diversity rationale for race then should also apply to religion, but we reject discrimination on basis of religion
• Uses race as proxy (substitute) for attitudes is unconstitutional bc it depends on racial stereotypes

• Should be left to voluntary efforts not the government

• ***Economically inefficient
• I find this is one of the most powerful arguments against affirmative action, written by Glenn Loury
• Reduce black individuals' incentives to accumulate capital bc of systematically lower admissions
• Loury really articulates well the paradox that exists with providing leverage to minority students:
• "The political discourse over affirmative action harbors a paradoxical subtext: Middle-class blacks seek equality of status with whites by calling attention to their own limited achievements, thereby establishing the need for preferential policies. At the same time, sympathetic white elites, by granting black demands, thereby acknowledge that, without their patronage, black penetration of the upper reaches of American society would be impossible. The paradox is that, although equality is the goal of the enterprise, this manifestly is not an exchange among equals, and it never can be."

• Finally, the negative effects of affirmative action at three highly selective research universities and the advantages/disadvantages in terms of SAT points, done in a Princeton University study

• Whites: 0 (control group)

• Blacks: +230

• Hispanics: +185

• Asians: –50

• Recruited athletes: +200

• Legacies (children of alumni): +160

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Honestly, I am exhausted. I've read arguments, alternatives, rebuttals (indeed, very good rebuttals)... I have no idea what to think!!!! I'm already very bad at decisions (e.g. rocky road ice cream or mint chocolate??? #lifequestions)... but I want convictions. 

All I know is, affirmative action is happening and it has proven effective in enrolling minorities. I'm almost positive it's not going anywhere, but I hope it becomes shelved someday, because that means someday we will have achieved the equality President Johnson was talking about. Equality as a right, equality as a fact, and equality as a result. What a visionary.

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I technically missed a post. But considering you've missed... 4 posts??? imma be lax on myself. DIANE WHERE ARE YOU. the internet is weeping

love love love,

Elina