Midterm Threats

Two days ago, someone at my university discovered a piece of graffiti written in Sharpie inside a bathroom stall.

The message was determined to be a potential threat to university safety.

Campus officials responded by (among other things) increasing police presence on campus and sending a university-wide email announcing that students who do not wish to come to campus during this potentially dangerous time cannot be penalized for missing class.

As this email went out, the campus became awash in threatening graffiti. Students woke up to find "you're next" written on their dorm room doors. Emergency residence hall meetings were called, to try to establish some kind of safety guidelines for residents. The graffiti didn't stop.

I'm of a cynical mind, and my instant reaction is "midterms begin next Monday, and someone -- or a group of people -- is trying to get the university to shut down the campus."

The undergraduates, however, have told me that they are legitimately afraid. Never mind that this additional graffiti appeared alongside the university's "you can skip class" policy; never mind that none of the previous school shootings have been predated by a graffiti outbreak. The undergrads are afraid, and they have good reason to be.

One student even asked me where the safest place would be in a lecture hall, in case of a shooting. Near the door (for possible escape), in the center (surrounded by a mass of bodies, able to duck and hide behind a row of chairs), in a far corner (potentially inconspicuous)??? I didn't have an answer for her.

What does a university do in a case like this? Clearly, if something were to happen, they would be liable. They also want to ensure student safety, and so taking some kind of proactive action is both appropriate and necessary.

At the same time, announcing that students can skip class if they feel afraid (and, in fact, do not need to write their professors any note explaining or acknowledging such fear; they can simply not show up, which essentially meant carte blanche for anyone who missed class today) would seem to offer students a seductive opportunity: want to get out of midterms? grab a pen...

I guess we don't know where to sit in a lecture hall anymore, or what to do in response to threatening messages.

What would you do, if you were a university administrator? What would you do if you were a student?

Is An Online Mutiny Not Mutinous Enough?

Today I had the chance to meet Holly Hughes, making this the third of the infamous NEA Four I've met in person. (Memo to John Fleck: wanna do lunch?)

Hughes gave a talk about performance art as a political act, which evolved into a group discussion of the state of activism in the US.

One of the older faculty members made the following comment: "No one wants to be a public activist anymore. Everyone goes online and does these clicky-clicky things, but that's anonymous and impersonal. No one's willing to go out there and be an activist in their body, and take that public risk in front of everyone."

Immediately I responded that these online "clicky-clicky things" had perhaps spurred more political change in the past few years than any physical act; the internet brought down George Allen, Dan Rather, and Rick Santorum, just to name a few. The internet revealed the true horrors of the Saddam Hussein execution. As soon as the Clinton campaign "leaked" pictures of Obama in "his native clothing," the internet was there to call bullshit.

Another faculty member said "But it's not activism if you're online doing it anonymously. To be truly political, you have to put your name and your face and your body out there."

It soon became a split discussion. The "young people" argued that online activity has done plenty to further political and social change (where would Obama be without the internet?), and that the impersonality of a laptop was more than overcome by the connectivity of an online group. The anonymity of the internet also afforded those of us who might be unable to participate politically "in the body" (we're all worried about employers finding out, after all) to take part under an assumed identity -- an identity which, online, became as public as one's real name.

And the "older people" told us to stop dinking around on the internet and go out there and march, even if it meant losing our jobs or getting sprayed with tear gas.

The trouble, I think, is that the internet generation has seen marches. People have been marching on Washington since the beginning of the Iraq War (that'd be five years now), and nothing has changed. We saw Cindy Sheehan protest, physically, outside of GWB's ranch... for three years.

We've also seen people who try to politicalize the physical get fired, get tased, and -- in some cases -- get detained "indefinitely." As students, we could be expelled for protesting the building of a parking garage, or see our politically-themed play canceled (with the administration asking us to saw all of our prop guns "in half," lest someone go into the prop shop and use a whole prop gun to threaten someone).

But we can put an anonymous video online and watch it go viral, we can bring down a candidacy while posting entirely under avatars, and we can organize everything from flash mobs to bone marrow registry drives.

Okay, okay, I know those last two involve physical actions. ^__^ But the moral of the story is this: perhaps we don't feel the need to put our bodies on the line because we have the capability to put the truth online.

And the truth will set us free.

Pretty Blue Update!

Here's a quick update, before I dash off to a rehearsal:

* I did not win the Oscar pool. This disappointed me greatly, because I am ridiculously competitive. I *almost* won; for the majority of the awards I was neck-and-neck with another party guest, and came out ahead at the last instant because I called No Country instead of Blood for best pic; and then this guy who had been sitting quietly in the corner all night said "Actually, I got the most right," and showed us his ballot. And I'm totally not bitter about it or anything. ^__^

* As of this morning, I no longer have a soft cast on my foot. I had "the opposite of surgery," where the surgeon removes all of the metal pins he put in during the surgery, and then I had my pinholes sutured with silver nitrate, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I've regressed back to creeping down the hallway. I was all excited about getting the cast off and the pins out, but it looks like having the opposite of surgery traumatizes the foot just as much as having surgery does. In short, it hurts to walk, and it'll hurt for a few days. On the plus side, I can wear a regular shoe again.

* I saved $10 by giving myself a manicure while watching the ABC premiere of Raisin in the Sun. The manicure turned out all right; bought a kit for $2 which gave me a little jar of white polish and a little jar of "nail color" polish so I could do it French-style, and surprisingly I was able to pull this off. Raisin in the Sun wasn't bad either, although I was disturbed by the choice to make Asagai Beneatha's teacher, instead of her friend. Made the inevitable romance just a little creepy. For the record, Sean Combs can act... and thank goodness.

That's all for now. Sorry there isn't any more... um... substance; it's been a light news week in Blue-land. ^__^

Duct Tape Solves Everything

So... remember how I duct-taped the word "VOTE" to my sweatshirt for Super Tuesday?

Tonight I'm going to an Oscar party.

Racked my brains trying to think of a costume. (Everyone's going to go as Juno, right?)

Then I came up with a brilliant solution.

Grabbed duct tape, a jacket, and set out to spell "PUNK IS NOT DED."

Problem solved!

Job Search $$$: Shall We Start Keeping A Running Total?

Over on the hilarious A Philosophy Job Market Blog (tagline: "It'd be funny if it were happening to someone else"), the group bloggers keep a running total of how much money they are spending on the act of job searching.

From the most recent money post:

Holy shit, the APA was expensive. Three nights in the hotel, even at the reduced grad student rate and splitting a room with one of my office mates, came to a $180 plus taxes. Transportation was $288. Add in internet service in my room at $10 a night, a couple of burritos at Chipotle and a sandwich from Potbelly, and I'm looking at a Visa total of about $544.60 for the conference.

So I've spent $995.39 on the job market this year. That's more than 5% of my gross annual income.

To amuse you all, I thought I might start a similar tally. Today, I spent $84 on interview clothing, and $200 on a round-trip plane ticket to DC.

Which is... over a third of my monthly income. Woo-hoo!

Paging Daniel: Someone Translated My Blog Into German

To Daniel and all other German-speakers:

Someone's started copying my blog posts and translating them into German.

Here's their rendition of this post:

Sie dürften fragen, wenn Sie von einer zynischen Drehung des Gemüts sind, warum ich Bargeld auf Schönheitflüssigkeit und Haar goo fallen lasse, wenn ich deutlich für Geld und Gegenüberstehen von bevorstehenden medizinischen Rechnungen und eine potenzielle Verschiebung festgeschnallt bin.

Jene Frau sollte ihr Haar allein verlassen, dürften Sie denken. Sie sollte Mild benutzen. Oder Setzen Sie besser noch Gleich.

"Beauty fluid" becomes "schonheitflussigkeit," but "hair goo" is "haar goo." ^__^

Barack Obama And The Unstoppable Momentum

Tagging off of a comment I made on Ultrabrown:

Barack Obama has taken the place of Harry Potter in our collective consciousness.

Think about it. Last year, the entire world waited to find out what a seventeen-year-old wizard would do to save the world from evil. To pass the time, they made fanvideos, posted online, and generally whipped up enough momentum to cause grown people to dress up in ridiculous costumes and stand in gigantic lines to pay $30 for a book.

With Harry Potter done and gone, where will America (and abroad) transfer its collective fandom energy?

How about onto this other, slightly magical man whom we believe will save the world from evil?

I think it's fantastic that Obama is gaining so much momentum from what are, essentially, fangirl techniques. I also think it's fantastic that this momentum is cropping up within nearly every demographic; will.i.am, Viva Obama!, and the infamous BollyObama video.

(A full collection of fanvideos can be found here.)

All that's left are fanfic and cosplay. I did a search for Obama fanfic and -- luckily -- didn't find any. But I wouldn't be surprised if it started turning up in the next few months. (The only slash we see had better be Barack/Michelle, 'kay?)

As for cosplay... well... the national election, the big one, is on November 4. My birthday.

I think I just decided on my party theme.