Another One Of "Those" Posts from Dave

From Ephblog:

From WSO:

Seeing only one female student on the list of candidates for class speaker made me wonder and I looked at commencement archives. No female class speakers between 2003 and 2010. The archives start in 2003.
In addition, only 3 out of 24 total speakers are female. If we don’t count the valedictorians, then only 1 out of 16 chosen speakers is female (this includes Phi Beta Kappa & class speakers).
This makes me very uneasy.

Instead of becoming “uneasy,” this student (and the WSO commentators that follow) might consider becoming “educated.”


Men and women are biologically different.
 
If you don’t think that this scientific fact plays a major role (not the only role) in the gender of Commencement Day speakers, then you are deeply uneducated. And that is probably partly the fault of Williams College.


Would any Williams professor dare to point this out in a public forum? I doubt it. They all saw what happened to Larry Summers . . .

---

Now, let's compare the WSO post and David's post. The WSO post states that seeing one candidate for speaker made her curious, and so she found that there have been no class speakers since 2003. She also found that only 3 out of 24 speakers are female, and that only 1 of the elected speaking roles is female. This causes her to be uneasy, presumably, because she thinks that something is preventing equal representation (or, that this isn't due entire to chance.

David's response is that "uneasiness" is a flat-out wrong thing to feel, and that a smarter, more educated person would immediately understand that biological differences between men and women are the cause of the gap. Why? Because "men and women are biologically different."

What David misses entirely is that the WSO poster never said the differences weren't biological; indeed, she didn't say anything about biology. David takes this as a permission slip to imply that she is "deeply uneducated," and as a bonus, "probably" blames Williams College for this deficiency. David further takes this as an opportunity to reference Larry Summers.

The problem, of course, is that even if there are still biological differences between women and men that affect the selection process for speaking roles, it's still perfectly appropriate to feel uneasy about the gap. Thus David's entire post is falsely premised on an imagined deficiency in the WSO poster - assuming ignorance where ignorance may or may not have existed.

But let's take it a step further. David just wrote a post about biological differences between men and women at Williams. Just as he assumed the WSO poster was unaware of these, I will also assume that David doesn't know anything about them, given that he included absolutely no references, supporting documentation, or citations of any kind.

And since he doesn't seem to think that citations are important, I have justification under his ground rules to state that he must be "Deeply uneducated" to miss such an obvious fact, right?

And the kicker: I've been in touch with the WSO poster, and she understands all of this, even if David didn't expect her to. Pity she's now going to be less willing to make a perfectly reasonable post on WSO, given that idiots from the wider Williams community will quote her, make assumptions about her, and attack her.

People talk sometimes about how women are "silenced" in society sometimes. Well, if making assumptions about someone's knowledge, insulting them without grounds, and stating that Williams has failed her, all while failing to provide any sources that can be checked/refuted, thereby preventing any responsible discourse doesn't count as "silencing," I don't know what does. Because the ultimate point of David's post isn't that Williams is under-educating people. It's that simply questioning a platform with apparent male privilege is out-of-bounds, and makes one worthy of condemnation. And that is, in itself, condemnable.

For a Prefrosh

I gave up on my schedule, it seemed a little TMIish.....these are quotes from an e-mail I sent a prefrosh who asked me several questions about Williams online (her questions/quotes deleted):

I actually wouldn't worry too much about the weather - snow can be annoying, and slushy stuff moreso, but the weather Sept-Nov is wonderful, as is April-May. Being so far from your family is also probably, in my experience, not going to be the main issue (the relevant point is if you're within driving distance to go home for the weekend), and in this era of Skype/Cell Phone, the isolation of Williamstown is less punishing.

What will remain, though, is that Williams is a school in the middle of nowhere. We have one movie theatre in town, 3 bars (if you count one I've never been to), and the restaurant of choice ("the Forge") is a decent drive. There are gobs of things to do every weekend; boredom is never a problem, but some of the things that are normal in cities (a nearby airport, traffic lights, variety of live shows) just aren't present here. Instead, we're surrounded by BEAUTIFUL mountains and a variety of trails, from casual to punishing. The Outing Club is really awesome here, and Mountain Day, of course, is all about our surroundings. The question that I think many frosh can fail to answer is "Do I want to be in a context of trails/mountains/beauty, giving up the accessories of a city?"

For most Ephs, that question is a nobrainer, but some don't give it a thought, and then can't enjoy the wonderful science/art/music/what-have-you facilities and resources because of a Williamstown block....

Financial Aid is strange; the colleges used to coordinate aid packages so that students would be able to attend a college of their choice, regardless of aid, but the antitrust folks didn't really go for that. Not super relevant, but that's the sort of thing that you learn here in a course about higher ed taught by the President. However, if you didn't like Bowdoin Williams might not be much better; you should also feel free to appeal their decision; it can't hurt after all.......

Roughly 2/3s of freshman rooms are singles, but that doesn't mean a majority of frosh get them. I would actually say that living with a roommate for a year teaches valuable skills, and helped me to appreciate my singles for years 2-4 much more. Plus doubles are all in frosh quad, which has a much better location.....

 My entry was a mess for a variety of reasons, but I still like all of my entrymates: more importantly, while I am living with two people from my entry this year in a FABULOUS co-op (you can come visit us @ Susie Hopkins during previews if you want), I didn't do that for the past two years. In fact, I've found that my closest friends at Williams have been gained slowly but surely, from year to year to year. Not getting along with one's entry is not the doom that you might have heard of. It does happen, and will happen though. The entry is supposed to be a "family" of default connections for each frosh, but because of the demographics that means that a huge range of incomes/origins/mindsets are in a veeerry small space. Is that always comfortable? no. Do I think its valuable? YES.....

(about diversity) - The $64,000 question. Of course, I'm a white-straight-male, so the closest I've gotten to some of these issues has been living in black DC for a few weeks in winter study and experiencing the feeling of standing out like a sore thumb. One thing I'll say straight away is that people have a variety of high school experiences - for some of us, we were the smartest kids in the room from K-12; others went to Williams-like prep schools where everyone is smart. I had something of a hybrid experience - my school was 50/50 black/white with a similar socio-economic gap, but I think when I came to Williams I expected a bunch of people like the "smart kids" at my high school.

That's not what I found. Athletes at Williams do tend to be whiter, richer, and more from the northeast, partly because Williams is athletically strong and it takes money to develop those skills in high school, but the key thing for me is that for many students at Williams, everyone around them has always been smart, which means that their social identity has never been about being a "nerd." For others of us, we were the nerds growing up, so we tend to take on that role at Williams, which can be hard because everyone here is smart. I think part of what you have heard about is the clash/surprise of having to find a new identity - based on being a leader, an artist, a historian, a dancer, a musician, a future-doctor, a fun-lover, an outdoors-lover, a cook, a religious person, or mostly likely some combination of these and many more possibilities. That's hard, and the people coming here from prep school don't have the same hurdle, in some ways.

Specifically addressing you concerns, I think it's more that athletes tend to cluster in their teams, which makes sense - they spend huge amounts of time in practice, on the road, or at games together, and they all share common attributes. But for the rest of campus, it can sometimes feel like athletics steal people away from the rest of us, espeically fall-sport athletes who honestly might not have much time for their entry until season is over. Is there a divide of sorts between athletes and non-athletes? Yes, but its a very bridged divide, and more about individual groups/teams than anything else, just as many friend groups at Williams are based on entries.

As for race, there are many types of people of every race here; I think the shock can be suddenly being surrounded by so many white people (I had to get used to having white custodians, which don't exist in the South, and not a lot of blacks). Williams is small, though, and there is no group on this campus that won't welcome yo because of your race. Not one. I think that we play out some of the gaps in society in the uncomfortableness of putting so many people together. We're not a happy family of perfection up here (you won't find that anywhere, despite what brochures will tell you), but I think we do it pretty well. Some of the older alums can be problematic at times, but that's something you'll only see if you want to be involved with them.....

 (on grades) -
Where do you hear this? I don't think its that hard, really, so long as you plan ahead, stay on top of your readings, and give assignments enough time. It can be hard to get an A if you're doing a million other things, but if you spend the same amount of time you used to be in school focused on your work you'll be far ahead of the rest of us. We do operate with curves here, to work against grade inflation, but I think an A-, at least, is always in reach, and probably higher than that in many classes. There are a lot of resources (Math/Scienve Resource Center, Writing Workshop) for people to use; I'd only make sure that you don't put yourself in a class you aren't prepared for....

It's always easy to be the party of "no."

And the democrats are playing that role to Paul Ryan's budget proposal. Come out with something in opposition, and we'll talk. But calling it a "death trap" is stupid and hypocritical. We're walking towards a cliff.

The Last Six Weeks - a Daily Diary - 4/5

11:00 - wake up from late night problem set
11:15 - actually get up for 11:20 class
11:20 - class; discuss libya
12:35 - grab lunch, go to library, finish problem set
1:10 - class
2:35 - POEC meeting, realize much work to do
4:00 - fix question #3 on PS with prof permission
4:30 - turn that in, read news then go home and cook dinner
7:00 - event
8:30 - 12:30: chatting, talking with people in Sawyer, and sending 33 e-mails
12:30 - watch end of star wars @ susie
now - going to sleeeeeeep

The Last Six Weeks - a Daily Diary - 4/4

In an effort to record daily life at Williams, I'm going to record a brief bit about the events of my days.

9:00 AM - Wake up, watch news, read blogs, write e-mails
Head to grab breakfast at Eco Cafe, then
11:00 AM - CSCI 134 Class
12:00 PM - Get lunch, talk with lots of folks
12:45 PM - Bell training
1:10 PM - Audit class #1
2:35 PM - Audit class #2
4:00 PM - Job discussion
5:30 PM - Buy milk, deliver home
6:00 PM - Labbbbbbb until 9:45
10:00 PM - Susie fun time with Diego's Birthday

At some point: a problem set due tomorrow....

(Screencap source)

Dear media,

The general public/yours truly didn't have a clue about what radation levels constituted "dangerous" or "normal" before the Japan Quake, and since most people aren't as hyperactive news-readers as I, most don't know today that minute amounts of radiation are everywhere, and no cause for concern.

But when you report that there are "trace" or "minute" amounts of radiation in milk or in the air, people don't know that radiation also comes from flying cross country, or even from eating a banana. And because you don't tell them that, (instead saying that "government experts say it wont hurt us"), what you're really telling people to do is to freak out unnecessarily, and from what we know about stress, I'm fairly positive that the media attention to this is going to cause more economic damage in worry and reduced buying of COMPLETELY SAFE PRODUCTS than the radiation ever could.

The fix is simple: compare the radiation level in milk to a "normal" level, or use some sort of relative figure, for example that a person would have to drink 6 billion glasses of milk to get a dangerous dose. These are easy. Sadly, your duty to alert/alarm works, in this case, against the public interest, and it's one of the few times I'm quite disappointed in the modern media.

Obama has embraced the Bartlett Doctrine

If you watched The West Wing, you might recall a plotline in the fourth season revolving around "Equatorial Kundu," where there was a tribal genocide occurring, and where President Bartlett decided to intervene, saying that until that day, the United States had never before practiced a doctrine of military intervention on purely humanitarian grounds.

That line, broadcast in 2003, can no longer be said to be accurate. We have fundamentally involved ourselves in a tribal conflict; acting to protect a population from oppression and murder at the hands of its own government and leadership, where our fundamental interests were based on conscience and a "common humanity," instead of essential interests.

Obama's line is that he skirted the full responsibility by placing this on international backs, but no one can doubt that we've seen American leadership at full display in the courtyard of international relations. We own this struggle now, and my greatest fear is that we will now be perceived to be in a proxy war, requiring more resources until our patience with the rebels has ended.

Possibly, possibly, they may succeed. But if the fundamentals of this conflict are geographically based on tribe, then I think al-Qaḏḏāfī will remain, and every day he stays in place will weaken perceptions of American power. I could be wrong - God willing, the President has intelligence that says otherwise, and may those events come to pass, but this is a big risk, and one that will have to be paid for, one way or the other, by Americans who never voted for any of the people that go us into this.


Perhaps all of our bombings have been about preventing genocide, but last I checked, many of the tanks we hit weren't on their way into Benghazi.

"Tradition, Family, Prosperity" and Brown University Collide

First off, this video is INTENSE. It's the direct clash of two very different ideas about marriage and homosexuality, and I felt quite uncomfortable watching, even as someone who has been near and involved with discussions on this issue for years.

Second, I think the pro-gay folks comported themselves much better than the anti-gay folks, considering what TFP published on their YouTube page that generalized all of the counter-protesters as "violent," when many of them behaved exactly as the TFP folks did.

Third, I think destroying the banner was foolish and fool-hardy (and from a PR standpoint, stupid to do when filmed), because it doesn't communicate any willingness to engage, and ultimately, you don't reach people by destroying their stuff.

But ultimately, the video is the sign that we can disagree - strongly - and have no one get hurt (just spat on, grumph), and that's something for which I am proud to be an American. The ACLU gal in the video was also great; while these people may think that counter-chants aren't ok, they are the perfect counter to this sort of protest, and I commend the many Brown students who stood up for their beliefs, as well as the marchers who made the opposite case who behaved appropriately. I do NOT commend the editing of the video, which is simply pretentious, and the roughshod descriptions of what occurred, which I think are written to get more fund-raising.

Mark Hopkins & The Constitution

From Patheos:

Reverend Mark Hopkins, the former president of Williams College, urged the federal government to pass laws protecting the observance of the Christian Sabbath (Sunday). Hopkins argued that the Fourth Commandment ("Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy") should be embedded in American law in much the same way that commandments prohibiting murder, stealing, and "bearing false witness" were staples of the legal system. If that was not enough to convince naysayers, Hopkins emphasized Jesus' words in Mark 2:27—"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath"—to argue that the human body was created by God in such a way that it required a day of rest. "Men and animals," Hopkins wrote, "will have a better health and live longer; will do more work, and do it better, if they rest one day in seven, than if they work continuously." Since rest was a human right endowed by God, how could a nation with Christian roots not endorse the Sabbath?

We embrace what we like from our past and ignore the very unconstitutional thoughts of Williams's celebrated President. I am left wondering, to an extent, about how "correct" my current constitutional thoughts will seem in 50 years. Perhaps anyone who thinks the government should regulate marriage will be ostracized?

Libya

The recent political kerfuffle over Obama's intervention in Libya is the perfect Catch-22. As was inevitable, military equipment has been destroyed, and civilians killed - by us. We own this conflict in a way that no one can diminish - mission creep is going to get worse unless we have set up (privately) a CLEAR AND ABSOLUTE end of commitment.

If we hadn't intervened, you can bet the GOP would have made a huge fuss that Obama had let the rebels die (which is what would have happened by today). As it stands, they're criticizing him for getting us into another conflict, and that's one thing about being POTUS - sometimes you just have to take it on the political chin; it's part of the office's responsibility, and something I hope other presidents will emulate.

I am still an opponent of intervention - the success of Egypt is that they survived and made it work without outside help; while the dictator's survival in Libya/the crush of the rebels would have sent the wrong message, I don't think a doctrine of intervention is going to do us many favors either. These revolutions have been shown, absolutely, to work. Citizens should now concentrate on organizing for the next round of uprisings, with the knowledge that time allows evil regimes to consolidate power.

Lessons should be learned and absorbed; it's not wise for us to push this too hard, and certainly strategically stupid to open all of the rebels to charges of Western influence. We shouldn't make ourselves a propaganda boogyman, and I fear that's the ultimate effect of our actions.

Responses to Ephblog Questions

Which experiences at Williams would you like to take with you, be they educational, interpersonal, community-oriented, etc., so that those parts of your life will be part of your next steps?

Honor Committee. There is no responsibility quite so great as when which eight students control, to some extent, the near future of someone's life - if they have to make up a course, or if they might be suspended. There isn't much outside accountability for Honor Committee - we students receive advice from faculty and the Dean, but ultimately the call is ours. My honor experiences, in making deciding votes in both directions, have made me much more comfortable with less consequential decisions - I can look at a problem, make a good call, and go on with my life much more easily now. Nothing teaches responsibility like responsibility.

Storytime. I've always been a fan, but I think there's something authentic and unique in the trust of that space - hopefully, I can inspire something like it later.

And then there are the countless experiences with difference - people who have different customs or ideas, and navigating our distinctions and similarities.

How might that relate to searching for work and finding what you’d like to do, or a workplace you’d like to be part of?

Hard to say, especially initially. Williams has helped to make me a better person, but I don't feel like I've gained many occupation-specific skills here, which was probably the point.

CS 134 anyone?

Taking it right now and loving it....kinda wish I had gone for this class freshman year; I might (??) have double-majored....

This blog is not where I post the most:

If you want to read the stories that I find most interesting / worthy of note, subscribe to this Atom feed of links/articles (website version here).

 

I link all of this, and more, each day, with Google Reader's shared items feature. The feed isn't quite as visual as what's shown here, but I'm rather loathe to quote anyone on the blog proper without commentary.