The
Boomerang December 2019
We Must Scrap the Script
Illustration © IIdalina Lehtonen
By Alberto Delgado
In late November, I wrote a post in UCU Students advising people to seriously consider leaving UCU if they felt unhappy and/or noticed their classes are bad. It was imperfect, but it was honest: I said what I wish someone had told me early on. Some said I should have encouraged people to fix whatever is wrong. I sympathize, but you can suffer the consequences of a problem without grasping it. Not everyone is equipped to understand and fix whatever is wrong with UCU. Here, I will try to explain the problems I see. One problem is that many courses are bad. Classes teach little. Discussions go nowhere. Mistakes don’t get corrected. Obvious bullshit gets smiles and nods. The most confident children run the show. Teachers transmit insecurity. Terms don’t get definitions. Loaded words are used presupposing knowledge and agreement with their implicit assumptions. Politics even in stats. Explanations reduce understanding. Apparently, we all plan to become academics. Simple topics are made difficult by verbosity. Infinite readings (some not worth their weight in kilobytes) come at a pace no human can process. But that is all about that, because I’d rather spend more time on something less straightforward: this social weirdness. At UCU, it feels like there’s a way you are supposed to be. It’s pretty comprehensive. A certain sense of humor. A certain attitude towards studies. A certain style of writing. A certain arrangement of priorities. A certain set of acceptable emotions and feeling-tones. It feels like everything has to be lighthearted, sarcastic, positive and low-stakes. When you choose other attitudes instead, such as serious, ambitious, firm, or genuinely excited, things become more interesting. But how do you engage these attitudes anyways? You see so little variety around you that it’s hard to choose, combine and reinvent ideas to build a distinct personality for yourself in line with your sensibilities. Other ways of
being seem to belong exclusively on TV. Becoming and remaining distinct here takes courage and persistence, because this place has a way of sanding you down into the bland model of the “perfect UCUer”. The contrast to my former university in Venezuela is stark. I often wish I could show people the difference. Back there, you never know what to expect from people because each has such different outlooks on life, ways of talking, polit-
ical opinions and so on, even while most come from the same city. You can’t fit in because there is nothing to fit into. It comes to mind that “get yourself a personality” is a common insult back home. Beyond sharing some nostalgia though, I bring up the example to show what is possible. My former university is not an anarchic hell. All this freedom and heterogeneity exists in peaceful, creative order. But back to Utrecht. I’ll name what I consider to be some of the worst patterns of this UCU model: Fake smile and glazed eyes. People pretending to listen who clearly aren’t listening because they don’t react when you contradict yourself. Not laughing at nonsense nor doing any other of those things that make us humans feel truly seen and understood. Laughing instinctively without getting the joke. Trying to make everything chill, noncommittal and low-stakes. Saying what you think the majority thinks (with no evidence) but not saying what you think. Nodding along to a conversation where people talk too fast and use words you don’t understand. Talking too fast and saying words you don’t understand. But the worst pattern? Ignoring these things. Accepting them as inevitable. Keeping quiet to keep the peace. Can we make our lives here better? Sure. But it won’t just happen. We each need to stop imitating behaviors we dislike. We need to connect with and trust that spark within that tells us how to thrive rather than survive. UCU could become authentic, vibrant, exciting, but only if a lot of individual people, including you, choose to ignore inertia and start making a lot of small, brave decisions throughout each day without asking for permission, without expecting praise, without thinking too much. It’s up to each of us, reader. Will you try?
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