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YALE DAILY NEWS · THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 · yaledailynews.com
OPINION
.COMMENT yaledailynews.com/opinion
“What it all boils down to is that fossil-fuel companies need to accept what science and real-world planning scenarios show” 'ALASTI' ON 'CONTROVERSIAL STUDY FINDS SUBSTANTIAL DIVESTMENT COST'
We believe you
GUEST COLUMNIST I S I S D AV I S - M A R K S
Globalize DS A
lmost every year, students criticize the freshman Directed Studies program for its narrow focus on the Western canon. Within its syllabus, there is a striking paucity of texts written by females or minorities. But despite these criticisms, there has been little change in the curriculum over the years. Toward the end of the spring semester, as a nominal gesture, a couple of token black and female writers are featured along with a slice of Islamic history. However our focus on the content of the DS program must be coupled with an examination of broader structural forces. In order to fully understand the harms of having an extremely whitewashed version of a study of Western civilization, we have to examine the larger institutional forces that shape Yale, America and the whole of academia. Even though I’ve only just begun the DS program, it’s already patently obvious that the curriculum is taught through a Eurocentric lens. While we’ve been studying ancient Greece as the bedrock of Western culture for the past two weeks, there has been no mention of the influential roles Egypt or India played in the formation of nascent European civilization. Additionally, there is no mention of the gender dynamics in Grecian civilization or the existence of religious female cults in Greece. Sappho, an important female literary figure who wrote in Ancient Greece, is also absent from the curriculum. I understand DS is a zerosum game: the introduction of Tolstoy comes at the expense of Chekov and reading all of Thucydides means not reading any of Diodorus. But surely we can include someone as revolutionary as Sappho by cutting out bits of Herodotus or Livy. One argument we often hear is that women and minorities simply didn’t publish the same quantity or quality as the white men who held positions of power in the classical world. But even if this is true and our readings are homogenous, there’s no reason why our professors can’t supplement the curriculum by discussing the lives and ideas of women and non-Western communities in lecture. There is a wealth of historical and cultural evidence with which we piece together not only their experiences and intellectual contributions but also the systematic discrimination they faced. The exclusion of these voices is not limited, however, to the DS program. This is a pattern that has been exhibited in our broader University, higher education in America and across the world. They reflect structural barriers that different groups continue to face. Our lack of a multicultural
alternative to DS is a reflection of Yale’s narrow educational focus. As an institution, Yale has an endowment of around $24 billion and has come under criticism for giving nearly half a billion dollars to hedge fund managers. This comes at a time when our University is unwilling to get rid of the student income contribution, an issue which disproportionately affects minority students. For a school so well-endowed, it’s inexplicable we’re unable to use those resources in order to create a more inclusive education. I’m calling for the creation of a new program, one that differs from the DS program by focusing explicitly on giving intellectual voice to women and non-Western communities. Higher education in America has always tilted towards the powerful. But since the development of a neoliberal economy, our universities have increasingly discouraged students and teachers from questioning existing power structures. Yale is not immune to this trend. Some of Yale’s donations, such as the $10 million earmarked for a new Islamic law center or the whopping $150 million for the renovation of Commons, come from questionable sources that rely on the capitalistic practices often funding systemic oppression. I would posit that even beyond taking capitalism’s money, Yale and other universities are adopting capitalism’s ethos. Just as capitalism gains its success on the backs of marginalized groups, the academy consistently writes marginalized groups — women, disabled bodies, minorities, LGBTQ and the poor, among others — out of the history books. This process intellectually justifies the demographic destruction capitalism yields. As the premier freshman program, DS exerts a disproportionately powerful influence on Yale’s character. It’s not a coincidence that our Philosophy and History Departments are overwhelmingly white when first-year students are only introduced to white thinkers. It would be revolutionary if Yale could create a DS program to introduce impressionable freshmen to non-Western thinkers and history. I make this point not just for the sake of equality. African, Indian, Islamic and Asian thought truly has forged our way of life and the values we hold true. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, we’re doing our students a disservice by not exposing them to the rest of the world. ISIS DAVIS-MARKS is a freshman in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact her at isis.davis-marks@yale.edu .
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COPYRIGHT 2015 — VOL. CXXXVIII, NO. 17
O
n Tuesday night, I made a bowl of oatmeal for a friend. He was starving, so I brought him to my room and microwaved some Quaker (not as good as stove-top, but it holds up). We crashed onto my bed and I recorded videos for Snapchat in which we discussed our abnormal love for oatmeal. We joked about how this was the perfect snack. Some people pray; we buy oats. Despite the giddiness of our interactions, we were somber. We were both shaken, though frankly unsurprised, by the Association of American Universities’ campus sexual climate survey results that were released on Monday. Once we descended from our oatmeal high, we talked about how scared we felt. When I read President Salovey’s email about the results, I had to lie down. After a particularly rough weekend that marked three years since a dear friend’s murder (yes, you read that right), the last thing I needed was a reminder of other violence and trauma. While my friend’s murder can be classified as an anomaly, I can’t file away sexual violence as easily. More people experience sexual violence and it’s discussed more often. People are harassed and
assaulted in myriad ways that do not always feature an anony m o u s , drunken figure in an alleyADRIANA way. Drunk and sober MIELE people commit and expeCheck rience sexual violence. yourself As we continue to process the results of the survey and what they say about our campus, I think we need to be mindful of how this place is experienced by differently bodied people. Ultimately, regardless of certain voices that question the believability of an anonymous survey, a great portion of the student body participated, and there was very little incentive to lie. Women are not safe here. I do not mean to suggest that women are safe in some other, magical campus where violence is nonexistent. Even women’s colleges have incidents of sexual violence, and harassment and violence among same-sex partners and queer people is a real problem. We live in a world that is unsafe for women, and the reality
is that Yale is a part of it. The survey’s results indicated that people who identify as a gender other than cisgender male or female are assaulted at a rate of 60 percent. While there are far fewer non-cis people on this campus than cis people, this suggests that certain bodies are at greater risk of attack than others. Throughout our world, trans and queer people are murdered and traumatized at horrifying rates. As though this needs to be said, this is not okay. I recognize that every human being can and will experience pain. Nobody, not the wealthy or the white, is safe from violence in this world. All people who experience trauma should feel validated. Yet, some bodies are at a greater risk of pain. Some people are more likely to feel heard and supported. When I was harassed and assaulted during my sophomore year, I didn’t understand what happened. I just knew that I was scared, and I felt unsafe, and I knew that a lot of people would doubt or question me. It took me months before I could tell the whole story. When I finally did, I didn’t feel relieved. I felt lost and ashamed. When we're children, we are taught by our parents. Don’t
accept candy from strangers or visit a white van at the end of a parking lot. We learn to protect our bodies, but as hard as we may try to stay safe, we can still get hurt. When we are hurt, we tend to blame ourselves. It doesn’t matter if I was honest about what I wanted, or if other boys had been respectful. One night, someone decided that how I felt didn’t matter. Before the survey, my reality was real. It still is now. I still survived an experience of violence, and that won’t stop being true. As I sat in the JE courtyard finishing this column, I was amazed by how supported I felt. I was amazed by my friends and mentors, by the people who heard me and believed me and made me feel important. I implore you to understand that yes: Some people will abandon you. Some people will be mean. Some people will be dismissive. But some people will hold you and toast you bagels. Some people will sit with you on a bed with a bowl of oatmeal. I am here. I survived. And we believe you. ADRIANA MIELE is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. Her column runs on Thursdays. Contact her at adriana.miele@yale.edu .
GUEST COLUMNIST EMALINE KELSO
Beyond Ward 1
ASHLYN OAKES/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR
T
he News sparked a conversation about civic engagement last spring in an article questioning the existence of Ward 1 (“Do Yale and New Haven need Ward 1?” Apr. 20). After interviewing 37 Ward 1 residents, the reporter found that a startling proportion of students could not identify their alder. Using these numbers, Fish Stark ’17 launched a remarkable campaign around an important issue — the political engagement of Yale students. We talk about this issue quite a lot in the context of the Dems’ voter registration campaigns, the purpose of the Yale Political Union or the organized activism of groups like Fossil Free Yale. Some students care quite a lot about politics, but not about local electoral politics. The News asked the wrong question, narrowing the conversation about civic engagement to the Ward 1 alder. What do you imagine would have happened if the News had asked, instead, for respondents to name the mayor of New Haven, as well as Connecticut’s governor, senators and state representatives? To follow that up, the reporter could have asked respondents to name the same list of politicians from their hometown and state. Though I certainly hope that at least half could manage Gov. Dannel Malloy (half credit for Daniel or Dan), this skeptical writer would be willing to wager that the numbers of correctly named politicians working below the federal level would
have been similarly low. It isn’t just Ward 1 that students are neglecting politically, and it isn’t just students who are failing to engage politically. National voter turnout in the 2012 general elections was only 57.5 percent, which itself was a drop from 62.3 percent in 2008 and 60.4 percent in 2004. We’re trailing most developed countries in terms of eligible voter turnout by up to 10 to 20 percent.
STARK AND HIS CAMPAIGN GOT IT RIGHT WHEN THEY IDENTIFIED VOTER EDUCATION AND ENGAGEMENT AS A PROBLEM Stark and his campaign got it right when they identified voter education and engagement as a problem — it is, in fact, a crisis. What they got painfully, significantly wrong was their claim that the source of this problem was Sarah Eidelson ’12, or that it was significant at all. If people don’t understand how politics is relevant to their lives, they sure don’t see how politicians could be. American citizens remain existentially alienated — from
their local and national communities, from their labor, from their abilities. I believe that politics exists to empower the individual and to foster a communal space of life-building and future-making. We need to move beyond capitalism and reject competition as a measure of good community, instead developing a collaborative politics. I see the incompetence and decreasing imagination of our bipartisan politicians as a source of this political alienation. This causes radical stratification of power along income lines, alongside the increasing commodification of our cultural and political spaces. When we don’t vote, we fail our democracy — but our democracy is failing us. If even 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds can’t be mobilized by idealism, how will anything change? When you narrow down a problem, you narrow down your solutions. Throughout this election I’ve seen a lot of finger pointing. The Ward 1 alder should make more of an effort to connect with their constituents. Abstract groups of activists should come out of the woodwork to get people informed. When people ask, “Who is responsible for the apathy of Yale students?” they invoke the dual definition of “responsible” as being both “cause of” and “solution to” the problem. It is imperative that we find real solutions to this problem instead of wasting time on sporadic blame games.
There’s a case to be made that our political system would need to be entirely overhauled before citizens could feel universally democratically empowered in electoral politics — that, in a post-Citizens United, two-party electoral system, the individual will never realize the immediate consequences of their vote. We definitely need to address the inequities of capitalism: improving welfare and health care opportunities, shortening workweeks and enforcing generous maternal and paternal leaves. These reforms all give people the leisure and resources to engage. We need a more rigorous debate around these questions. Why don’t we care about politics? Why won’t we vote? If we want to solve the problem of civic engagement, we should at least scrounge up the names of our own government representatives. Then maybe we could call them sometime, organize some marches, hold some meetings or set up a voter registration drive. We need our bandaid solutions because state mechanisms will continue to churn out profound local consequences, whether we care about them or not. Good democracy requires enthusiastic and wellinformed civic engagement, but that’s probably going to require more than getting the president a Twitter account. EMALINE KELSO is a junior in Morse College. Contact her at emaline.kelso@yale.edu .