Tag: Main

In response to the Wespeak: “Productive debate, not drunken
debate,” about the incidents at Intown last Saturday night, I would like to say that I was misrepresented and my quote was taken out of context in a racist manner. The debate was about the Hawaiian party that was thrown that night by some Beta brothers. Many other students and I were offended by this event because it served to ignorantly appropriate another culture and was racist. In order to make a point about how offensive the party’s theme was, I said “Have an African party, wear Kente cloth, get drunk, and go to X House. Then see if it’s ok to be racist, and make fun of someone else’s culture.” This is completely different than what Matt wrote. His representation of me portrayed me as a violent black woman, whose “threats” of graphic violence were backed up by an overly aggressive, intimidating, uncontrollable black mob.

An African party like this would never happen because people know it is wrong and it is racist. Moreover, there are visible student groups and a venue that anyone who would throw an “African” party would have to answer to: Ujamaa, West Indian Student Association, African Student Association, Black Women’s Collective, Black and Latino Brotherhood and the venue of Malcolm X House.

Unfortunately, there is no Hawaiian student group and no Hawaiian house. The presence of identity houses on campus is one way in which this institution legitimizes and supports the identities of people on campus. In addition to these student groups and program houses, Wesleyan has institutionalized the study of racism directed at Black people with the African American Studies Program. This creates an environment where people know what is ok to say about Black people. People know that it is not ok to make overtly racist jokes, use derogatory names or throw racist parties about Black people because they would be seen as racist. People know that these acts or events themed in this nature would evoke strong responses. What those who
threw this “Hawaiian” party have not come to realize is that throwing this party was racist the same way an “African” party would be racist.

The strong reactions produced as a result of my comment, as well as Matt’s misinterpretation of them, further show the blatant racism of the Hawaiian-themed party, as well as in the discussion we had on Saturday night. Matt attempted to misconstrue what I said in order to make me appear emotional and violent. This misrepresentation further perpetuates the racism that occurred through this series of events, and on Wesleyan’s campus in general. Specific to this discussion, that perpetuation is: the racism of the Hawaiian-themed party, the reactionary wespeaks to the naming of the racism of that party, the yells and threats of the Beta brothers who were present, directed at the only black person at Intown, and then the most recent wespeak, misrepresenting my quote and X House.

Dear Ms. Greathead,

So I picked up last Friday’s copy of the Argus the other day, and your column [“Stranger Things Have Happened: WesleyaNYC: Simply the best, Better than all the rest” (Argus, October 31, 2003)] caught my eye. I’m hoping that you were aiming for sarcasm with that one, and that I’m just not getting the joke. Maybe it flew over my head. But you came off as just a tad too serious for sarcasm.

For the record, I can understand your “New York is the Center of the World, We live in a The City Centric Universe” idea, because I’ve bought in to it time and time again. I was born in Manhattan, lived in Brooklyn, moved out to New Jersey as a kindergartner, and spent a good long time wrestling with a geographic identity crisis until my accent showed up. And it really only tends to do that when I get pissed off. In fact, as you read this Wespeak, try to do so in a Jersey accent.

That said, I’m gonna venture to say that I can understand where you’re coming from. You don’t have to be from New York City to call it The City, to imagine it as the most important place on Earth. Still, it’s that kind of thinking that has given some of us a bit of a swelled head and a whopping case of New York City snobbery. Not that I’m pointing fingers or anything. But when you extend your City vs. Midwest/South/Pacific Northwest/West/Southwest, “we’re the greatest and the rest of the world has an inferiority complex” logic to Wesleyan—well, that’s when I start talking like I’m from Jersey.

You seem to be buying into that “bubble on a hill” idea, where Wesleyan occupies an almost mythic place in the imagination of people who don’t go here. Okay, there are about 3 thousand of us, a couple of thousand more alumni, a few billion or so non-Wesleyan people in the world (including the “immigrants handing out fliers” that “true” New Yorkers ignore with such breezy nonchalance—wait, correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t immigrants be New Yorkers too?)…Yeah, we here at Wesleyan must really be the center of the universe. As much as I’m sure those billions of people orbiting around us would appreciate your concern for the absence of Wesleyan in their lives, what with the boredom, lack of ironic fashion sense, and complete un-talentedness this absence implies, I still have to wonder—where do we get off saying that we’re better than anyone else? School pride is one thing, self-righteousness is very much another.

And last time I checked, the world we live in extends way beyond the New York metropolitan area and the privileged space of elite private colleges. Your column would suggest that you think otherwise. But of course, maybe I’m the one who’s wrong here. I’ve spent most of my life on the wrong side of the Hudson River, haven’t I?

Respectfully yours.

The issue of points off campus has received much attention lately. Since the WSA passed its dining resolution on October 26 giving Aramark the green light to move forward with their plan to move points off campus, most of the power now rests with the WSA’s dining committee. It is their responsibility to select the restaurant where points will be used, and to adopt a set of standards for evaluating potential restaurants. These standards include the labor practices of the candidate restaurants, such as the hourly wages and benefits they offer their workers.

The dining committee is made up of representatives from the WSA, USLAC, EON, as well as the Local 217 Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. Including representation from a variety of groups on campus is intended to make the committee function democratically with input from a variety of viewpoints. However, while the WSA, USLAC, and EON were able to select the individuals from their groups to represent their interests on this committee, the workers were not given that right. Instead, Aramark’s management chose an employee who has not been active in the union to be the dining committee’s union representative. The workers already have a system in place for assigning leadership roles and selecting representation. Aramark management has undermined that system through a blatant disregard for that procedure.

We are neither heartless nor emotionless; in fact, quite the opposite. But during the course of the past three years here, we’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend: people no longer ‘think’ their opinions. Instead, they ‘feel’ them. The phrase “I feel like” seems to have taken over this
school. Some may argue that this is simply a question of semantics. We, however, are not convinced. We are saddened by… no, wait… we feel sad because of this egregious usage of our beautiful English language.

The phrase is upsetting for two reasons. Firstly, it’s logically nonsensical. One can feel emotions. One can feel happy or sad; one can feel like going to a party. One can
not, however, “feel like Marx was wrong” or logically say “I feel like I disagree” (which we have overheard on multiple
occasions). What a pointless thing to say, “I feel like I disagree.” Of course you feel like you disagree, because you do, most likely, disagree.

This school was recently called the most politically active in the nation. That means we all must believe in some things strongly. We must have strong opinions if we’re willing to vocalize them off campus. Stop protecting people’s feelings by hiding your opinions.

The second reason this phrase is upsetting is that we are at an academic institution—one of the best in the country —and an academic institution is driven by intellectual debates, which rely on what one thinks of various opinions, facts, and theories. All such related discussions require people to think. If we phrase our thoughts in the form of feelings, it leaves no room for debate. It is possible to argue against thoughts and opinions, but not feelings.

So, for the sake of preserving this intellectual community, start thinking instead of feeling your ideas, Wesleyan.

I know this much: my friends aren’t bad people, and neither are your friends.

Two particularly unfortunate things happened Saturday night. Despite these events, which I will go into below, I hope that the productive dialogue that precedes them will not be forgotten in the inevitable fallout of the night’s climax. I attended a party at Intown.

Before my arrival, a number of the party’s guests and residents and friends of the neighboring house became involved in a discussion of the Wespeaks pertaining to a Hawaiian-themed party at DKE and the Wespeak written by Mr. Wilson in response to it. In short, this discussion ran beyond three hours and involved—in my opinion—productive dialogue, harmful failed communication, and most tragically, explicit threats of physical violence against parties on both sides.

In my eyes this serious discussion was first brought towards its tragic end when a friend’s girlfriend who does not attend Wesleyan arrived at this Halloween costume party wearing a grass skirt, flower necklace and a t-shirt with “Maui” printed on front. My friend did not know that in the previous month, a serious and heated debate about the commodification of Hawaiian culture by tropical themed parties had occurred on our campus. Further, she was not aware that some people feel that such parties commodify Hawaiian culture and marginalize the history of the American colonization and annexation of Hawaii.

Before a Wespeak was written about the offense such parties can cause, I did not know that drunk kids trying to find temporary love while wearing hibiscus-covered shirts would offend anyone. Since the aforementioned Wespeak was published, I’ve become aware that this is, in fact, a poignant issue that some people feel needs to be addressed both on the Wesleyan campus and by America as a whole.

Yet, how did a fruitful and informative dialogue culminate on Saturday night? My friend, who arrived at a party where her costume was cited as a tool of mental and physical oppression for over three hours, had enough of being accused of ignorance without any of her accusers offering her an education free of judgment. Tragically, her response was to throw a full cup of beer on someone she deemed overly aggressive in criticizing of her costume and called the same person a bitch. My friend did not then stand there and prolong a fight; she ran into the Intown parking lot in tears caused by the accusations she (perhaps wrongly) felt as personal and for her aggressive response to them. Equally tragic was the response of those people who had accused her of racism, bigotry, and oppression: “Come to X House and we’ll see what happens to you,” which accompanied graphic threats of violence.

Throughout this letter I’ve repeatedly used the word tragic to describe Saturday night’s events. I believe that this is an appropriate adjective for the night because after over three hours of productive, educational, and intelligent discourse between two conflicting viewpoints, the civility and dialogue was tainted by two truly base responses. In my mind, the thing that makes Wesleyan great is that we have created a socio-political environment where differing views can be presented to others. Yet all too often our campus does not want a dialogue; people want agreement, first and foremost. Students confuse what they believe is right with the realities of a political world with varied viewpoints and because of this, never come down from their moral high ground. The result: nothing changes. People get angry about Wespeaks instead of considering them as valid opportunities to educate each other.

In my opinion, Saturday night epitomized both the promise and failure of Wesleyan’s ideological atmosphere. We’re all intelligent people here who are capable of listening, understanding, and empathizing with each other. When we do this we are a powerful force. Yet more often than not, we don’t listen. We shout. We rant. And we get angry for people doing exactly what we’ve just done to them (that is, shouting and ranting).

I know that there are many perspectives on this campus that I have never considered, but I would never confound ignorance of someone’s beliefs with a prior denial of the possibility that people other than myself may be right on any given issue. I know we all think we’re right, but when we deny our potentiality to listen understandingly, we miss our greatest strength as a community of many powerful minds. In closing I’ll offer a plea through a simple analogy: as a community, we do not hold fifteen-year olds responsible for not knowing how to drive a car, as they have not been taught yet. Yet once they are taught we expect drivers to act in a certain way towards other drivers. In my mind, politico-ideological education is no different; we should not hold those who are unexposed to our own beliefs responsible for their ignorance—we should educate them ourselves.

Did anyone notice that all the wespeaks in the last issue of the Argus were about the recent dining-options hubbub? I for one have heard enough from both sides of the issue, and at this point have become completely apathetic. Someone needs to write about something else. Autumn, for example. Or the weather. Even though I am partially colorblind, I can still appreciate the beauty of that tree in front of North College. You know the one. Its red-orange boughs extending to all sides of campus, it does not care one bit about dining options. It only cares about stretching towards the dwindling sunlight of late afternoons.

Sure, it’s great to take a stand. But isn’t it tiring sometimes? Sometimes we all need to just sit in the sun, play catch, drink lemonade, and watch the trees. Sometimes we need to be children again, able to sleep unworried in the backseats of our parents’ cars and forget about unions, politics, battery eggs, and whatever else might be troubling our consciences. It is a beautiful day outside, so be like the autumn trees and just go lie in the sun. I am.

This past Saturday night I was walking down Home Avenue holding hands with my boyfriend after coming from a party at Earth House. At one of the houses we passed, several guys were outside and we heard condescendingly, “Look, two guys holding hands.” I turned around and charged up to the house and confronted them. I was angry and it turned into a shouting match. One of them mimicked me in an effeminate voice and I got up in his face. One of their friends came out of the house and told them to go inside. We left at that point too.

And surprise, we were really upset as we walked to my house. We felt threatened and vulnerable, I felt like a jerk and a loose cannon and was also a little astonished that I was so brazen. My bf told me that that never would have happened at his high school and he can’t believe it happened at Wesleyan. Me neither, really. Except there was that instance last year at DKE when I was kissing someone, and then all of a sudden he got punched in the face. In the past couple of weeks, several of my friends have been called fags or other epithets on the street. These things still happen at Wesleyan.

Drunk men standing on a stoop and calling out the two guys holding hands may not seem like the biggest deal. It’s probably not something you see everyday, even here, and they didn’t throw what to me is the f-bomb. But it was wrong if for no other reason than because it shattered our quiet blending in with the rest of the campus and made our intimate time together something to be gawked at. I know that being made to feel uncomfortable for being yourself is hardly a unique experience. But it’s reasonable to expect better from people in general and from people at Wesleyan in particular.

To the editor:

It was with mixed feeling that I saw Nicole Sugerman’s wonderful article on Friendster on the same day that the Friendster powers-that-be deleted the Wesleyan profile I had nurtured and through which more than 400 current students had linked.

As “Wesleyan University” (using the pseudonym “boon tan” in honor of the legendary no-show frosh from the ’80s), I felt great about being able to bring together students from Pine Street to Pearl Street. And the “WesAlum Alum” profile has grown to more than 375 former Cardinals in just three weeks, bringing together alumni from Brooklyn to Tokyo.

But alas, the Friendster terms of service forbid any profile that doesn’t represent the individual who owns it, so today, they suspended the Wesleyan account. They had previously deleted my profile for the band Pavement, through which 60 fans had linked. I fear—know—that WesAlum Alum is next.

Of course, deleting the Wesleyan profile is an absurd decision by Friendster. Universities are a natural focus for linkages, and the only other way to find other Wes folks on Friendster is to list Wesleyan as an “Interest” or maybe a “Favorite Movie.” Friendster, you see, has a
policy of deleting “fakesters,” many of which are profiles for celebrities, concepts, or sports teams, in other words, profiles that won’t contribute to a fee-based dating site. But in their single-minded drive, Friendster is killing the real golden goose, the desire we hold to see how we all link together. There’s a real profit model being wasted
there.

We can change things, however; I believe in the power of individuals to change the decisions of organizations. As someone who’s picketed major corporations and now works at one, I understand that someone who stands
outside ChevronTexaco headquarters screaming epithets will get nowhere. The person who can really change ChevronTexaco is the one who buys a lot of petroleum.

Well, we are, after all, the *customers* of Friendster, and Friendster is a start-up company in a highly volatile new business. If you want to see Wesleyan come back to Friendster, as well as the other universities and other interests that truly link people, please send a respectful, well-reasoned, non-insulting, constructive email to feedback@friendster.com, and also let them know you want your Wesleyan back. (The email address for the profile is—was—seamus@rangelife.com.)

Friendster is totally entertaining and occasionally touching concept. The guy who developed it to get dates for himself just needs a little help figuring out what he’s got.

Yours truly,
Eric “Rick” Meyerson ’95
a.k.a. “boon tan”
Argus editor-in-chief, fall ’93

So about two months ago the two of us came up from Jersey to attend this hardcore progressive Wesleyan University we’d heard so much about. We’ve always been told that its professors, administrators, and students, have long supported the ideal of social justice.

The thought of going to a place where people actually cared about something made us giddier than Dubya holding a pound of Peruvian Blueflake. It didn’t even enter our minds that when given a choice between defending decent labor practices and supporting minimum-wage slavery that there’d actually be support for the latter.
The way we see it, the issues surrounding University dining services present the Wesleyan community with a choice between a real-world application of the long-standing progressive values that made this place so attractive to us, and a policy characterized by the sort of narrow self-interest and hypocrisy that used to be reserved for the Ivy League.

The worker-designed proposal for dining service reform is exactly the kind of proposal that any progressive student body would readily support. It includes a program for improving dining quality and protects the rights and needs of workers both here on campus and throughout the Middletown community. It recognizes the need for collective bargaining in the struggle for a balanced power dynamic in the labor/management relationship.

The WSA proposal, on the other hand, seems to value falafel over workers’ rights. It allows for the expansion of points off campus without even considering the treatment and representation of labor within the chosen establishment. And if the blatant disregard for labor conditions wasn’t bad enough, the WSA resolution contains no protection against future expansion of points off campus to additional restaurants in years to come, which could mean the loss of unionized positions here on campus as a result of decreased demand for on-campus services, in addition to the acceptance of sub-par labor treatment outside of the Wesleyan campus. Adding insult to the students’ and to the workers’ injury, this policy could also become an excuse for decreased food quality, which leaves frosh and anyone unwilling to trek down to Main St. for a decent meal in the middle of the winter without adequate dining options. Doesn’t that bother anyone else?

What we’re trying to say is, we’re a little confused as to which Wesleyan we’ve ended up at. Are we attending the compassionate, liberal Wesleyan that acts on its principles, or are we attending some other school filled with SUV-driving armchair activists who talk global and act nowhere?

Aramark has been on the Wesleyan campus for fourteen years. During that time dining service workers have witnessed many changes affecting the quality and the options they offer. Not so long ago Wesleyan Administration and the student body were so dissatisfied with Aramark as the food service provider, they were seriously considering a change. Aramark made quick fixes in several locations last semester and was able to satisfy administration and stay on campus. We as Local 217 union workers have worked for many years on this campus to provide good service to the student body in spite of limitations. Now as workers we are faced with the possibility of student dining services being shifted to non-union locations OFF campus. This once again allows Aramark the quick fix with no accountability for offering dining options that should be – and have been in the past – provided on campus. Aramark officials have tried to divide the Middletown community by mischaracterizing the workers interaction with Giuseppe’s. No “hard-ball tactics” were used when meeting with Rose and we remain on good terms with her.

Students should demand better options right here on campus. Don’t let Aramark off the hook, once again. Your dining options have been compromised enough already!

H.E.R.E.
Local 217
Hotel & Restaurant workers
Wesleyan Campus