As Thanksgiving break approaches, many of us are looking forward to spending the holiday with friends and family. Fortunately, those of us who can’t make it home can do the same — the College’s efforts to ensure that there will be a festive, communal vibe on campus are sure to give us all something to be thankful for, even if we can’t be with our families or friends from home.
Over the past few weeks, and over many conversations with professors I admire and whose politics have deeply influenced my own, as well as over conversations with close friends, I’ve tried to work through a very important question: what does it mean to have a radical education? And what does this imply for how we live and what we live for?
“Four weeks ago he was here. We saw him; we heard him; and we knew him. He was one of us, for he was our most recent alumnus … Now he is gone.”
Cal Plimpton addressed a grim college community in Johnson Chapel on the evening of Nov. 22. His voice quivered with emotion as he spoke. The brief speech ended with: “Let us stand a moment in silence, to honor him; then let us go and do the work he couldn’t complete.”
On Wednesday night, cartoonist Alison Bechdel delivered a lecture about how she became a comic. She also discussed the subject matter of her two books — secrets, sexuality and family. However, she did not discuss what brought me to Converse Hall that evening: the Bechdel Test. In 1985, Bechdel devised a method of ascertaining whether a movie is sexist. In order to pass the test, the movie must have:
1. More than one named woman character.
2. These characters talking to each other.
3. Them conversing about a subject other than men.
One of the most difficult questions I’ve been asked during my time at the College is how I learned English and why I speak it “so well.” My instinct is to feel exasperation and indignation, which are immediately followed by guilt at my lack of generosity towards the well-intentioned asker, who was, after all, “just curious.” The residue of this amalgamation of feelings tends to stay with me, constituting a vague bother, and this is why it was of interest to me to examine this scenario and my own reaction to it.
With economic strife rising, it is no surprise that the value of college degrees has been widely debated. Most noticeably, while many economists argue that a vocational degree or bachelor’s from a state university is certainly better than no degree at all, in terms of preparing a student for employment post-graduate, the question of liberal arts degrees often hangs in the air.
On Sunday, we all received an email from Dean Larimore announcing the “Social Cup” initiative — yesterday, Val rolled out a set of fresh blue cups that indicate to fellow students that the user is open to sitting with people he or she does not know. The purpose of the initiative is to promote social mingling in Val and to help those who would like to meet new people express that desire in a clear yet fairly unobtrusive way. This initiative is creative and has the potential to dramatically improve our community at Amherst.
