Dear University of Chicago,
Now... I really have nothing against thought and discussion. But my friends, sometimes you take things too far. I have for you two examples that I would like you to consider. One is on a small scale, though I think it reflects the same lack of, oh, a sense of humour. Nor is it as all-out controversial. But, hey, what can you do. You need two arguments to prove a point, non?
First we'll start with the über-controversial and... non-sensical.
Here is your required reading. The short of it is that, somewhere in Max P., a party was thrown. A "Ghetto-themed" party. What they meant by this is not something I will speculate on, since the Maroon is a secondary source, and an unreliable one at that. I'll take it as granted, however, that this was a small party. Now, by the comments the host may have made to the people who showed up, I can guess that there was some latent racism in existence here. Though, really, on the part of
one person. Who offended a bunch of people who were, in the true UofC sense of things, probably looking for an argument anyway. We do that here. If I had a penny for every argument I'd seen unnecessarily picked here, I might be able to pay for this education. I think part of the problem here is that we live in a very segregated neighbourhood. This leads to an involuntary sort of racism no matter what, and as an intellectual community we're hyper-sensitive to this, if not a bit paranoid. But I fail to see the point in flipping out over it. And that is exactly what we've done. We've taken a party with fewer than 20 people, one that wasn't making any noise, and a dispute some people in the house had with the people who threw it, and blown it entirely out of proportion. Because today I received a long-winded letter from the president of the university (along with every other student) informing us of the "issues at stake" and the "climate for minority students, faculty, and staff." There wasn't even noise coming from this party, according to the RHs! Okay, UofC. Let's face it. Some people -- educated or not, attending your university or not -- are racist. Are idiots. Have no social skills, no tact, whatever. I fail to see how we need "an all-University open conversation on this topic." Because even if we need to keep in mind, on the whole, our roles in a community, there are some people who are going to throw stupid theme parties with their friends, whether they intend to offend and cause a big mess or not. It happens.
So. Point one of things being blown out of proportion and taken far too seriously. Next we get to look at the purely academic. Today I took a midterm in Civ. It was, by far, the strangest midterm I have ever taken. Not because it was multiple choice. Not because it was unusually hard. Not because I probably didn't know a third of the material as well as I should have. But because a quarter of the test had questions like "Which of the following best describes Billie Holiday's voice?" and "Who was referred to as 'Pres'?" I laughed at it. Apparently (though, I suppose, unsurprisingly), many people did not. Really, I would have been more surprised by the insanity of this midterm had the professor not given us several big speeches about how we shouldn't worry about getting everything right. Oh, and if I hadn't noticed that he had a freaking
sense of humour. The e-mail I just received, though, just makes me scratch my head at people.
To: Students in Science, Culture, and Society
There is a saying in theater that irony closes on Saturday night. I think some of you may have an underdeveloped sense, well, if not of irony, of something just this side of Dadaism. The last several questions on the exam were to measure your cultural development, though that development will not be reflected in your final score. I, for one, officially love this guy. And I am saddened that the last twelve questions of the test won't be graded, because I had a lot of fun jusifying my answers on the back of the answer sheet. And I was failing the rest of the freaking midterm, you'd think if I could have a sense of humour about it other people could suck it up and maybe not complain about it? Seriously, like he would take a
grade on those. What the heck? And the thing's graded on a curve, anyway. How many of you must have e-mailed him over this for there to be an e-mail to the entire class about the questions?
How could you take it that seriously??
Sigh. I give up on you people, UofC. Loosen up. Get a sense of humour sometimes. And if you're going to pick arguments, for goodness sake don't drag the entire university in on them. Don't pirate people's webshots for your revenge because people are (GASP!) wearing sideways baseball caps! (Because I've never seen white kids doing that normally... no). And let your professor have some fun, it's rare enough that they're not curmudgeony as it is. Holy. freaking. goodness.
Frustrated,
evilhippo
P.S. Any UofC people, friended or randomly wandering by, are more than welcome to pick an argument with me. Or comment. Because this worries me.