Healthful Hints: Getting acquainted with stress in college

Posted by Zoe Silver

"I just spent five hours in the library reading for my Government class. When I got back to my dorm, my roommate was coughing all over, but it's too cold outside to open the window, so I'll probably get sick too. I miss home and don't feel comfortable introducing myself when I go out. On the plus side, I've met some really cool people and last Friday at Falstaff's was amazing! I also think my Anthro professor is a genius."

…Sound familiar? 

This is the narration of many of our stories. Adjusting to life on campus is no piece of cake, but through the trials and tribulations of college life we all can, and will, find one happy place to call home: Skidmore. 

As a peer health educator, I am dedicated to making Skidmore a happy and healthy haven for us all. We each deserve the liberty to make our own decisions and it is my hope that we will also take on the responsibility of educating ourselves to promote our own health and the health of our peers. Adjusting, for first-years, and re-adjusting for everyone else can be a stressful experience. As college students, we are constantly put in situations that force us to choose our own paths: Will I get an A on my paper if I pull an all-nighter? How many cookies should I allow myself at D-Hall today? 

We govern our own bodies, relationships, academics, etc., so if we take the time to ease our stress and enhance our decision-making, we can ensure an awesome experience at school. 

Let's assume that stress is the most difficult part of our lives. A common example: "The walls suffocate me as I try to cram for my Econ exam tomorrow and my roommate's music is blasting, but I'm too shy to ask her to turn it down. My other roommate is still out. She's probably drinking… and I'll probably have to help her get undressed at 2 a.m. so that she doesn't stumble and fall. Meanwhile, my friends from home are mad at me for not calling them often enough. I feel like I'm going to explode!" Stress management is a really important tool in your first year and beyond. If you can learn it, you will be good to go. 

Before I get to strategies for stress management, here's a quick vocab lesson: A "stressor" is defined as an agent that causes stress. In the hypothetical situation above, the stressors include noise, relationships, etc. An excellent initial step to take in minimizing your stress should be to avoid the stressor. In other words, figure out how to remove stressful things from your life. This may mean learning how to say "no" when you've reached your limit, avoiding people who stress you out or taking control of your environment (perhaps by removing yourself from the loud room and making a cozy set-up in the study room). 

When we can't avoid the stressor, we can try to alter it or alter our reactions to it. Simply put, talk about it (come visit your peer health educator!) or confront it. Don't be afraid to assert yourself, and stay open to compromise. 

Unfortunately, sometimes this doesn't work out, in which case we can try adapting to the stressor. Try to look at the big picture and reframe the problem at hand. If you really can't get your roommate to turn down the music, think of it as an opportunity to take a break and re-center yourself. Try listening to the music and build your relationship with your roommate. This leads directly into a final option: accept the stressor. Sometimes things are completely out of our control and we just have to live with them.

Even when we can't control our environment or workload, we can control what we do with the rest of our time and how we deal with our stress. Until next time… remember to relax and enjoy yourself once in awhile. Keep a healthy lifestyle, get plenty of sleep and exercise frequently! All of these things will work to minimize the impact of the many stressors you face here on campus and beyond. Here's to a happy and healthy week!  

Editorial: Ambiguity and uncertainty in the new AOD policy

Posted by the Editorial Board

Hardly anyone aware of the troubles that our college faced last year by way of substance abuse could be surprised in seeing a noticeably harsher Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) policy this fall. Last October, the tongue-in-cheek title of Moorebid Ball was gravely apropos, setting the tone for an academic year that would see increased incidents of disorder and vandalism; the sort of abuses that only certain "substances" can generate.

As it happens, the administration actually began the process of AOD revision a full year earlier than the aforementioned events took place. But it is safe to assume that had there not already a revision in process, Moorebid's torrent of hospitalizations and the $40,000 worth of property repair would have sparked one anyway. So setting the question of origins on one side, we are left to pick apart the brand new, five-tier, "point-based" AOD policy – a document which has already angered enough students for college authorities to schedule a public discussion on the matter for the first week of October.

Much of the present debate over this significant alteration to our college's disciplinary code has centered on the new "association" rule included in the first tier of violations. Among the offenses of Level I – old standards such as "open container" and "underage possession of alcohol" – there lies an innovation: students simply in the presence of alcohol are to be penalized, after a courtesy free pass for the first offense. There, in print, we are told that a student who is not drinking, but only within range of those who are, can accumulate fines and heavy sanctions if written up more than once.

This clause is not only superfluous but also irrational. First, if we are to understand the rule's purpose as a way to account for those drunken, disorderly students who nonetheless carry no trace of intoxicants, there is already a Level II violation that authorizes Campus Safety to write up such individuals – a violation labeled "public intoxication/disorderly conduct." For what reason should our new code contain a statute to potentially penalize students who are neither in possession of alcohol nor causing any trouble?

Pressing this question further, what about those students who choose to act as designated driver, or walk inebriated friends home safely? What about those who, relying on the college amnesty policy, call an emergency in to campus safety? Choices of this kind are rightly preached to us as responsible, and realistically they are made more than just once in a lifetime, as the new policy would limit. Now these choices would entail a Level I violation and we are faced with a potential situation in which students end up penalized for not only harmless but also responsible behavior.

Both of these incarnations of the "association" problem hinge on the separate but related question of Campus Safety's enforcement of the new code. Legislation is one thing, and execution another; what is the enforcement policy concerning these new rules? Realistically, if Campus Safety were to break up, say, a Scribner apartment party, the obvious impracticality of collecting every student, most of whom slip out the back of the house within seconds, dictates how closely officers could enforce the code in that case.

But when it comes to busting parties held in dorm rooms with no back door escape route, will Campus Safety lock every person inside the room and proceed to take names? Operating off of this harsher and more pervasive legislation, it would seem as though anything but that kind of thorough round up would be plain negligence on the part of the officers.

Further clarification on enforcement, then, is essential to form a coherent picture of what campus will look like under this new policy. The language of the document, highlighting the use of "discretion" on the part of the authorities, is far too vague.

The topic of discretion leads finally to the looming question of appeals. After sifting through the above issues that arise from the policy's text, one notices the text that is glaringly absent: any mention of the Integrity Board appeal system and how this new code would impact it.

The appellate process for disciplinary matters is of course located in the Student Handbook and stands on its own, but the new AOD policy remains incomplete without an articulation of how that process is affected. There is a clause that allows additional points to be assigned to any case, through the administration's discretion, but no corollary where points my be subtracted on account of amnesty or lenience. This door should swing both ways.

Without a doubt our college will be engaging in this discussion for months to come, but before any reasonable dialogue can happen it is up to the administrators to provide everyone with a clearly articulated policy. Right now, there are too many contradictions and foggy principles to soberly assess the new AOD code.

Editorial: Give student leaders the training that they need

Posted by the Editorial Board

Burned into the memory of even the most distinguished upperclassman is that feeling of quiet dread that struck upon arrival at college. No matter how far one has climbed the social ladder since then, it is impossible to forget those initial moments of freshman year in which everyone was a stranger in a strange land.

Perhaps the memory of that unpleasant blip is what prompted so many of our peers to become mentors, advisors and residential assistants to the incoming class of 2015.  With 447 students – approximately 20 percent of the student body­ – now dedicated to assisting first-years in their transition from greenhorns to proud Thoroughbreds, one would be hard-pressed to charge our college with negligence of the freshman condition.

Every year those students who take up this noble task ­– through Residential Life, SGA, peer mentoring or club leadership – arrive weeks earlier than their classmates. They are trained in those arts of counseling and guidance so that the first-years arrive to a capable crew. There is no question that some coaching is needed to equip these volunteers with the skills they need to work with struggling freshman during Pre-Orientation and First Year Experience programs. But over the past few years the nature of those training activities has taken a strange turn, and this year's schedule pushed the program's deficiencies to the forefront.

First and most troubling is that this training, meant to impart practical counseling skills, has become bogged down by so many games and mediation techniques. First the mentors and RAs try them on each other, and then when the freshmen arrive they pass the trust building onto them. These exercises range from the more standard icebreakers ("who would you bring to a desert island…") to silly diversions such as jumping around on newspaper "lily pads" to rather heavy dialogues where students are asked to share the skeletons in their closets.

So it makes sense that several peer mentors witnessed their assigned freshmen sit out these activities, or even slip away from the group altogether. It is also true that still others did enjoy them. But what the deserters understood is that the purpose of such exercises is something quite distinct from helping first years adjust to college life. Compulsory bonding, whether via "Apples to Apples" or a heart-to-heart, really does little to build genuine trust and only reduces time spent on legitimate service to the freshmen.

What might such legitimate service include? These kids have just arrived on campus, and what they want is simple. It is information: about their ID cards, or residency, or accommodations for dietary restrictions. First years are less concerned with the lily pads and secrets than they are that life will retain a structure and rhythm here at college. They would be better off with a team of ‘Skidmore experts' at their disposal rather than a troupe of well meaning but improvising mediators. And many a trainee will tell you: not only did I walk away from the emotional bits frustrated, but they didn't even shed any light on my job.

Their irritation can be justified further. Speaking to upperclassmen that participated, all estimate that over half of the schedule for the training period was devoted to the games and feelings. These are hours that student leaders could have spent in practical preparations, finalizing plans to insure the best possible experience for their incoming students. Shaving the superfluous bonding time off of the schedule would have made for a more productive, more efficient, and ultimately less cringe worthy week.

There is no reason to quarrel with the aims of training, only the heavy-handed execution. First years should certainly feel as though they have support from the upperclassmen that serve as mentors and RAs. To be frank though, those older students are not there to solve first years' problems, only to guide them toward those resources on campus that can. A week of training does not make a peer mentor a certified counselor, and while mentors are the first line of resources for first years, ultimately the troubled students must be funneled toward those best equipped to actually help them, be they at Health Services, the Counseling Center, or anywhere else. Therefore there is no need for an instituted emotional connection and every need for a clean, practical program to which the trainees can adhere.

In the current state, everyone feels ambushed: the upperclassmen dedicate day after day to drills everyone said goodbye to in high school, and do so to the detriment of their clubs and duties. Meanwhile, the freshmen are not given concrete, useful direction amidst the mandatory bonding sessions. Securing a welcome and supportive college community for those entering is, as always, a worthwhile task. But sometimes scaling back our efforts, doling out straightforward jobs and letting the campus breathe achieves what a compassionate but overbearing program never could.

Reconsider group work: Letter to the Editor

Posted by Katie Vallas

This week, I had the opportunity to interview 14 professors in the Management and Business Department about their responses to an article called "The Default Major: Skating Through B-School" in "The New York Times." Their responses were helpful, informative and thought-provoking. The chance to speak with almost the entirety of the department on a broad range of topics, from student engagement to interdisciplinary learning, reaffirmed my sense that the college is fortunate to have so many experienced and motivated professors in its most popular major.

But through the course of these interviews, I realized that there is one topic, perhaps what seems like an insignificant one, on which these professors and I had a profound difference of opinion. Two paragraphs in "The Default Major" dealt with group projects: specifically, the article suggested that group work benefits the lazy and penalizes the hardworking, all while actually inhibiting learning. (The student who might benefit most from working on accounting, the article argues, will invariably be the one who asks his group members to crunch the numbers.)

Most professors conceded these criticisms might hold water, but they insisted group work nevertheless plays an important role in the business classroom. Working in teams is an important skill, they reminded me, and students need to learn how to compromise, make decisions and motivate their peers.

Indeed, the need for these skills is pervasive — so pervasive, in fact, that I question why professors think students haven't already learned them. Well-rounded students participate in sports teams, get part-time jobs, lead clubs, labor at internships and volunteer on weekends. They also have friends, boyfriends, girlfriends and families. The lessons of leadership, compromise, motivation and decision-making don't have to be integrated into every class, I would argue: students are learning them every single day.

That's not to say that anyone couldn't do all of these things more effectively. But at what cost do we make group projects a fixture of nearly every course? I suspect the majority of professors discount the degree to which work is distributed unevenly in group projects, as well as the resulting extent to which individuals finish classes without ever having completed entire segments of the coursework. (What do professors think happens when they assign a group of five to write a single paper? Do they think students alternate paragraphs?)

Group work can be valuable in learning about organizational behavior and might assist students in completing projects of a scale that would overwhelm a student working individually. But, at a certain point, professors who heavily rely on group projects need to know they are failing to do justice to their students: the ones who had to take on most of the work, yes, but also, and perhaps most regrettably, the students who never did.

-Katie Vallas ‘11

Summer reading: consider change: Challenging Privilege

Posted by Danny Pforte

We all want to believe that our eyes are open, but are they really? How quick are we to ignore the issues that plague our campus? No matter what your views are, it is important to at least give voice to them. My outlook on the overall campus climate is that students are apathetic to the point where it's dangerous.

So few students are fighting to empower and maintain the safety of those who suffer. So few students uphold the open-minded attitude with which Skidmore College advertises itself -- but what about everyone else?

Where were we when a group of our own was accused of a hate crime and an assault at Compton's Diner? We were so quick to judge and trust speculative evidence from the Saratogian while arriving at our own conclusions about the incident. We demonized the few people who understood the circumstances of people of color in the criminal justice system and the importance of showing solidarity in their community.

Where were we after the OSDP office was vandalized and when swastikas and "Kill N*****" were spray-painted on campus grounds? Voices were silent when there was reason to believe that homophobia resulted in a student's window being egged and other cars being vandalized in the Northwoods parking lot. These hostile actions are brought to our attention, but then quickly placed in the "too uncomfortable to address further" compartment of our minds.

The loudest voices heard this semester were anonymous. There were the "Food for Thought" posters, which offended some by challenging privilege and its relationship with oppression. There were also many anonymous comments posted in response to my articles.

We as an institution have done a poor job making issues that deeply affect students seem urgent. While I commend the students, faculty and administrators who have promoted dialogue and action regarding sensitive issues that arose this semester, people have prioritized their own individual ideologies over the collective good of the student body.

Instead of interpreting the message on the "Food for Thought" posters that were posted on the office doors of faculty members as a legitimate reason for concern, many considered the call for attention as an attack on individual faculty members. The posters were criticized because they challenged privilege. Similarly, many saw the threat I received online as a joke and tried to downplay the harm that online posts can have.

This campus is at a tipping point. I think that people relied upon anonymity with the "Food for Thought" posters, knowing that it would at least bring attention to the matters at hand. Despite numerous SGA discussions, community meetings and other events that sought to bring these people out in the open, most of the Skidmore community did not attend. This widespread apathy and ignorance has made those of us who care feel burnt-out and hopeless.

The challenge to the Skidmore community lies within each and every one of us. We must be true to ourselves. We must also challenge apathy as something that is unnatural and caused by larger issues within our society.

Why care about racism and bias incidents if you've never been the victim of one? It is a fact that white people enjoy this privilege on this campus and in our greater society. Why care about homophobia if you're a heterosexual? It is a fact that our society is hetero-normative and denies rights and privileges from sexualities that do not fit the narrow definition of heterosexuality. Who cares about people who feel uncomfortable on this campus? As long as I remain unaffected, these problems must not exist.

This has been the attitude of most Skidmore College students over the past semester. A lot has happened, but few students spoke up. This semester revealed the need for students to take a step outside of their comfort zones. I believe that this is an ongoing process. While it's fine to focus on oneself during stressful times, it becomes problematic when we cannot see how this selfish mentality is damaging to the greater society in which we live.

Individualism strips us of our ability to empathize with others whom we do not understand. Until we see beyond ourselves and the surroundings to which we are accustomed, we cannot find solutions to the social issues that have been leaking into our bastion of liberalism since Skidmore's creation.

There are huge issues that I will be thinking about this summer, and I hope that everyone who reads this does so as well. Do we see ourselves as incapable of becoming agents of change? Do we take offense to opinions that challenge our own? Will we remain indifferent to the unearned privilege and power that society grants certain individuals at the expense of others? These are questions that we should ask ourselves over the summer. Come back ready to improve our campus.

View Islam rationally: get to know our Muslim brothers and sisters: Daydreams

Posted by Rick Chrisman

Although Greg Mortensen, author of "Three Cups of Tea," should be held accountable for stretching the truth in his book, Mortensen remains an important model for the unique work that he did while in Afghanistan.

As Nicholas Kristoff wrote in a recent article, "he was right about the need for American outreach in the Muslim world. He was right that building schools tends to promote stability more than dropping bombs. He was right about the transformative power of education, especially girls' education. He was right about the need to listen to local people — yes, over cup after cup after cup of tea — rather than just issue instructions" (NY Times 4/20/11). Greg Mortensen took Muslims and Islam seriously, and he succeeded in getting many Americans (including the Pentagon!) to do so, too.

Unfortunately, not everybody has adopted Mortensen's positive spirit. Instead, a large part of our population is afflicted with "Islamophobia." Evidence from last year alone is enough to warrant saying so. People determinedly opposed the construction of a mosque "at Ground Zero," even though it was not a mosque and not at Ground Zero.

Brigitte Gabriel, a "self-appointed terrorism detector" who makes $178,000 a year by lecturing to big audiences, blames what she calls "Islamofascism" on the Qur'an. Glenn Beck of Fox News ranted all year about a worldwide Islamic conspiracy to reinstitute the ancient Caliphate, until he was finally banished by his boss, Rupert Murdoch.

New York Rep. Peter King held a controversial Congressional hearing in March to investigate American Muslim sympathies, confirming the widespread anti-Muslim prejudice in our society. The "Reverend" Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fl., having changed his mind about burning a Qur'an back in September, decided to "hold Islam accountable" by holding a "mock trial" of the holy book.

He pronounced the Qur'an "guilty" of five "crimes against humanity," which led to a protest in Afghanistan two weeks ago that resulted in the death of 12 non-combatants. But if the Qur'an is to blame for all the offenses committed by Muslims, shouldn't we also blame the Bible for David Koresh, Jim Jones and the "Rev." Terry Jones, too, for that matter?

Does any of this constitute a real problem? Yes. We have seen this sort of bigotry many times before in U.S. history: Massachusetts Puritans hanged Mary Dyer and three fellow Quakers on the Boston Common in 1660; the Mormons were driven out of New York and into Illinois where their leader, Joseph Smith, was murdered in 1830; Roman Catholic immigrants were persecuted in post-Civil War America.

Such poisonous intolerance doesn't disappear without effort. Although there have been no fatalities this year, there has been a lot of religious discrimination, harassment, threats and phony legislation (e.g. the law outlawing "Sharia" in Oklahoma, Missouri, North Carolina and other states).

We need to act better, not only for the sake of good human relations in our diverse country, but also so that there will be clear-sighted decision-making in Washington. Good policies do not grow in a climate of fear and intolerance, as we saw in the case of the Iraq War.

We have a part to play, too. We must live up to our image as an informed and compassionate citizenry. First, we need to defend American Muslims the way we would stand up for any other good neighbor. For example: Heartsong Church in Memphis put a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" sign on its lawn facing the construction site of a new mosque being built across the street.

Second, we need learn more about the Qur'an — it's a beautiful book that creates high expectations of a moral life and a just society. A good way to do so might have been to enroll in Professor Gregory Spinner's course on Islam next fall, but unfortunately, it's already full. You could, however, lobby the college to add more sections to the class and, while you're at it, suggest that we expand the Religion Department in general.

Third, students, get to know your Muslim peers at Skidmore better. Admittedly, it is hard to find and engage each other over religious matters. One option would be to join the (new) Islamic Awareness Club, led by Sofia Naqvi '14 under the auspices of Hayat.

Fourth, look next fall for Islam-related and other inter-faith programming of the (also new) Inter-Religious Council. Under its auspices, students are proposing a series on "War Today," featuring panel discussions about current religiously stoked hot-spots around the world.

Finally, good people, become curious about religion. And do so with genuinely sympathetic interest, not presumption or bias. There is much, much more to every religion than meets the eye.

Commencement speech: read my lips: Ancient American Traditions

Posted by Brian Connor

Well, everyone, it's been real.

Four years and seven thousand beers ago, I first set foot on Skidmore Campus, dedicated to the proposition that Creative Thought Matters. And now, graduation approaches. This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The torch has been passed to a new generation, to a new class of Skiddies proud of our ancient creative heritage. Throughout the next two weeks we'll all be thinking about the bad breaks we might get after college. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest, most privileged man on the face of the Skidmore campus.

Because the long Green and Gold line has never failed us, and we won't fail it. Were we to do so, a million ghosts in Gold and Green and crazy hippie regalia would rise from their Lower East Side apartments crooning those magic words: "Drink more, smoke more, Skidmore."

Our graduating class is the great arsenal of creativity. I shall not fear a crisis of creativity, for I have been to the top of the Tang, and I have looked over and I have seen the hipster promised land of Brooklyn. I may not get there with you, but I know that many of us, as aspiring creative professionals, will get to the hipster promised land.

Hipster — that word should have new meaning for us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences. We will be united in our common interests — we're fighting for our right to live, to be over-privileged douche bags with ironic and esoteric tastes. Today, we celebrate our graduation day!

Beware of the creative-industrial complex. Do not allow your abilities to be stifled and channeled through a soulless pipeline of cultural production that feeds insatiable consumer appetites solely for profit.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Rowdy drunks throwing beer bottles on the shoulder of Perimeter road. I watched joints glitter in the dark near the Northwoods rock garden. All those moments will be lost, like beer turned stale. Time to graduate.

Approach academic life with genuine interest: Editorial

Posted by the Editorial Board

As the semester comes to a close, students in the class of 2013 will pick the disciplines that will be their majors. If last year's trend continues, 13 percent, for a total of almost 100 students, will choose to pursue a course of study over the next two years in the most popular department on campus: Management and Business.

Numbers like these cry out for explanations. A disproportionate number of students might express interest in this discipline because the subject is inherently more interesting, relevant or valuable. The Management and Business faculty might be more encouraging, engaging or better qualified. Maybe MB 107, the introductory course, wins students' loyalty to a greater degree than other departments' equivalent courses.

Or Management and Business attracts the largest number of students because, perhaps, the department has become Skidmore's default major, popular among those students who, in the absence of interest in another discipline, have just decided to follow the crowd.

This idea will be familiar to anyone who picked up the April 14 issue of "The New York Times" and saw the article "The Default Major: Skating Through B-School," a ringing condemnation of larger trends in undergraduate institutions' approach to teaching business classes. The article — required reading for any student considering the major — posed the argument that many business departments have become overrun with unmotivated students, who will spend few hours studying thanks to a lack of real interest in the discipline.

Upon reading an article like this, the first response of anyone in our college community is to look to our own department of Management and Business. We question whether this picture of the apathetic business student coasting through dumbed-down coursework is an accurate representation of what has become the most popular and visible department on campus.

But even a first glance will show that when it talks about failed pre-professional preparation, this article isn't talking about schools like Skidmore. Our department sits one floor down from the (nearly as popular) department of English; one building over from classrooms where students are learning psychology, sociology and history; and across campus from biology labs and art studios. Ours is a liberal arts approach to business, the department's professors say.

We think such a department belongs here. Its holistic take on the discipline means that it's largely not the pre-professional department as labeled by its critics (and many of its supporters): with students gaining a basic sense of the many moving parts of a business, rather than an intensive understanding of just one, students aren't leaving as marketing gurus and CPAs. For the most part, business students learn to apply the very disciplines that are quintessentially part of the liberal arts: math becomes finance, sociology becomes marketing, English becomes communication, and so on.

But the department runs into trouble when it expects a liberal arts understanding that, for many of its students, might not exist. If business majors haven't spent time with those other disciplines — if the finance student is weak on math, the marketing student ignorant of sociology, the communication student inexperienced with English — their understanding will be flawed at best, superficial at worst. Discussions turn vapid. Tests just recycle the textbook, without asking for students to demonstrate critical thinking. Even the most engaged students lose focus. That's when classrooms veer dangerously close to the generalizations made by the department's critics, of unquestioning and unthinking eyes on the bottom line.

Many Management and Business students already spend much of their time in non-business classrooms, but to thoroughly avoid the academic pitfalls laid out in "The New York Times," the department needs to mandate an interdisciplinary approach. Planned restructuring of the major, with a rumored emphasis on students' learning in other departments' classrooms, looks like it might do just that. Besides making our business students better at business, such changes would reinvigorate the intellectual curiosity of students who treat Management and Business as that pragmatic default major — the department that they chose because, well, they didn't know what else to do.

Those students will always be there, dragging down classrooms otherwise populated with some of the college's most engaged, enterprising and creative minds. So long as students continue to overlook the rich variety of the almost 40 departments and programs offered by the college, default majors like Management and Business — as well as other similarly popular majors, like English, Psychology and Studio Art — will continue to play host to unmotivated, apathetic students.

By picking these disciplines for a reason besides genuine academic interest, a student does not only himself, but our college, a disservice. He or she just robbed another department of one of its most passionate students.

What happens when you get your moral wisdom from Donald Trump: Politics for the Upstate Student

Posted by Julia Grigel Mid-April is the time of year when Albany's legislative chambers are filled with glorious debates on such things as the state vegetable (corn won) and wiffleball safety precautions. They are now presumably doing things like sipping margaritas and watching Top Chef and scratching their heads about Donald Trump's bid for president in 2012.

Basically, Albany is on a break from politics, so I'm taking a break from Albany. And I really just would like to talk about Donald "The Donald" Trump and his newly resurrected public face.

Donald Trump is best known for owning a lot of stuff and having a bad hairstyle, but he has also had a successful career in Hollywood. He has played himself in several television series, most notably "The Apprentice," in which he fires people.

Recently, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that people like "The Donald" satisfy the public's subconscious yearning to see the crème de la crème of the obnoxious loudmouths rise to success. Trump, says Brooks, is "riding a deep public fantasy: The hunger for the ultimate blowhard who can lead us through dark times."

Brooks also says Donald Trump is successful because he personifies the current American individualist dream, "The Gospel of Success." Brooks' interpretation of the American view of success rings alarmingly true. Afraid of seeming too materialistic or too driven, we have to pretend to have only the most moderate and well-meaning of ambitions. "If you attend a prestigious college or professional school, you are supposed to struggle tirelessly for success while denying that you have much interest in it." Huh.

It is precisely that mechanism — the one for basic humility — that Donald Trump lacks. He lacks that part of the moral sense that causes us to veil our desire for unbridled success and personal glory. And that is why he is so popular with so many conservatives, says David Brooks.

"The Donald" is the latest and the greatest in harebrained political figures mouthing off left and right and denouncing everything possible. But he represents something present in Americans. David Brooks was right — we all secretly love blowhards, if only because they're entertaining. And if we deny that this weird love for people like Trump is innate, we are being too morally hopeful about ourselves and about the rest of the species.

I'm by no means advocating that we throw up our hands and proclaim that we're all in denial of our true moral baseness — we are certainly not all Trumps. I'm just saying that if we take ourselves seriously as individuals — and if Skidmore takes itself seriously as a college — we ought to learn to stomach our flaws. We ought to learn to confront our inherent capacity for disrespectful, vainglorious and utterly egomaniacal impulses. Because if we refuse to admit that uncomfortable tendency, then we can't put it in check. And if we've learned anything this semester, it's that our community has got to put disrespect in its place.

Give us more flexibility with our dining plan: Editorial

Posted by the Editorial Board

When prospective students tour the college for the first time, a walk through the Murray Aikins Dining Hall can be a jaw-dropping experience. Visually, the building makes an immediate impression - how many other colleges feature a dining hall on every student and faculty ID card? Once inside, the walk from station-to-station features more shouts of "But wait, there's more," than a Ron Popeil infomercial. The array of options available can be staggering, and the range of cuisines and dietary accommodations consistently impress.

Those students who decide to attend Skidmore will become intimately familiar with all of those options, as first year students are required to purchase an unlimited meal plan. With only a microwave available for food preparation in most residence halls, first year students will inevitably eat nearly all of their meals in the Dining Hall.

For first year students, that arrangement is ideal. The Dining Hall is an inherently social experience, and for first year students, particularly during the fall semester, being brought together at meal time is valuable. Likewise, while some students may come to school equipped to fend for themselves, gastronomically, not all are prepared to do so. Requiring all first years to purchase an unlimited meal plan may trend toward excessive hand-holding, but it also ensures that no one starves while learning the ins-and-outs of college.

The level of hand holding, however, diminishes in sophomore year. There is no explicit "sophomore year experience," and as the spring deadline to declare a major approaches, sophomores rapidly disperse along their own unique routes through college. For the vast majority of sophomores, however, dining remains restricted. All students living in residence halls, regardless of class year, are obliged to purchase an unlimited meal plan. Without more kitchen amenities in dorms, most students are admittedly unlikely to stray far from the Dining Hall, but it is not unprecedented, and the lack of choice is frustratingly restrictive.

The college's stated goal is for the majority of students to live on campus, and rules prohibit rising-sophomores from drawing for off-campus housing, so simple math dictates that nearly all sophomores will live in residence halls. As a result, nearly all sophomores are obliged to purchase meal plans, regardless of personal dietary preference. Dining Services does a commendable job catering to students' needs, however, no system is perfect, and some students may find themselves more comfortable choosing other options. After a year spent living in Saratoga Springs, it is safe to assume that students are acquainted with the multitude of dining options available downtown, or may have friends with open kitchens in Scribner or Northwoods Village. Requiring sophomores to purchase an unlimited meal plan adds a significant cost to tuition and prohibits students from exercising other options.

It seems unlikely that allowing sophomores dining flexibility would put a dent in Dining Services operational budget; most dorm residents will still likely choose a meal plan, if only because it is convenient and readily available. The few who feel the need to pursue other options, however, ought to have the right to so. It is a simple matter, but one that speaks volumes about expectations of personal responsibility. As students we are expected to fend for ourselves in a strenuous academic environment; surely we can handle the choice of where to eat.

A man's world is far from perfect: Challenging Privilege

Posted by Danny Pforte

Recently, much of the conversation around the Skidmore campus has been focused on racial tension. But there is much more to a person's identity than race. Social identities include race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, as well as physical and mental ability. Each of these facets of our identities grants us a certain level of power, but also faces a struggle. Some groups hold more power in society than others. One social identity that has been overshadowed by our discussions of race is gender.

Gender is socially constructed, and men are the dominant group in the United States. Even though strides have been made to increase academic and workplace opportunities for women, the power remains in the hands of men. A common theme in our society's policies is the promise for equal rights and opportunities for subordinate groups. But these promises ultimately lead to hypocrisy and its consequences.

For example, the Equal Pay Act was supposed to eliminate workplace discrimination and wage gaps between men and women. However, the most recent census confirms that on average, women are paid significantly less than men for the same work. And of course a more obvious example of institutionalized sexism would be the recent congressional discussion to cut funds for Planned Parenthood, while also attempting to narrow the definition of rape to physical violence. As it so happens, rape is more complex and harmful than a beating.

Our campus reflects the consequences of the patriarchal society in which it is located. In challenging me to a debate, some of my critics decided to use sexist language, such as the phrases "sack up" and "man up." These expressions are very common and also problematic, because they not only reinforce male domination, but also highlight the socialized aggressive behavior that prevails among the men in our society.

Men are expected to be on the offensive when it comes to our values and beliefs, which often prevents any productive discussions from happening. Both sides should try to understand differing opinions. The media, peers, school, and other groups socialize aggression and violence as normal behavior for men, while women are taught the exact opposite. Women in our society are socialized to be weak, submissive, and they are objectified, taught to think that their bodies are their only resource, rather than their true talents and intelligence.

We cannot blame ourselves for being socialized by the dominant groups in society. Their power gave them control over our thoughts and behavior while we were young. However, we must all take responsibility for the gender inequality on our campus. Women are most often the victims of sexual assault on this campus. The conversations I have had regarding the "hook-up culture" revolve around the idea that "men are assholes" and that they take advantage of the gender ratio on campus.

But I think that the sexual misconduct on campus and the hook-up culture are the result of sexism deeply ingrained within our society, rather than the ratio of women to men. Women are taught to use their bodies for power and have low self-esteem if they can't meet the high standard of being a "beautiful woman." Since men are socialized to the opposite effect, being inclined towards aggression, violence, and a sense of entitlement, they will continue to be the perpetrators of sexual misconduct, domestic violence, and gender inequality.

It is time we all ask ourselves what it means to be a man or a woman. Even more importantly, we should take a look at the power and vulnerability that accompany our gender identities. Other identities, such as our race and sexuality, play a key role in the formation of our gender identity. Another important aspect of gender is that it is not a rigid dichotomy. There are individuals within our society who identify themselves as transgender or "fluid." The binary depiction of gender as being either man or woman further highlights the power dynamic and inequality within our society.

The fight against all of the –isms (racism, classism, sexism, etc.) begins with a fight with ourselves. We cannot truly find solutions to large-scale issues without looking at how they affect us, how they place us in positions of either power or weakness. Once we come to this realization, we must try to abstain from practices that reinforce power inequality among social identities. Whether it is challenging a friend's sexist remark, or advocating the empowerment of women on the societal level, we can all play our part in fighting sexism on our campus and in the larger community.

A big part of this fight against sexism is for men to understand the problematic nature of masculinity. Masculine tendencies such as aggression and violence were constructed to relinquish power from women, but they also have dire consequences for men. Men are expected to be non-emotive, and it is taboo to seek help and to be incorrect about something.

Most social identities that divide us into privileged and oppressed groups entail negative consequences for both groups. Until we speak out on these important aspects of our identity, we will stay trapped in someone else's construction, which was created specifically to dominate certain groups. Let's get free.

The threats and boons to our dialogue: Ancient American Traditions

Posted by Brian Connor

As a follow up to my piece about McCarthyism at the college, which I believe was an important critique of how our community is currently conducting itself, I'd like to say a few words about writing to this community in general. Now, from my last column, you may have concluded that I despise Danny, that I feel he should be silenced.

Quite the opposite is true. For while I despise what this "dialogue" has devolved into, I thoroughly admire Danny for his resolve this past semester. I have been moved by Danny's writing but also criticized it, a stance which, despite the Sociology department's suggestions, is not contradictory whatsoever.

Call it a Saul-to-Paul moment, call it what you will, but after seeing the same concerns voiced in the message boards of my column, and the same insensitive language that appears on Danny's columns each week, I began to admire Danny as I never had before.

I wrote my article knowing that I would receive tons of support just for the mere fact that I was criticizing Danny. Danny writes his column each week knowing that, if past weeks are at all an indication of what's to come, that dozens of trolls are going to immediately jump on him and criticize him, no matter what he writes. He has become the vocal leader of a movement that has brought ugly truths about our community to the forefront of discussion, and he has knowingly and willingly made himself an easy target for critics of these truths.

The Skidmore News comment boards have become a bitter arena for dialogue and highly vindictive criticism of writers like Danny, and myself to some extent. But they also provide an essential check to our and other writers' power, a humbling reminder of our responsibility to our audience.

Some of the comments have exceeded the boundaries that common courtesy dictates, however, to the point where vulgarity and even fighting words have appeared on the Skidmore News website. These comments aren't appropriate and are detrimental to our dialogue.

On the other side of the same coin, when members of the community get themselves so worked up about these hate-filled comments that they lash out and make outlandish accusations toward individuals and campus organizations, they become those "shutter-minded embracers of intolerance" that they seek to condemn.

The good people at the Sociology department threw Danny under the bus. It would have been appropriate if they had offered a well-reasoned argument against anonymous online commenting. But instead, they dragged Danny into a misplaced, ill-conceived, even threatening, demand for allegiance to their conception of open-mindedness. They posed the question of Skidmore identity in absolutes, rather than in a format that acknowledges the multiplicity of viewpoints and identities that Skidmore fosters.

Rather than encouraging all-inclusive dialectic exchange over a topic fraught with complexity, they advocated strict allegiance to what they posed as a moral dilemma, that is, you are either on the right side (you endorse and heed Danny and company's writing and viewpoints) or the wrong side (you disagree with Skidmore's notions of multiculturalism and Danny's writing and thereby implicate yourself as a "shutter-minded" embracer of intolerance).

This letter in particular moved me to compare our situation to that of American society in the McCarthy era. A healthy and free society depends upon, is predicated upon, the ability for someone as controversial as Danny to speak his mind. Many of us may not agree with what Danny has to say, but I hope each and every one of us can agree that we must all defend his right to say it.

That being said, we must defend others' right to criticize his writing and condemn it. We cannot allow our dialogue, our ongoing community-wide discussion, to solely honor one interpretation of our philosophy of applied multiculturalism.

This discussion is too critical to Skidmore's legitimacy as an institution of higher learning, and a community devoted to multiculturalism, to allow it to be hijacked and dominated by the most vocal and extreme 10% of commentators. By responding to, and thereby legitimizing, inflammatory comments with equally inflammatory charges, the framers of the dialogue are doing just that.

I hope that our dialogue can transcend this semester's vitriolic online commenting, move beyond the accusatory declarations we've read in the Skidmore News, and genuinely learn from the divisive ideological conflict of the Compton's incident, to recognize and invoke our shared beliefs and interests.

Though Danny has devoted his column to pointing out what's wrong with our society and community, in doing so he has demonstrated exactly what's right with it. When an unpopular and controversial perspective can be voiced, and can resist being silenced, then one of America's, and Skidmore's, foundational promises has been fulfilled.

And when trolls can democratically and anonymously disparage someone's opinion online, humiliate an author, and challenge preconceived notions of civility, then one of the Internet's fundamental promises remains intact. Bring it on, trolls. You're messing with a Vatican assassin who has tiger blood flowing through his veins.

West brings old-time religion to campus: Daydreams

Posted by Rick Chrisman

If you were lucky enough to attend Cornel West's lecture last week, you must have left it bedazzled. I sure did. West did more than live up to his reputation as being a great speaker. In a true tour de force, he spoke for more than an hour without any notes, citing Seneca, Plato, Anton Chekov, Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, and Alfred North Whitehead.

His lecture was more than merely interesting. It was profoundly intelligent and he delivered it with humanity and passion. As one student described it, it was poetry. We were moved, we were pierced, we were shaken, we were lifted, we were humbled, and we were challenged. We laughed, and some of us nearly cried.

As a public intellectual figure working in an academic setting, West took a unique approach in appealing to us as moral beings. He posed fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of our individual lives: what does it mean to be human? Whom have we helped, whom have we served, and what greater vision have we served? Do we have a vocation or a career in mind? What is the purpose of a college education?

He started by proposing something startling: the idea that education is about facing death. He defined "deep education" as facing the fact of death — both the inevitability of our own deaths, as well as the many forms that death can take, namely in social and political oppression.

So, if you're an American, you have to grapple with the centuries of social death imposed upon African-Americans and many other minority groups. It's not a comforting thought. At the end of the lecture, he asked if we have what it takes to do so. Can we endure such an education and allow it to affect our personal decisions?

To some ears this would sound pretty radical. But it is entirely traditional, and West reiterated this point throughout the lecture. The most essential human endeavor is to pass on tradition, which he summarized with the expression "Socratic questioning and prophetic witness." How traditional — Socrates and the Bible!

You probably know all about Socrates and the idea of critical thinking, but do you know what West meant by "prophet" in the phrase "prophetic witness"? The prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures — such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Amos — maddened kings and their subjects alike by criticizing exploitation and the widespread abandonment of religion. These God-intoxicated prophets gave voice to God's empathy for those who suffered. They spoke of doom for these delinquent leaders, but also promised them comfort if they were to repent their sins.

The disconcerting message of the prophets was that "few are guilty, all are responsible," which held everybody accountable. As West said, their words were like "a scream in the night," but also assured people of God's compassion. The prophets ultimately sought the redemption and reconstruction of social and political life, a mission inspired by the divine. West is not only a modern Socrates, but a bona fide prophet as well.

Being a "Rev." on campus myself, I joked with him afterwards, asking him whether we should call him "Rev. West." He emphatically declined. I suggested the title "evangelist for justice" instead. He said yes. Like James Baldwin before him, West may have left the church of his upbringing, but the church never left him at all.

You can read all about the lecture's content in West's 2004 book, "Democracy Matters." You might wonder, then, why you should bother to see him speak in person. To me, the answer is obvious: to be questioned personally by someone who takes the kind of risks that he wants us to take. To hear someone speak of hope who has survived the lash of discrimination and the boot of derogation. To be in the same room as this remarkable man, and to leave in awe, entering into a new Skidmore day.

Rick Chrisman is director of Religious and Spiritual Life, teaches occasionally in the Religion and Philosophy departments and suspects art is the one true religion.

McCarthyism reincarnated at Skidmore: Ancient American Traditions

Posted by Brian Connor

The 1950s was a frightening time in American history. The Soviets had recently acquired the atom bomb and what was thought of as a global communist conspiracy for world domination was thought to have infiltrated the United States. A climate of fear engulfed American society, reason was abandoned and the word "Communist" evolved into a generic term for evil, shedding all the political and philosophical nuances that Communism entails. These were the circumstances that allowed Joseph McCarthy to rise to power.

Skidmore has an unhealthy fear of racism. Back at school in Brooklyn, when the odd swastika or racial slur was found drawn or written here and there, it was disposed of, not even briefly legitimized by discussion, given no more thought than excrement waiting to be flushed. When I got to Skidmore, and our entire dorm was gathered to discuss a "bias incident," I was introduced to a system that treats every offensive doodle as a profound social phenomenon indicative of deep-seated "biases."

Racism, and all other forms of bias, have become to Skidmore what Communism was to 1950s America: a grave concern, of course, but also an obsession that borders on mania. There is an enormous specter that Skidmore believes is looming right over North Broadway, threatening to encroach at any time, to sweep in and shatter its dream of harmonious diversity. And now, from this atmosphere of fear, a movement has begun which has abandoned reason in favor of ideological conformity, taking a form that eerily resembles McCarthyism.

McCarthyism at the College

In the aftermath of the Compton's incident, the lines of ideological conflict were drawn. Supporters of the allegedly criminal students were quick to demand total allegiance to the cause of absolving the students of guilt. Yet there remained a silent majority of students and faculty, myself included, who, though fully aware of and disgusted by the obvious signs of institutionalized racism, were not willing to throw caution to the wind and condone violence.

As I attempted to convey in my column, "Quiet the commentators," (which was an inappropriately authoritarian title thought up by one of my editors) the incident was much more complicated than the diametrically opposed narratives offered by the two emerging camps. I pleaded for the bickering between town and gown commentators to cease, I urged the community to abandon ideological warfare and embrace reason and tempered analysis. I also mentioned Danny Pforte in passing.

The very next week, Danny's entire column was addressed to me! Somehow he had misconstrued my words to suggest that I was advocating apathy, and rebuked everything I'd written.

To what did I owe the honor of having an entire article addressed solely to me? It was because I offered a perspective that demonstrated a slightly different understanding of the situation, and I questioned the approach that commentators such as Danny were taking. Apparently, I had broken party line. I was disturbed by the us-and-them mentality that I saw emerging at that moment.

I felt no need to respond—to engage in polemics over the barely coherent argument Danny posed to me would constitute hypocrisy given the fact that I had, a week earlier, criticized this approach to the issue. I watched the situation develop with distanced curiosity, ever open-minded and never quick to dismiss others and their opinions before reflecting on the worth of my own. I can now, however, say with confidence that Danny's writing is detrimental to our community and its discourse, and that many of his critics are completely justified in their infuriation.

Each week Danny has written slightly different versions of the same column and each has garnered the same vitriolic responses on The Skidmore News commenting boards. Danny has taken the exceptionally vicious comments and cited them as evidence of oppression and discrimination.

In some cases students may actually be racist or unwilling to accept the reality of their white privilege. But in most cases, at least in mine, people do not want to be pidgeon-holed and generalized, their myriad experiences and realities reduced to one monolithic "white majority." Offense to these articles is even more justified, when the majority of students are characterized as wealthy white oppressors.

Skidmore has long been stereotyped, had generalizations thrust upon it by outside entities. The 420 media escapade two years ago reminded us of our susceptibility to this. But, never before, at least not in my time at Skidmore, has one of our own made such malicious generalizations about the student body.

I couldn't have imagined up until now that we would ever be generalized as rich, white, able-bodied perpetrators of discrimination and oppression. Danny wrote that Skidmore has a "conservative student body." This certainly is a radical suggestion, though it is also highly dubitable, and, in my opinion, patently false.

Danny's articles have in no way contributed to campus dialogue. Danny had the opportunity to bring the community together to discuss ways in which we can improve the social atmosphere at Skidmore, which many, as Danny has repeatedly stated, have testified is unwelcoming. This is a cause that, as members of this community whose comfort here is inextricably intertwined with our peers', is dear to nearly all of us (I can't speak for the students who draw swastikas and other "biased" words and symbols around campus or just generally project ignorance).

All Danny has done, however, is inspire resentment from many students, whom he has been continually disparaging and marginalizing through his highly polemical columns each week. We need to be brought together, but instead we are being torn apart, lines are being drawn, and blame is being recklessly cast in a situation that has descended into near McCarthyism.

When one student anonymously posted a veiled threat to Danny on one of his articles, Acting President Susan Kress issued a statement, and The Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work wrote a letter to The Skidmore News, defending Danny and condemning the paper for its anonymous commenting policy, and commenters for their incivility.

The Department of Sociology framed the issue as "A question of Skidmore identity." What the letter essentially boils down to is the question, "are you with us or against us? Are you for what's right or what's wrong?" This letter displays a frightening demand for ideological purity, a demand for rigidity of thought.

The Sociology faculty gave us two options of who we, members of the Skidmore community, can be, of where we can stand. We can either be, "individually and collectively, open-minded and capable of addressing questions that make us uncomfortable." Or, we can "shutter our minds, our classrooms, and our institution from the challenging questions concerning race, class, gender, and other points of difference among us."

The letter concludes that The Skidmore News currently practices the latter and asks readers if they will "call out those who privately embrace intolerance." To criticize a publication's online commenting policy is one thing. But to suggest that its editors "privately embrace intolerance" is another, frighteningly McCarthyistic, thing all together. The faculty even deigned to equate allowing anonymous commenting with supporting "terrorism," the 21st century's version of "communism," a catch-all term for evil.

It is now open-season for racists at Skidmore, for calling out "shutter-minded" lovers of ignorance, and apparently no individual or organization is immune to those charges. The comment boards now indicate that our Student Government Association is being accused of racism. Teshika wrote, "SGA: you are completely perpetuating the system of white power."

And Danny, our own Joseph McCarthy, has free reign, with full administrative and faculty support, to spearhead these outrageous charges, to use extremely isolated incidences of racism to draw broad conclusions about his fellow students and their organizations, implicating anyone and anything he likes as perpetuating racism and oppression. Have you no decency, Danny? Have you no shame?

Recognize mortality to cool campus climate: Challenging Privilege

Posted by Danny Pforte

After attending the Cornel West lecture and after having an intimate breakfast with him and the rest of the Intergroup Relations (IGR) team the following morning, I feel the need to reflect upon the purpose of human life.

In the U.S., we are born into a nation of conflict. We are a people passed along a conveyer belt, built up with socially constructed expectations, only to be met with disappointment, fear, loss and suffering, while the creators of the system stand by and watch.

For the few that reap the benefits, it has become easy to shrink into a cowardly apathetic state and shed accountability. For the rest, hope is lost. Survival mode is in full force. So what is the purpose of human life?

I agree with Dr. West that a major step in finding purpose is learning how to die. Learning how to die means that we go beyond our comfort zone. It means critically engaging with our surroundings and grappling with harsh realities, and that to not do so would be to let go of what it truly means to love. It means connecting love and justice with an unbreakable bond. When we love, as Dr. West said, we can't stand to see others treated badly.

The painful truth — one that I believe has driven us into our bubbles and away from our purpose — is that the very country we live in is on the brink of collapse. The powerful have formed a systematic oligarch complex enough to blind us to difference and hatred, and also powerful enough to make us turn a blind eye toward love and community.

The sense of individual pride and power we are taught to embrace (that lie called the "American Dream") has sapped us of the compassion that we may have otherwise had for those unable to gain access to the creators' power and privilege.

Too many of us have bought into the idea that we live in a vacuum and that our purpose is to strive for wealth that we can earn all by ourselves. This sense of independence seems gratifying, but it is extremely problematic. None of us who have ever gained privileges within our unfair system have ever done so alone. Privilege always has and always will come with help. Many of our privileges come in the form of hereditary power, such as the inheritance of wealth among the upper class and the ongoing political dominance of white men.

The purpose of human life is to critically analyze what we have been told is true and to challenge the status quo. Instead of following the leaders of apathy, oppression and fear, we should take a step back and look through a different lens. Listen to the voices that you cannot relate to and make an effort to understand them.

Empathy is not guaranteed, but we must work toward this important life goal. Flip the script of the American Dream and better yourself by learning from people whom you fear, whom you hate. Only after striving toward this goal can we truly fulfill life's purpose.

The campus climate has been a hot topic of conversation over the course of this semester. The naysayers who have discredited the experiences of people who have been and are presently marginalized have done so in a manner that is prevalent in our current society. It is unfortunate that the loudest voices you hear in our society are those of the cruel tea-partiers and conservative politicians, who look for every way to take away basic human rights in the form of budget cutting and privatization.

But even more disturbing is the number of people who are silent and can only find the courage to voice their opinions anonymously. As rapper David Banner states, "We are livin' in a day and time, where we stand for nothing, fall for anything, and everything we say is fine."

We must look beyond our socialized "realities." A purpose in life worth dying for is one that examines what we do not know. And once we find it, we should feel obligated to take it into consideration rather than to disregard it. I acknowledge that this is much easier said than done.

Our segregated and unequal society has separated us from both the knowledge and experience needed to understand its complex construction and its impact on people. It has also removed any sense of community, so that people coming together for the common cause of justice is an exception and not the norm.

Our campus climate reflects our need for the life purpose that our society strips from us when we are born into our unjust system. But if we can expose injustice, fight it and stand for something different and something new, then our purpose can finally manifest itself.

Danny Pforte is a sophomore who is inspired by the need for change.

Let's address campus discomfort : Letter to the Editor

Posted by Jonathan Zeidan

Dear Editors,

As expected, the record number of contested positions for the Student Government Association (SGA) elections last week invited significant attention from members of the Skidmore student body. During the debate between candidates for the position of SGA President, we were asked about what we, as candidates for SGA President, will do next year if further issues regarding racial tensions arise.

In my speech I pointed out that there are actually two important issues affecting Skidmore campus culture and the student community: racial tension and alcohol abuse.

I would like to clarify that these two issues are in no way causal. They do, however, represent significant issues relating to feeling comfortable with oneself and in one's community that we, as a student body, must address.

It is clear that we are struggling to find answers to many questions surrounding diversity on campus. We are far from having all the answers, but now is not the time to stop looking. After reflecting on my own personal role in the discussion surrounding diversity at Skidmore, I understand that the awareness we have gained this year is only the first step in a long process. There are no easy solutions, but I plan to continue to facilitate discussions and work with an increasingly diverse set of student leaders to make concrete progress for a stronger community in which we can all take pride.

The Skidmore student community also experienced tremendous difficulties with issues surrounding alcohol consumption this year. After attending the "alcohol dialogue" in the fall, it became clear to me that many students drink to overcome stress and anxiety and often use alcohol as a social lubricant. Our Skidmore community will have to continue to encourage and enforce policies that support responsible alcohol consumption among its members. I personally do not think we can or should attempt to stop students from drinking. Rather, my approach would attempt to promote responsible drinking practices and develop an awareness of social pressures on college campuses.

Last week the student body elected many strong, qualified, and diverse members to positions in the Student Government Association. SGA is an evolving organization that strives to accurately represent all facets of the Skidmore Community. Like you, next year's SGA Executive Committee members have begun searching for answers to the issues affecting the student body. I invite everyone to look for the Executive Committee's letter to the student body in the coming weeks where we will detail many of the planned activities and action items on the agenda for the ensuing academic year. SGA encourages your feedback. The Student Government Association is a vehicle for change– we need to work together to create our vision of an ideal Skidmore community.

Respectfully,

Jonathan Zeidan ‘12

Jonothan Zeidan is the SGA president-elect.

We need to trust our community: Editorial

Posted by the Editorial Board

On Friday, April 8, a group of vandals defaced five cars parked in Northwoods Lot, spray-painting offensive epithets and causing thousands of dollars of damage. With no witnesses and little evidence brought to light so far, the perpetrators could very well go unpunished.

This isn't the first shocking case of vandalism seen on campus this year. Even aside from the long lists of instances investigated by Campus Safety or emailed out in the Bias Incident Reports, extreme cases have caught the community's eye. In just one night last October, there were more than $200,000 of damages inflicted on the Northwoods Apartments construction site and the Center for Sex and Gender Relations.

In both of these cases, and as is likely with this most recent crime, the vandals were never found.

News of attacks like these shocks a campus community accustomed to considering itself free from crime. This is a campus where laptops are left unattended in the library, wallets turned into Campus Safety and dorm-room doors kept unlocked. Students wander the campus alone until the early hours of the morning, never questioning whether doing so is unsafe.

To see members of the campus or local communities betray that sense of trust is frightening; the fact that these attacks frequently include reprehensibly offensive hate speech makes it all the more so. Is this really a campus where you might return to your car and see the word "fag" written across the windshield? What do instances of vandalism like these say about the college we attend?

These are good questions, and ones we expect to see pursued in campus conversations that reflect on how these attacks fit into a larger picture of violence and prejudice at Skidmore. We hope, too, that these conversations might touch on how to better the college's relationship with the Saratoga Springs community, as members of the local area might also have played a role.

But this crime also needs to be addressed with specific and immediate action. Campus Safety should begin installing video camera surveillance of areas that—like Northwoods Lot and the area surrounding the Center for Sex and Gender Relations—are isolated during the weekend nights where these crimes most commonly occur. This investment of resources, while potentially dear, might be the difference between catching the parties responsible and, as in the last cases of vandalism, failing to do just that.

Campus Safety officers might also increase their nightly rounds taking them through these isolated areas, allowing them to head off crimes before they occur. If this means that they might not be able to respond to every noise complaint in the dorms, we know these officers will make the right choice. In anyone's book, catching the student holding a baseball bat and a can of spray paint is a better bust than writing up the first-years settling in with a six-pack and a deck of cards.

We hope officers will continue to consider new strategies that will ensure that students feel safe on the campus and that administrators will allocate the funds necessary to aid them. Using whatever means necessary, we need to preserve the sense of safety and trust that makes this college, for four years, our home.

Voyeurism and violence at the track: Ancient American Traditions

Posted by Brian Connor

This past September, as the racing season came to a close and the Fall semester began, a friend and I took a group of first-years on a pre-orientation trip to the racetrack. To make things more interesting, we took a little trip of our own. We strolled around the track and the paddock underneath the mellow late-summer sun, which cast a strange glow on the scene, simultaneously nostalgic and melancholic, as families came out to picnic for the last few races and old raspy-voiced, wrinkly-faced horseplayers tried to recoup their staggering season-long losses.

We wandered, dressed in our finest threads, though still confined to roam the general admission areas, as the owners and elite lounged above in their boxes. Psychologically indisposed to responsibly supervise the first-years in our care, we abandoned them, procured beverages and managed to place several completely random impulse bets before joining the masses near the post. As the tension within us rose to a fever pitch, synergistically enhanced by and channeling the crowd's pre-race tension, the starting gates blasted open and they were off.

The crowd erupted as the horses battled around the far stretch and the vicious faces of the potentially impoverished yelled over our shoulders, their beer sodden spittle dowsing our clothing. The crowd was awash in waves of ecstatic glee and vicious desperation as these giant beasts, muscles tightening and rippling, jockeys furiously egging them on, crossed the finish line.

And then, about 50 yards from the finish, a horse at the back of the pack suffered a massive heart attack, flipped over, planting its head in the dirt, its enormous torso crashing down after it, throwing legendary jockey Kent Desormeaux several yards onto his neck, breaking one of his vertebrae. A deafening silence fell over the crowd and all the emotional outpouring was instantaneously stopped in its tracks and crystallized in the thick summer air. The wide-eyed first years looked confused and frightened. I was shaken very badly.

I fumbled through my betting stubs, hoping these numbers and dollar amounts would somehow make sense of the situation before me. Nobody really knew what to do or how to feel. A truck came out onto the track, and officials gathered around the felled horse, preparing to put it to sleep. To my side, I heard someone yelling. I turned to see my aforementioned friend, a shocked look in his eyes, shifting his gaze between the crowd and the scene on the track, yelling to no one in particular, "they're ANIMALS!," "these are ANIMALS!," "these are f***ing ANIMALS!"

I was too bewildered at the time to understand his pronouncements, but when I ran over a turtle on perimeter road later that evening, I began to understand. The turtle lay there, its broken belly spurting out greenish brown bile, its legs beating trying to turn itself over, and I was transfixed as I watched, gripped simultaneously by hollowing sorrow and visceral, unflinching curiosity.

In each of us there is a repulsive, yet completely innate, infatuation with death and violence. The racetrack, my friend had observed, is an exhibition of these innermost primitive longings. Though thoroughbred racing is popular around the world, the American racing industry is infamous for its lax policies on performance enhancing drugs. The horses are pumped up on intense steroids and then forced to compete against each other in unnaturally taxing capacities. And human beings come to watch and exchange money on these twisted, forcefully imposed, drug-riddled displays of physicality.

At the racetrack, the line between human being and animal is obscured. The "animals" my friend was speaking of, the "animals" he became acutely aware of at that moment, were all around him. All of the spectators, who came to gamble and watch the beasts compete, all of the owners, who, despite their cocktail party chatter about breeding and pedigree, sacrifice the horses' health for profit and celebrity, were animals, indulging in primitive, base voyeurism. We are the animals, and this fact is more evident than ever in our new sadistic internet culture.

"Don't tase me bro" was the desperate cry for mercy uttered by a University of Florida student who, invoking his 1st Amendment rights by posing questions, on Constitution Day no less, was tased and physically removed by police from a lecture given by Senator John Kerry. This incident, the video of which went viral on YouTube, should have been regarded as a deeply disturbing incidence of police brutality, but was instead trivialized and made into an internet meme, setting off the "bro" craze which brought us "bro rape," "bros icing bros," "brosemite Sam," "bro-Nameth" and the general prominence of "bro" in the American lexicon.

The video did spur some serious discussion over 1st amendment rights and appropriate use of force by police. Major networks chimed in, and the event became a rallying point for some radical civil rights groups. On the whole, however, the event was buried under an inane avalanche of popular culture renderings on T-shirts and in remixed YouTube videos.

Even students in the audience, witnessing this horrific act first-hand, can be seen goofily guffawing at this man's cries for help and his screams of pain at having electricity shot through his body. The backwards way in which this video appealed to young internet-faring American audiences, as a "bro" to be laughed at for being such a "bro" and provoking violence, rather than as a gross injustice, exemplifies our prevailing culture of voyeuristic sadism.

When Tyler Clementi's roommate streamed his sexual encounters over the internet, he was indulging in that same technological sadism. This was the tased-bro situation with a fateful and telling twist: rather than the police perpetrating a wrong upon a person while a second party captured it and a third party, our culture, looked on and laughed, the roommate assumed all three roles. He was the cameraman, the perpetrator and the cruel voyeur. But this time, no one was laughing and a sick culture was briefly exposed. But, for all its importance as a symptom of an ailing culture, the Clementi incident did not have nearly as much lasting power and internet presence as did the "don't tase me bro" incident.

Clementi's suffering and resulting suicide was talked about briefly as an example of a potential homophobic hate crime and the definition of privacy in our uber-information age was discussed, but our innate longing for sadistic voyeurism remained intact. The cries of despair uttered by the student who gets tased — like the electric current that swept through his body — instantly triggers the animalistic pleasurable response in which our synapses are wired to indulge in.

A month after that grisly scene at the racetrack, after that turtle's demise and after Clementi's suicide, Paul the Octopus, the German World Cup predicting animal, died. He correctly predicted seven matches as well as the final result of the 2010 World Cup. He was cremated, a shrine was erected in his honor, and the rest of the animal kingdom, humankind included, continued its eternal competition, trudging through life and making sure to slow down and rubberneck here and there, to stop and smell the anguish.

Brian Connor is a senior American Studies major from Brooklyn. He spends his summer nights at Siro's and his winter mornings in bed.

Discuss these issues face-to-face: Challenging Privilege

Posted by Danny Pforte

People say that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." But words are weapons, and they can hurt more than sticks and stones, depending on how they are used. Many students have used harsh language to disagree with my opinions and have done so anonymously.

I want to use this article to further push my beliefs until naysayers decide to use the resources available to discuss these issues in person, rather than disagreeing anonymously – or even worse – threatening me for my beliefs.

First, whether we'd like to admit it or not, inequality is a reality. The practices of neoliberalism (i.e. the privatization of everything and a prioritization of individual over collective good) has nearly eliminated social mobility and turned our nation into one of privilege. The underclass and working class in this country are struggling to survive while growing in number. Wealth and power remain in the hands of a small minority. This is a grim reality that will only worsen because of the ideologies that blind us to differences in race, class and gender that are socially constructed to divide us.

No matter if it is race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age or a combination of these, aspects of identity, inequality and hierarchy exist within and between these groups. Access to power in this country is reserved for privileged groups, and that is true across the board. Often, experiences with oppression differ when various identities intersect.

White, able-bodied, upper class males are the creators of our current system. Their policies, institutions and ideologies are purposely created to subordinate certain groups of people. If one studies the political and social climate of our country, one would realize that there is a war against the working class, women andpeople of color, as well as other subordinate identities in this country. Being a combination of these socially constructed categories leads to disaster, because our country's institutions have systematically restricted resources needed by individuals within these categories to gain voices and to gain power.

I will reiterate that the Skidmore community is no different. The majority of the Skidmore population is white and upper class. Most are able-bodied, in that physical or mental disabilities are not an issue. And yes, the campus is also overwhelmingly heterosexual. The institution and many students do not understand groups who do not fit into the Skidmore norm. This lack of understanding rarely comes in the form of blatant acts of intolerance. Usually misunderstanding takes the form of avoidance and silence.

When my friend told me to check out the most recent comment on my article from two weeks ago, I did not expect to read this:

"Danny…although this privilege is not genetic, I have a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop writing these articles now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will ‘dialogue' you."

I was taken back by this harsh defensiveness toward my views. This infuriated response to my writing is nothing new, but here it transformed from mere comments to a threat. It has given me reason to fear for my safety in a community I call my own. I have grown uncomfortable walking by myself at night on this dark campus.

And why must I feel this way? The main reason is because I challenge the society we live in as unjust, and place accountability on those who are the privileged creators of the systems within it. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy, among others, found out the hard way what happens when an individual challenges the status quo of our great nation. If you could ask them, they would probably agree, to put it simply, that you end up shot, thrown in jail or both.

I am uncomfortable on this campus, and I know others who have not only expressed their discomfort to me, but to the campus community as well. When I say that equality is a myth in this country and a myth on this campus, I mean it. I do not have to prove this like a detective because in fact, the detective work has been done already whether you want observational proof or proof in numbers.

This reality is enough for me to say that I will not stop writing these articles and pursuing work that leads to a change in society for the greater good. You can threaten me anonymously or otherwise, or even take the final step of following through with your threat. Or, you could join me. If you want my opinion, I like the second choice better.

My feelings toward this campus and this nation can be summed up by Canadian hip-hop artist Shad in a lyric from his song called "Call Waiting": "World full of pain got us waiting on a miracle, waiting on the world to change, when we should wait on the world like a waiter, serve the world man this world is strange, bizarro, lovers of tomorrow to break under the weight of the wonder and the sorrow." Well said.

Danny is a sophomore who is inspired by the need for change.

A question of Skidmore identity

Posted by The Faculty of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work

It is clear to us that what has come to be known as "the Compton's incident" has become a catalyst for change on the Skidmore campus. It has drawn the best and the worst out of our community, and its effects persist despite untold conversations, classroom discussions, teach-ins, and items published in The Skidmore News.

As a result, our individual characters and our collective character as an institution are being tested both by voices pleading for understanding and insight and by those who embrace ignorance and reject dialogue.

The question we confront is, who are we? Are we, individually and collectively, open-minded and capable of addressing questions that make us uncomfortable? Or do we shutter our minds, our classrooms, and our institution from the challenging questions concerning race, class, gender, and other points of difference among us that have been raised on campus, in Saratoga Springs, and on these pages? It is worth keeping in mind that these points of difference are socially created and have profound implications for us all.

Among those speaking publicly for unity, understanding, and in opposition to racism, classism, and the like, Danny Pforte, Teshika Hatch, Sulin Ngo, and Professor Kristie Ford stand out. Yet, in the on-line version of The Skidmore News Danny, Teshika, and Prof. Ford have been vilified and even threatened with bodily harm. Consider these quotes that were posted in response to Danny's columns over the last month:

"And Teshika, listing traits that make one privileged? What textbook was that list from? … Jesus, Kristie Ford is doing everything she can to incite race riots on campus. I fall into 4 of those categories, but guess what - I WORK HARD EVERY FUCKING DAY AND I'M PROUD OF MY ACCOMPLISHMENTS. You know nothing about me personally, or most of the people that you're generalizing."

"That guilty onlooker bullshit was relevant for the Holocaust, but for you to call everyone at Skidmore a racist who isn't fighting your made-up systematic oppression is such complete bullshit. I respect every race, but I don't respect you or your opinions anymore. There are ways to strive for equality without CONSTANTLY accosting the white students like Pforte does weekly. It's offensive and it makes him a hypocrite ... We really need to get rid of the fucking sociology department. They're churning out these god-awful chronic martyrs at record rates."

"Danny, … [i]f you stop writing these articles now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will ‘dialogue' you."

We echo Acting President Kress's condemnation of these postings. The content of the courses that have inspired Danny, Teshika, and Sulin and that are offered by Prof. Ford and others in our department is founded in the best scientific research that can be brought to bear on social inequality, power, and privilege.

What these scholars, every professor in our department, and many others across the Skidmore campus are trying to do is to hold up a mirror to individuals and to our community. No one is trying to convert anyone to any point of view. Rather, we want to encourage students and our colleagues to examine the facts and to learn from and about one another. The point is to grasp and appreciate difference and the exciting, often difficult-to-acknowledge possibilities inherent in exploring the discomfort that many feel when confronted by difference and its societal implications.

So, what can you do? First, when you hear or read homophobic, racist, classist, or misogynistic language, challenge the assumptions behind those remarks—even if they come from friends. Second, promote earnest, curious explorations of those points of division. It's okay to question anything and everything on this campus, so ask for the data and ask others outside of your circle of friends about their experiences.

And most of all, do not shy away from hard questions about you: why do you believe as you do? Do you embrace stereotypes? What assumptions do you make about others — and others about you? How well founded in reality are those assumptions?

Here at Skidmore, we are fortunate to have numerous opportunities in the classroom, in The Skidmore News, and elsewhere on campus to ask these questions and others like them. Take advantage of those courses, and join clubs and casual groups that will help you to ask and answer those challenging questions. And demand that your peers, professors, and administrators promote opportunities for the sort of free interchange of ideas, suppositions, and facts that can result in this campus addressing difference in productive ways.

There may be no better vehicle on campus than The Skidmore News for the free interchange of outlooks and experiences regarding what divides us. In a small community like ours, the student newspaper has a profound responsibility to ensure the safety of those who publish on its pages—web pages included.

As such, we invite all Skidmore News readers to join with us in demanding an end to the on-line paper's anonymous posting policy. That policy allowed and encouraged the quotes above to see the light of day, and it is out of place for three reasons.

First, it allows for threatening, libelous posts but does nothing to protect those who write openly. How would you feel if someone wrote profane comments on-line that implied s/he would do you bodily harm and signed them "Anonymous"? Could you ever feel safe on campus?

Second, one of the standards of scholarship is acknowledged authorship, and we see no reason why the same standard should not hold for a campus's student newspaper. We must know who writes what so that we can engage one another in meaningful dialogue. Anonymity promotes bullying and even terrorism, not the sort of respectful disagreement and earnest engagement in issues that institutions of higher learning stand for.

Third, the discourse on our campus should be elevated and well-considered. Anonymity promotes thoughtlessness and does nothing to compel the sort of difficult self-questioning that we advocate.

The Skidmore News editors' new policy promising to censor objectionable comments does little to address these concerns. On-line posts are already monitored, yet threatening comments have slipped through. Indeed, our concerns about the comment quoted above addressed to Danny were dismissed by The Skidmore News editors, who insisted those lines were merely a paraphrasing from a movie, as if the threat to do bodily harm somehow no longer existed. Nor will the new policy do anything to promote engagement and elevated discourse.

Many of us are doing all that we can to ensure that Skidmore stands up to its ideals. Together, we can do more. Will you call out those who privately embrace intolerance? Will you call for more to be done to promote understanding in your dorms, your classrooms, all over this campus, and in Saratoga Springs? Will you demand honest interchange and the exchange of ideas person-to-person with nothing hidden: not names, not faces, and not even opinions? Will you try to understand difference—and in the process try to better understand yourself?

This piece was submitted by the Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work faculty. By request, this piece has not been edited by The Skidmore News editorial board.