Certain things turn ugly when you think too hard
There was recently a protest on our campus. It was over, globally speaking, a somewhat minor issue relevant only to Denison students. The actual background isn't much relevant to what I want to talk about, but my friend Robbie gave a pretty succinct explanation on facebook:
To make a long story short, students came together to show disapproval of President Knobel's decision. He disregarded the constitution and chose to provide funds to an organization that the student government almost unanimously voted not to fund.
I didn't much care either way, and only found out about the whole thing via Erin [aeirol] afterward. I wasn't even going to mention it here until this comment on Robbie's album of the event:
Why don't students come together to protest something that actually matters to the rest of the world (war, Darfur, hunger, clean water, racism), and not a silly budget issue that polarizes an already tense campus?
It's this kind of attitude that I find so utterly frustrating. First of all, it isn't as if there is an either/or; protesting student rights on Denison's campus isn't mutually exclusive to protesting the events in Darfur, or the war in Iraq, or women's rights. Even if you acknowledge that there isn't an either/or and chose to say something like "if you have time to protest this thing you could easily protest something better" you still come out looking like a douche. It's as close to infinite regress that exists: there will always be some issue more important or on a greater scale than the issue in which you're currently involved. And, even with issues of the greatest importance and of absolutely enormous magnitude, well, there'll always be more than one of those, and then it turns into a massive smackdown of which one is more important.
Secondly is the fact that people value different things and are under no obligation to protest things which they don't feel strongly enough about to protest. Does it make someone a wonderful person to stand by and scream about student rights whilst ignoring starving children a few miles away? Not really, no. Neither does it make them a horrible person, nor does it invalidate the cause they're protesting.
Saying anything along the lines of "why are you protesting X when you could be protesting Y?" really, to me, only sounds like another way to propagate ignorance. It's the same argument a lot of sexist assholes use, and really, it seems one of the most effective ways to slaughter any kind of meaningful dialogue that might be brought up on the subject. Exempli gratia*:
STATEMENT: This song is not just insulting to anyone who's an atheist (debatably anyone who falls outside of the Christian tradition, but let's just say atheist for now) but it also propagates the myth of the atheist somehow being a lesser human being than the Christian. That's not just insulting -- it's dangerous. So I'm going to write a blog post about it.
RESPONSE: Why can't you blog about more important things than a song? Women are being sexually harassed every day in the workplace! Why don't you blog about that? It's a lot more important.
STATEMENT: What seems to be blatantly racist casting in the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender film pisses me off, so I'm going to write a letter to the producers & sign a petition.
RESPONSE: It's just a movie based off a children's cartoon. How can you say that when our environment is going to hell? Why don't you write letters to the government about how to fix the environment? Why don't you sign a petition that will help us get clean water?
STATEMENT: I am really unnerved by the portrayal of women in general & what constitutes a desirable relationship in the Twilight series. Thus I am going to stage a non-violent protest of this book in a bookstore.
RESPONSE: Why are you protesting this when we have a possibly unjustified war going on? You should protest something that's really important, not something like a piece of teen fiction.
*As aside, I believe all six things are worth getting riled up about. What I don't believe in is enforcing your personal (and often unrelated) hierarchy upon them.
In short, I really get sick of people trying to dictate what is worthy of blogging about/writing letters about/protesting versus what is not worthy. It's not absolute and, frankly, it's really not your place to invalidate something which others believe is worth taking measures for/against.
If you want to talk about how effective a protest is, or how justified a protest is, that's something else -- something that's totally valid. But stop getting offended that some people give a damn about what you deem as unimportant.
ETA: Fixed the Avatar link and finished a couple sentence fragments. O-oops.
To make a long story short, students came together to show disapproval of President Knobel's decision. He disregarded the constitution and chose to provide funds to an organization that the student government almost unanimously voted not to fund.
I didn't much care either way, and only found out about the whole thing via Erin [aeirol] afterward. I wasn't even going to mention it here until this comment on Robbie's album of the event:
Why don't students come together to protest something that actually matters to the rest of the world (war, Darfur, hunger, clean water, racism), and not a silly budget issue that polarizes an already tense campus?
It's this kind of attitude that I find so utterly frustrating. First of all, it isn't as if there is an either/or; protesting student rights on Denison's campus isn't mutually exclusive to protesting the events in Darfur, or the war in Iraq, or women's rights. Even if you acknowledge that there isn't an either/or and chose to say something like "if you have time to protest this thing you could easily protest something better" you still come out looking like a douche. It's as close to infinite regress that exists: there will always be some issue more important or on a greater scale than the issue in which you're currently involved. And, even with issues of the greatest importance and of absolutely enormous magnitude, well, there'll always be more than one of those, and then it turns into a massive smackdown of which one is more important.
Secondly is the fact that people value different things and are under no obligation to protest things which they don't feel strongly enough about to protest. Does it make someone a wonderful person to stand by and scream about student rights whilst ignoring starving children a few miles away? Not really, no. Neither does it make them a horrible person, nor does it invalidate the cause they're protesting.
Saying anything along the lines of "why are you protesting X when you could be protesting Y?" really, to me, only sounds like another way to propagate ignorance. It's the same argument a lot of sexist assholes use, and really, it seems one of the most effective ways to slaughter any kind of meaningful dialogue that might be brought up on the subject. Exempli gratia*:
STATEMENT: This song is not just insulting to anyone who's an atheist (debatably anyone who falls outside of the Christian tradition, but let's just say atheist for now) but it also propagates the myth of the atheist somehow being a lesser human being than the Christian. That's not just insulting -- it's dangerous. So I'm going to write a blog post about it.
RESPONSE: Why can't you blog about more important things than a song? Women are being sexually harassed every day in the workplace! Why don't you blog about that? It's a lot more important.
STATEMENT: What seems to be blatantly racist casting in the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender film pisses me off, so I'm going to write a letter to the producers & sign a petition.
RESPONSE: It's just a movie based off a children's cartoon. How can you say that when our environment is going to hell? Why don't you write letters to the government about how to fix the environment? Why don't you sign a petition that will help us get clean water?
STATEMENT: I am really unnerved by the portrayal of women in general & what constitutes a desirable relationship in the Twilight series. Thus I am going to stage a non-violent protest of this book in a bookstore.
RESPONSE: Why are you protesting this when we have a possibly unjustified war going on? You should protest something that's really important, not something like a piece of teen fiction.
*As aside, I believe all six things are worth getting riled up about. What I don't believe in is enforcing your personal (and often unrelated) hierarchy upon them.
In short, I really get sick of people trying to dictate what is worthy of blogging about/writing letters about/protesting versus what is not worthy. It's not absolute and, frankly, it's really not your place to invalidate something which others believe is worth taking measures for/against.
If you want to talk about how effective a protest is, or how justified a protest is, that's something else -- something that's totally valid. But stop getting offended that some people give a damn about what you deem as unimportant.
ETA: Fixed the Avatar link and finished a couple sentence fragments. O-oops.