On Apathy

One of the best-intentioned phrases that absolutely drives me up the wall, and one I hear all the time, is "I don't care if you're gay." I understand what you're trying to say. You're telling me that my sexual orientation does not change how you view me as a person*, and I love you for that. But here's the thing: I care that I'm gay, and I need you to, too.

Why? Because we don't live in a world that doesn't care that I'm gay. Quite the opposite, in fact. Heterosexual people make up the majority of the population of the world, of the United States, and most specifically of the governing bodies of my country and state. Many of them, in fact, care deeply that I am gay, and are doing their best to legislate away my rights because of it. In the face of discrimination, "not caring" is not the appropriate response.

I feel the same way about people who claim to be colorblind. Isn't it a lovely sentiment? I can't begin to count how many times I've heard "I don't see race; I only see people." I think this is actually one of the more insidious forms of white privilege (forgive me my gross generalization, but I mainly hear the "colorblind" statement from white people) -- because western culture designates white people as essentially "raceless" (everyone else being "ethnic"), we assume that's how it ought to be. By claiming colorblindness, we're ridding other people of that burden of race altogether. But hold up. Race (which, let's just go ahead and acknowledge, is a cultural construct) comes with a lot of positive associations and group identity wrapped up in it. We're not doing someone a favor by stripping them of their identity. Quite the opposite. We're ignoring an aspect of their personhood because it makes us uncomfortable to think about it too much.

Well, guess what. People of privilege (be that white, heterosexual, male, able-bodied, middle/upper class, etc.) don't get the luxury of ignoring others' less privileged identities. It may make us feel good to say "but we're just the same!" -- it's the exact opposite of othering, right? -- but it discounts the experience of not being just the same as you. Until full equality is a reality, race matters. Sexual orientation matters. Gender matters. Fill-in-the-blank identity matters. Your apathy is not enlightened; it is dangerous. We need you to care. We need you to see us as equal to you without being the same as you.

Diversity is a beautiful thing. Colorblindness is not a thing to strive for. The world is a colorful place, and that should be celebrated, not dismissed or ignored. So please, care that I'm gay; also that I'm white, female, cisgender, Christian, a teacher, a singer, a math lover... In short, care about all the things that make me me. And keep on caring about all the ingredients in the identity soup until everyone agrees that all soup is just soup, period.

*Alternatively, you're saying that what goes on in my bedroom is my own business, which means that you are conflating my sexual orientation with sex, full stop, and that's problematic. But that's another issue for another post.

Edit: As it so often turns out, someone else already said it better. Thanks for the heads-up, Aadil.

Update on SB 65-70

UPDATE: The bill has been vetoed by Student Body President John Claybrook. Thank you for doing the right thing. You can read his open letter in The Eagle article reporting on the decision.


Initial reactions to SB 65-70: The Religious Funding Exemption Bill here.

Local media has continued to cover the hubbub around the Texas A&M Student Senate bill that passed Wednesday night, and I am impressed with the quality of their research and reporting. Today's cover story in The Eagle clarifies a number of things about the bill, including the fact that the student senators who wrote it didn't do their homework:

The bill's authors argued before the senate Wednesday night that students could already opt out of paying fees based on religious reasons, a fact A&M officials were not prepared to answer late Wednesday night. The ambiguity was cleared up Thursday. 

"I've been here for 40 years and I've never seen anything that would permit a student to opt out of paying a fee," said Bob Piwonka, executive director of Student Business Services. "I'm not aware of anything like that that allows a student to opt out of paying a specific fee." 

The university has a process that allows students to opt out of paying the university in various ways, but payment of a specific fee is not open to appeal, Piwonka said. Furthermore, the exceptional circumstances laid out in the appeal process do not include religious exemptions, he said, adding that he had no idea where the student senators got the idea. [emphasis mine]

So not only was it a bigoted, discriminatory piece of legislation, it was a piece of legislation not even based on facts. Slow clap for the senate. On the one hand, it is clear that this bill is going nowhere, which is a relief. On the other hand, it throws the bad faith of the authors into even sharper focus. The emotional harm of these events has already been inflicted, and our work here is far from done. We must continue to support the campus LGBT community in any way possible.

On a related positive note, Zedler withdrew his amendment to defund campus LGBT resource centers. It's a bad day for the bigots.

Reflections on Student Government

Last night, SB 65-70: The Religious Funding Exemption Bill (formerly The GLBT Funding Opt-Out Bill) passed the Texas A&M Student Senate with a vote of 35-28 or 33-30, depending whom you ask (an official tally hasn't been released). The vote came after nearly three hours of testimonies from students and student organizations, followed by debate among the senators. The crowd of students, faculty and community members who came to witness the hearing packed the Governance room and overflowed into the hall, an empty meeting room, and eventually a restaurant in the student center, where live streams had been set up. For background on the bill and a recap of last night's events, I'm going to refer you to people who have already done the legwork and research:

KBTX News coverage, with good background and links to the bill and a video of last night's proceedings.
The Eagle article, which ran on the front page above the fold this morning.

Now that you're up to speed, you might be wondering: why do I care about what goes on in the student government of a university I didn't even attend? If you're not from around here, you might not know that Bryan-College Station is routinely referred to as "Aggieland." What goes on at the university level affects our entire community's image and morale, up to and including on the national stage. More basically, in the words of MLK Jr., "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I was there last night to support the campus LGBT+ community. And in a very practical calculus, one has to realize that these student senators may well be actual senators one day, so we would do well to pay attention to their beginnings. The Aggie network is vast and powerful.

Now for my reactions. My initial feeling last night, upon driving onto campus and having to wait nearly 15 minutes to get into the parking garage next to the building where the hearing was being held, was hope. The place was packed with hundreds of people wearing LGBT-supportive buttons, t-shirts, etc. The energy in the space was incredible. While the livestream in the overflow space was choppy at best, we whooped and hollered for the articulate, powerful testimonies of student after student condemning the bill for its thinly veiled anti-LGBT motives. Only one student, a representative of Texas Aggie Conservatives, spoke in favor of the bill, to more muted applause. For a while there, I fully expected the bill not to pass.

Then the senators took the floor. Chris Woolsey, author of the bill and senator for the Northside caucus,  spoke about the need to protect the religious freedom of students and, in my opinion, did a lot of "mansplaining" about how this was actually really simple and everyone needed to just vote in favor of it and move on. The authors of the bill seemed confused about what the bill would actually accomplish -- they claimed that a process for opting out of student fees already existed, and their goal was simply to publicize it, but as one senator succinctly pointed out, "The bill doesn't, sort of, reflect the statements that you're saying." I wish I could have seen his name card over the poor quality live stream so I could high five him after. After a number of amendments, the text of the bill and the authors' words did eventually converge. There are still all kinds of problems with how this bill would be enacted: how exactly is it determined whether a student's wish to opt out constitutes a "serious moral objection"? Can atheists object on moral grounds even though it's the "Religious Funding Exemption Bill"? How would you ensure that students don't simply abuse the system to avoid paying fees?

Logistics aside, though, this bill does far more emotional harm than monetary damage to the LGBT community in particular. Several students and senators who spoke against the bill became emotional. When it was finally called to a vote, the girl calling the roll of senators had to choke out each name through tears. I can imagine how every "for" must have felt like a slap in the face. As the final tally was announced, many of those watching dissolved into tears.

During the debate, one senator asked, "Does this bill unite Texas A&M?" Unless you choose to ignore the evidence of your own eyes of the pain and rejection felt by so many members of the Aggie family, I don't see how you can in good conscience say "yes." The bill's authors were adamant that the new version did not specifically call out the GLBT community, but you can't walk back that first version -- we all saw it. We know what was in your hearts when you wrote it. We know why you couldn't name any other student fee that religious persons might wish to opt out of. We know that this bill is, at heart, about your need to publicly express, in a socially sanctioned way, your distaste for LGBT people. The GLBT Resource Center is not a lobby group. It is not evangelizing a cause. It provides support and resources (as the name implies) for a disenfranchised, marginalized group of students. The fact that they need services that you don't does not mean that you are in some way being discriminated against.

After the vote, a tearstained, dispirited group straggled over to Cain Hall, where we mingled on the patio out front, unsure of what to do and where to go. Then the lights came on and the director of the GLBT Resource Center unlocked the doors to let us in. That right there, in a nutshell, is what the center is for. To provide a safe space in times of distress. To be a place to go, to just be. And then we made a plan. The students are ready to speak out. In the words of one member of GLBT Aggies (which, for reference, is a student organization, unlike the GLBT Resource Center, which is not -- this has been a point of confusion for more than one reporter), "This was just a battle. We're going to win the war." We in the community will be here, cheering them on, helping as we can and reminding them that the Student Senate does not represent the attitude of everyone in this community.

Here are some ways you can help out:

• If you live in the area or are a student at Texas A&M, write a Letter to the Editor of The Eagle explaining why you oppose the bill. Visible community support means everything to the students who are feeling so discouraged after last night's vote.
• If you are a community member, join the email list for Pride Community Center, a local LGBT organization (of which I am a board member) working to support the Texas A&M LGBT community in this fight. We'll be sending out updates about what's going on in the student legislature and how you can help.
• If you live anywhere in Texas, get informed about Texas Representative Zedler's amendment to SB1, which seeks to defund, among other things, campus GLBT Resource Centers because they "support, promote or encourage any behavior that would lead to high risk behavior for AIDS, HIV, Hepatitis B, or any sexually transmitted disease."
• If you live anywhere at all, keep on keepin' on and fight for justice and equality everywhere!

Eagle Editorial Board opposes GLBT Opt-Out Bill

On the same note as my Letter to the Editor, published Friday, the Editorial Board of The Eagle published an opinion piece today opposing the GLBT Opt-Out Bill, entitled "Aggies must not exclude fellow students." I appreciate that they break down the bill's multiple issues: first, it clearly discriminates against LGBT people, which is wrong; second, "...the issue before the Student Senate is whether students can withhold a portion of their fee that funds a group they oppose. The answer clearly should be no."

I know that The Eagle doesn't speak for all, or possibly even the majority, of residents of Bryan-College Station, but this is still an editorial I couldn't have imagined reading in my hometown newspaper ten years ago. The times, they are a-changin', and it makes me proud and hopeful about settling down and building a life here. Are there places in the U.S. (and elsewhere) that I would have an easier time of it? Absolutely. But those places don't need me, which is one of the main reasons I'm sticking around.

Letter to the Editor

Appears in today's issue of The Eagle. Hyperlinks are my addition.

A&M Student Senate bill would exclude some Aggies

Here we are again. In 2011, the Texas A&M Student Senate passed a bill urging the creation of a "traditional family values center" in opposition to the GLBT Resource Center, stipulating that student fees would not be raised to compensate, implying funding cuts for the Center. The bill was vetoed by the student body president, but not before the campus and community were consumed by frequently vitriolic debate.

Now, the Senate is considering S.B. 65-70: The GLBT Funding Opt-Out Bill. It proposes that students who, for religious reasons, object to funding the GLBT Resource Center with their student fees can opt out of their share of the Center's funding.

Let's be clear: This is not about money. The amount per student can be measured in cents. This is about allowing some students specifically and publicly to express their disapproval of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

If the Student Senate were truly concerned with right of conscience, this bill would have broader terms. Perhaps vegetarian students could object to their fees purchasing meat for the dining halls. Atheist students might rather their fees didn't fund religious groups.

But Aggies are a family. Each student's fees pay into an array of services they might personally never use, but all are essential to some part of the population. By singling out the GLBT Resource Center, the Senate is giving tacit approval to students who essentially are saying they would rather not share a campus with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

This is important to our community image because A&M routinely ranks as the least GLBT-friendly campus in the U.S. The Aggie spirit is not one of exclusion or division, of giving some students a voice to make their fellow Aggies feel less-than.

For more about the bill and ways to support the campus GLBT community, visit bit.ly/GLBTOptOut.

HALLIE GAMMON
Board of Directors
Pride Community Center

#KeepItReal

I've never really read fashion magazines. Perused the covers in checkout lines, flipped through them in doctors' offices, sure. Even coveted a cousin's subscription to Seventeen for a brief period. But I figured out pretty early on that they set off my bullshit-o-meter in a big way. I knew that the vast majority of what these magazines were telling me ranged from nonsensical to downright harmful. So the really sad thing is that I bought into some of it anyway.

Here's the thing: I've never needed to worry about my weight. I've been genetically blessed with a high metabolism and environmentally blessed with parents who fed me a pretty healthy diet, signed me up for sports from an early age, and modeled for me how to live a healthy-enough lifestyle. I've never been overweight -- not even close. I know this, I've always known this, and yet I've exhibited the same thoughts and behaviors as every teenage and 20-something girl ever.

In high school, my friends and I were obsessed with our "pooches." You know -- the little roll of belly fat you develop when you hit puberty. We named them, joked about them, compared their sizes. My friends were constantly telling me mine was barely there, and I was constantly protesting that yes, it was. I hated my pooch. The thing is, we knew that it is biologically necessary for women of childbearing age to have a certain amount of body fat. We knew that everyone had a pooch -- all we had to do was look around at each other. So why were we so convinced there was something wrong with us?

Most days, I like the way I look. Getting away from my hometown for a while, where the standard of beauty for people my age is flat-ironed blonde hair and a thick layer of perfectly-applied makeup, certainly helped. People tell me I'm beautiful, and not all of them are my mother. I know I'm healthy, and for the most part I take good care of myself. But there are days when I wake up and obsess about my less-than-perfect skin (I thought acne was a high school thing?), the size of my thighs (generous), the way my butt looks in a swimsuit (not as perfectly toned as I'd like). To all of this, I direct a big, outraged WHY? The girl I love thinks I'm pretty. My doctor thinks I'm healthy. Apart from that, nothing about my appearance should evoke more than a passing thought. I'm intelligent enough to know that, and I obsess anyway.

There is something wrong with a culture in which concern for appearance is so deeply ingrained that even those of us who recognize and try to avoid the propaganda end up feeling its effects. The #KeepItReal challenge is focusing on one specific aspect, the digital manipulation of magazine photos to misrepresent women's bodies. While I doubt that axing Photoshop would be a cure-all for body image issues, I do think that publishing unmanipulated photos has the potential to bring the conversation about real beauty into the mainstream and help change perceptions a little at a time. So, on the off-chance you're reading this, fashion magazine editor: listen to the voices of women who want to look at your magazines and see true, obtainable beauty, not a digital fantasy.

Perry, meet Paul (and, you know, Jesus)

My governor makes me angry. In theory, I do not begrudge public figures the right to publicly have religious convictions. This does not mean I think it's okay for them to legislate morality for others based on those religious convictions, but if a politician wants to pray about his political decisions and tell us about it, that's fine with me. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a bad policy for anything, including religion, and we shouldn't pretend that a person's religion is some discrete component of their identity they can turn off at will. What is not okay with me is if a politician wants to pray instead of making political decisions, and encourage others to do the same, as if it were one of his official acts as governor. Enter Rick Perry.

This article reports on a speech Perry made a few months ago promoting The Response, a prayer rally he is sponsoring as the governor of Texas. If it were an ecumenical affair, I might be a little more sanguine about it (though I'd still find it just about as ridiculous as that time Perry ordered Texans to pray for rain), but when you bring the American Family Association into it, I start running the other direction. Also, there's this:

I tell people, that "personal property" and the ownership of that personal property is crucial to our way of life.

Our founding fathers understood that it was a very important part of the pursuit of happiness. Being able to own things that are your own is one of the things that makes America unique. But I happen to think that it's in jeopardy.

It's in jeopardy because of taxes; it's in jeopardy because of regulation; it's in jeopardy because of a legal system that’s run amok. And I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God and say, "God, You’re going to have to fix this." ...

I think it's time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God's hands. That's what I'm going to do, and I hope you'll join me.

To which I say:

Letter to the Editor

From today's issue of The Eagle, Bryan-College Station's local paper (hyperlinks are my addition).

Homosexuality is a given, not freely chosen

Two readers have already responded with evidence refuting Rev. David Konderla's claim (Eagle, May 24) that changing one's sexual orientation is possible. I add that the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation "conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed journal literature on sexual orientation change efforts and concluded that efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm."

I am not Catholic, but as a gay Christian, I have researched several denominations' positions on homosexuality. Many do not accept that different sexual orientations exist. They regard heterosexuality as the only possible orientation, and people who experience "same-sex attractions" are not gay, but "broken" heterosexuals.

The Catholic Church is more in line with scientific evidence than many denominations. A 1997 document from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Always Our Children," states: "It seems appropriate to understand sexual orientation (heterosexual or homosexual) as a deep-seated dimension of one's personality and to recognize its relative stability in a person. Generally, homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen."

It continues: "This implies respecting a person's freedom to choose or refuse therapy directed toward changing a homosexual orientation. Given the present state of medical and psychological knowledge, there is no guarantee that such therapy will succeed."

While not by itself damning of sexual orientation change efforts, this statement implies respect for scientific evidence, which, since 1997, has moved steadily toward affirming sexual orientation as immutable. If one accepts this, Rev. Konderla's organization seems misdirected and out of line with its own faith.

For more information, read the full text of "Always Our Children" and consult the website fortunatefamilies.com, which features an eight-part series on homosexuality and the Catholic Church.

HALLIE GAMMON

Caldwell

This letter follows two others I have written to The Eagle in a similar vein: We must continue to combat negative images (November 9, 2010) and No need for a family and traditional values center (April 26, 2011).

Third Thoughts

Excuse me for a moment while I get a little meta and blog about my blog. I've inhabited this same small corner of the web since late 2006, and this is its third "reboot" after a prolonged absence. Each time, I've toyed with the idea of starting fresh with a shiny new blog, but each time I decide against it. For one thing, some extremely deep-seated aspect of my character rebels at any sort of redundancy. It's why I don't use Twitter (redundant to Facebook status updates), why I figured out how to transfer balances between Starbucks gift cards so I wouldn't have to carry more than one, and why, if I ever fulfill my dream of getting an iPhone, I will immediately ditch my iPod and camera. In general, I like my life to take up as little space as possible.

There's another reason, though. I like continuity. I'm the sort of person who periodically goes back and reads every journal she's ever written in. Yes, sometimes reading the thoughts of my former self produces a feeling similar to nails on a chalkboard, but that person was me, too. Except in the most egregious cases, I'm not interested in hiding it. So please, feel free to get acquainted with Hallie the college freshman, who wrote a lengthy and impassioned article on how to wear a bra. Even though I've since ditched bras entirely, it's still one of my most-trafficked posts. 

The same year, I wrote a preachy rant about the fashion industry, in which I complained about "fashion statements that ought to be censored" and labeled girls who dress in revealing clothes "tart" (not to mention the judgmental comment that "if you're going to wear a practically nonexistent shirt, at least go back and read my bra rant - there are some things we don't want to see"). I have since learned the word for what I was doing. It's called slut-shaming, and if you -- like I did -- think it's just fine to judge women for how they present their bodies, please go read this amazing speech right now. I cried. No, the judgmental impulse in the back of my mind that goes "wow, that skirt is too short" has not immediately shut up. But I'm working on it.

And that's why I keep this blog around. Just like my third-grade diary with the heart-shaped lock, it keeps track of who I've been and who I'm becoming. Even better than a paper journal, this blog lets me self-annotate -- when I figure out that an old version of me was wrong about something, I can turn right around and tell her so. That means, as this blog continues to age, the "meta" tag will probably get more and more use. Read on, and watch the evolution happen.

Sharp Edges and Fiddly Bits

Last week, I had the honor of giving an address at Upper School Awards Evening. I talked about my experience as a Saint Michael's student: finding a home there, going out into the wide world, and coming back as a teacher. In my effort to convey the uniqueness of the Saint Michael's experience, my metaphors meandered through fishponds and geometric objects, and the phrase "sharp edges and fiddly bits" really did occur. Several times. 

Upper School Awards -- May 26, 2011 

It’s been five years, almost to the day, since the last time I stood at a podium to address the Saint Michael’s Upper School student body. It was commencement, and I was delivering the valedictory address. Five years ago, we didn’t have this chapel. I was looking out over my friends and classmates from the lectern at Saint Andrew’s church, but the view from here is almost identical. It seems aptly symbolic of my return to Saint Michael’s: the scenery is different from where I stand now, as a teacher rather than a student, but everything feels wonderfully familiar. 

Armchair Activism

I've been signing petitions on Change.org for a while now -- at first I wasn't convinced it could possibly make a difference, but their Victories page says otherwise. If nothing else, I find out about things I care about but would rarely hear about.

Well, I read about Old Navy's new line of Pride shirts on afterellen.com a few days ago, and then I came across this article today, and I got a little frustrated. Apparently, gay pride is only marketable in 26 stores out of Old Navy's 1000+ locations in the U.S. Apparently, my identity and equality are commodities that are only a safe economic bet among less than 3% of Old Navy's customers, and they couldn't even extend the line's availability to their online store. Personally, I find this offensive.

So I decided to take my armchair activism up a notch and actually write my own petition. If I've done it right, it will arrive in the email inbox, not only of Old Navy's customer service department, but of the CEO of Gap Inc., which owns Old Navy. I didn't want to be obnoxious and email-blast my friends (clearly I have no such compunctions about the owners of Gap and Old Navy), but if you have a second and would like to sign, it would be much appreciated. You can sign below, or find the petition here.

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Cross-posted from my Livejournal.

The Bra Rant 2.0

Back in the day, when this blog was shiny and new, I wrote about how everyone is wearing the wrong bra. I prefaced that post with a "girls only!" caveat, but now I think everyone should read it, whether the breasts in your life belong to you or someone you know. In the past few years, more and more people seem to be jumping on the "80% of women wear an improperly fitting bra" bandwagon, so I've found myself a new cause to adopt. This one goes "everyone is wearing a bra, and that's just wrong."

I don't wear bras. I have donned one perhaps twice in the past six months, for fashion reasons relating to particular outfits, but in general I would not be caught dead in one. Now, I'm not a bra-burning feminist or anything; my old bras are languishing in a dresser drawer, filed with my other purely-optional fashion accessories. There are many reasons to abandon bras altogether, but for me it is a matter of comfort. I have chronic headaches, and nothing guarantees a migraine like the pressure a bra puts on your back, neck and shoulders (yes, even the properly fitting ones). I go bra-free because it makes me happy.

In case you were concerned, I am in no way endangering my health by abandoning the brassiere, any more than modern women's organs are in danger of going unsupported by our lack of corset. According to brafree.org, one of the only anti-bra websites maintained by a bonafide medical doctor, there is no medical benefit to wearing a bra, and if you stop to think about it, has anyone ever really claimed there is? I always assumed bra-wearing was a necessity because that is the implicit message girls receive, but I don't recall anybody ever telling me why. We do it because it's socially acceptable, which brings me to my next point.

Those Who Can, Teach

I'm auditing a class this semester called "Education in the USA" and, despite the fact that it's not one of my "real" classes, I probably spend more time thinking about it than even my thesis. It is a thought-provoking class in every way, but one of the best things it has done for me personally is alleviate the persistent guilt I have carried around for years about wanting to be a teacher. We've all heard the maxim "those who can't do, teach" (and those who can't teach, teach P.E.) -- laughingly, but with the understanding that yes, we actually believe it. It has been both implied and explicitly stated throughout my education that my turning around and becoming a teacher would simply be "a waste," and many of my high-achieving friends have received similar messages -- most often, ironically, from our teachers. A professor in France told me point-blank that I should be aspiring to much more. When I was in the process of applying to Teach for America (to which I was not accepted), I felt I had to defend it by driving home the point that it was only for two years, and that if I ever did make teaching a career, I would do something "real" first. While I still think there are advantages to teachers' gaining experiences other than teaching, I am now in a much better position to refute the assumption that teaching is somehow a substandard career choice.

Ping

This is the requisite "Is anybody out there?" post, since I haven't posted to this blog in a year and a day (which is, in this case, exact). I will not be posting actual content tonight, but my "Education in the US" class has been provoking a good deal of thought, some of which I would like to write about a) in order to solidify it for myself and b) because I think it's important and I would like it to reach anyone it can in any way it can. Look for updates shortly!

C'est quoi la grève?

First of all, go watch this. (Here's the more-or-less comprehensible Google Translated version.) I heard it referenced many times here before actually hearing it play on the radio. Musical quality? Mediocre at best. But pretty hilarious because, well, so true.

Last semester's blogging was principally preoccupied with food. This semester, if I weren't too lazy to blog, it would all be about la grève. The word "strike" in English just doesn't carry the same weight of cultural connotations that grève seems to here. I can't count how many times since this strike started that people have told me striking is the national sport of the French. I have no trouble believing it. By all accounts, it's striking season - each year the revendications (demands, assertions, "this is what we're striking about") change, but come the third or fourth week of the spring semester and the striking begins. This turned out to be very accurate; most of my classes only met two or three times before being shut down by the strike.

It started, if I remember correctly, in the middle of my literature class - some of the students had held a general assembly that morning, and that afternoon the fire alarm went off during class. I didn't connect the two events until after we'd been shivering outside for half an hour and someone had got up on the steps to make a speech that I didn't entirely comprehend. It clicked when about half the students walked away in the direction of the bus stop rather than back to class, although my professor obstinately went back inside and finished her lecture through the continuing noise of the fire alarm.

It took about a week for all my classes to get shut down by the strike; classes in Letters and Languages went almost immediately, since its students were largely the instigators of the strike, as far as I can tell. Kinder observers will say that the liberal arts students are very socially conscious; most people will just call them anarchists. Whatever the case may be, they're a lot more invested in this than any of the other departments, and it's largely their fault that other faculties got shut down, since Letters and Languages students would go and "occupy" classes in other departments to dissuade them from taking place. In any case, it's been a full month since I've had a normal class week, though one math class obstinately continues to meet, even with only half its students, and the other has had fits and starts of trying to get back off the ground. At various times, both Letters and Languages and Mathematics have officially suspended classes for up to a week at a time, since even the professors had stopped showing up. I guess if they officially cancel classes it makes it administratively easier to make them up later.

At this point you're probably wondering what exactly they're striking about. Yeah, me too. As far as I can discern, there are three main reforms the government is trying to pass that people don't seem happy about. One has to do with the status of professor-researchers, and giving universities more power to evaluate them and establish how much teaching and how much research a given individual does. Another has to do with the way you become a teacher; currently you pass a competitive exam and go through a formation that's independent of the public university system, but the reform would make a teaching degree a master's program like other university degrees. The third has to do with how universities are funded; currently the government pays for pretty much everything and students pay a nominal enrollment fee, but some people want to let universities accept funding from private corporations.

My big questions, when I figured out that these were the issues, were: why are the students striking, when it seems like these reforms principally affect teachers and administrators? And how, as a student, do you even go on strike anyway? The rhetoric is pretty predictable. A lot of words like "solidarity" and "this is our future" and "corruption of the educational system." Everywhere you look are banners that say "university in danger." Here, education is free for students, which means that it's regarded as a right rather than a privilege. It's also extremely standardized, because if it's a right then everyone should have the same rights. Thus the resistance to evaluations of professor-researchers that would differentiate among them, privileging some, and the resistance to private funding, which might mean some universities or areas of study would be privileged over others. Basically, privilege is a dirty word here.

It all comes down to the free education system (which can apparently be traced back to a decision by the Catholic church, according to last semester's history class), which means that on the one hand, the government pays for everything, a system that may or may not be sustainable in the modern world (and especially the current economic climate), leading them to look for alternative sources of funding (though we'd never talk of actually asking the students to pay); and on the other hand, it creates a system where students can go on strike to protest such reforms, an idea that seems laughable to those of us who pay for our education. I would really love to tell a French student how much money I would have lost in the past four weeks if I'd stopped going to classes, just to see their jaw drop. Here, the worst that can happen is that they'd lose this semester, and since they're not paying anyway, it's much less of a big deal than it would be back in the U.S. - they can always repeat. Even so, since the students haven't been going to classes, the professors haven't been giving classes, bringing the university to a grinding halt and obliging it, by law, to make up the missed classes whenever the strike ends. Many of the professors I've talked to don't actually agree with the cessation of classes, even if they're against the reforms, but their position is "if the students don't want to have class, we won't have class." But they'll still make up the missed classes later. It boggles the mind, how docile they are. To all appearances, the students run this university.

We're now into week five and Middlebury has set up some replacement classes and tutorials for us, though in theory we're still supposed to be doing independent work for our "real" classes. Everything is fuzzy; we have no end date for the semester, since it may well be prolonged due to make-up classes; many of us still have no plane ticket home. It's certainly a point of cultural divergence with the American system, and not one I approve of nearly as much as the food...

Carbon Neutral for a Day

1. Click here: http://oneday.brighterplanet.com/users/4833/passes/public/WVT-S62
2. Put in your name and email. You are magically carbon neutral for a day (and by magically, I mean that Brighter Planet will donate an average day's worth of carbon offsets in your name)!
3. Pay it forward.

(The link is good for the first five people to click it.)

You can't rush art (or a French meal)

Nearly six hours ago, I sat down to lunch with about 25 French people, most of them related to my host dad, to celebrate Papy Claude's 80th birthday. After singing Happy Birthday - in English (apparently it's très à la mode) - we started the meal. First came the champagne and hors d'oeuvres (which aren't called hors d'oeuvres in French, as far as I can tell), then the cold salmon and white wine. That lasted maybe an hour. Then a break for collective singing of a 20+ verse song one of Papy Claude's sons had rewritten detailing his life story, which took easily 15 minutes to sing. Then came the main course (filet of duck with potatoes and green beans) and the red wine (I bowed out of the alcohol at that point - I'm not French enough yet), bringing us to the two-and-a-half hour mark or so. A pause for conversation, then cheese and salad (and more wine, of course - it was flowing freely at this point). Then more champagne with the cake...and chocolate, and cookies, and fruit. Four hours. Coffee and tea - at this point I was just sitting back and admiring the eating prowess of the people around me - four and three quarters. Christelle and I left to go pick up Nico from rugby practice and came back to find that the 60-and-up crowd had left...and the rest of the adults had pumped up the dance music and were bringing out more wine. We're at the six hour mark and they're still partying it up downstairs. I cannot but admire the sheer amount of energy they still have after the marathon meal. I'm not sure even the lengthiest Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter dinners I've had at home could rival it. Personally, I'm exhausted, but well-fed and relaxed and quite ready to admit that the French may have something here with this cultural tradition. (Though in light of the dance music, my dissertation isn't looking like getting written tonight. :P)

Daily Bread

This weekend was the regional retreat for GBU, which was a lot of fun and very much like any other church retreat I've ever been on - very little sleep, not nearly enough showers for the number of people (really, churches should know better by now, they host these things all the time), lots of singing and Bible study and silly games (biblical trivia = excellent, except that all the names are different in French, which tends to be a problem). The biggest difference was that I have never spent that much time on meals at a youth retreat. I know I've already mentioned the sanctity of food in French culture, but really now. The buffet line is apparently just not something that's done. Even with 30-odd college students, we still set the table for every meal and laid out all the food in serving dishes. Thankfully we stopped just short of having one person serve everyone (which would have taken forever), though the curious resistance of the French to the serve-yourself mentality produced some hiccups in the dish-passing, with some people attempting to serve everyone around them as well. Really, I find it quite charming, it's just so different. The fare was pretty typical for big groups - spaghetti bolognese, grilled cheese sandwiches (albeit in the elaborated French version of croque-monsieur), rice and sausage and vegetables. And all quite excellent. No disasters like the infamous burnt scrambled eggs from one UM ARMY trip in high school. All in all, I think I like the food culture here. Just in case I wasn't already aware of that.

Also, another thing that is Just Not Done here: eating in cars. We left Friday night around 7:30 (or 19:30, if you prefer), for a three/four hour drive, so obviously there was eating to be done in the meantime. There were bags of sandwich-makings in the car, and our group was the last to depart, so I figured we would eat on the road. No. The other two cars stopped and waited for us at a Shell station (I was amused that they exist here too), and we went inside, sat down at a table, made sandwiches, and spent a good 45 minutes having dinner. You just can't rush these people with their food. Later in the weekend, discussing this curiosity with Christelle, I remarked that obviously there exist French people who eat in their cars, given the presence of the McDonald's drive-through. Oh no, she said, giving me a half-shocked, half-amused look, that's not what drive-throughs are for here. People pick up their food and take it home to eat. I mean, okay, so car culture isn't as big here - I haven't met anybody yet who lives in their car the way my family does at home (the minivan is more or less an extension of my mom's purse) - but still. On occasion, while doing errands, a hamburger in the car is not all that bizarre a concept. Except that yes, here it is. Vive les différences culturelles, I suppose.

Overview of Life

I have been shamefully neglectful of this blog of late. For a brief overview of the past week-ish:

• Church Sunday + meal after church = finally the kind of political interest I had been waiting for all week. Only nearly nobody was excited that Obama had been elected, given my church's extremely evangelical tendencies and the number of conservative American ex-pats it attracts. And during a crowded/noisy lunch with far too many people to have a real discussion is not the time to be practically alone in one's political/social convictions, especially if one lacks the necessary vocabulary to explain them adequately. And if one is being lectured to more than discussed with by overconfident French people. It was not ideal. Also, the French have the somewhat unfounded idea that they are not at all racist merely because they don't have the same history of slavery as America. In fact, France doesn't seem to be terribly diverse, and the Asians/Maghrebins/other people belonging to minorities I talked to in my church disagree quite strongly. So I did not appreciate being lectured about how the French are so open-minded in comparison to Americans when, excuse me, who just elected a black president?
• For your general-interest (well, if your general interests comprehend linguistics) reading: Verlan, a French slang formed by inverting words. It's pretty cool and basically American English sucks because we don't have any linguistically interesting argots that anyone actually uses. Also interesting: Louchébem, which is remarkably similar to Pig Latin, and Javanais, which is sort of like a language game in English whose infix I can't actually remember. (For all three articles, if you read French, check out the French versions - they're more complete.)
• Quote of the evening from dinner after yesterday's Bible study, while trying to explain Thanksgiving: "So it's kind of like a Bar Mitzvah?"
• This weekend: retreat with aforementioned Bible study group, at some church in Orléans, with all the other GBUs (Groupes bibliques universitaires) in the region. Which should be very fun, even though it will take three and a half hours to get there by car because we'll be taking the routes nationales, because apparently all the actually efficient highways are really expensive toll roads. Hurrah.

Christmas Morning

Mommy, mommy, there's a new president in my stocking! ...Sorry, I'm a little giddy. It's so weird being the only one awake and caring here in my house. I'm really hoping for some more excitement when I get to school today. I also have to say I'm pretty impressed by the mostly-classy concession speech from McCain. It was genuine (except maybe the part where he called Sarah Palin an exceptional running-mate...) and whatever else you can say about him, he is not short on love for his country. Unfortunately, judging from the booing from the crowd when he talked about how the American people had chosen Obama over him, his supporters' hierarchy is more like McCain and then America. And Obama's victory speech...well, he could have said pretty much anything, people were so excited, but he sure is good at the powerful delivery. That man was born to be an orator. I know it's cheesy, but I'm so proud of my country today. How much people cared about this election, how many people voted, and yes, it's really cool that this election broke down the historic racial barrier, though I wish people (ahem, McCain) would stop talking about it like that's the most important aspect of Obama's being elected. I know the U.S.'s issues didn't disappear overnight, but I feel like I no longer have to be on the defensive about my nationality over here. I'm severely disappointed that I don't have an "I Voted" sticker to wear today, but it doesn't change the fact that I helped elect this president (well, technically I didn't, actually, as my state's electoral votes went to McCain, but in spirit...). And that is a happy, hopeful, exciting thought. Now, back to regularly scheduled living.