don't you hate those clever people at those clever-people-parties

i spoke with the dean. it was interesting. at least some of my frustration was eased by a long talk last night with greg, but the dean was able to give a name to the attitude of my class which i'm finding so problematic. i realised, too, that i was conflating lots and lots of issues with the school under one name, and doing so made the problem seem completely unmanageable. it's probably at least a little bit manageable.

i am relieved to know that freshman seminars aren't supposed to be ridiculously politicised, and that the administration has spoken to the tutor responsible for that; the climate of the seminar has improved since then, and their awareness of the situation is probably the reason that happened. i didn't speak to the administration about it, but i had voiced my frustration to the writing archon, and i have a feeling he passed my concerns along. i hadn't said anything, because i didn't know how and i didn't think it would help anyway. apparently, complaining about things can in fact improve a situation. this is a valuable lesson.

i am also relieved to learn that the administration is aware that a small group of freshmen are doing way the hell too many hard drugs way too often, and that they're trying to address the situation. offering treatment comes before kicking the kids out, but at least they know, and they're doing what they can. i think, to some extent, that the self-policing element of the community is broken, and though i don't live on-campus and i don't want to narc out people on the basis of rumour, i am going to go to the administration to complain about people who come to class high, or who constantly come to class hungover and unprepared and spend the whole tutorial whispering stories about how fucked up they were last night. because it's fucking tiresome. being made aware that i can do that, and be taken seriously, is also a valuable thing to know.

so i'll hang on til next semester and see if the behaviour of the freshman class is improved by don rags. the endless partying might be considerably reduced by a few threats, and if people actually buckle down and do their freaking readings, classes actually might not suck.

maybe.

once people start taking their studies seriously, they might start taking discussions seriously, as well. which might provide an opportunity to start having actual conversations with people, and to get them to gain even a glimmer of insight into themselves and the world in which they live. ms mora pointed out that these kids -- many of them, anyway -- grew up with that common and pernicious belief that racism and sexism and bigotry had all somehow been magically fixed, and didn't exist anymore, which meant that making racist and sexist jokes wasn't racist or sexist, but "edgy". that's a problem in the country as a whole, so of course it's going to be a problem here, too. if my classmates sober up enough, maybe we can talk about this. maybe by talking about it, we can work on it. when i was 18, i was perhaps not quite that naive, but it did take me a while to realise just how deeply society was still mired in hateful bullshit. i had to experience the bullshit firsthand to really figure it out. if the kids here don't get that experience -- and they might not -- they're probably not going to learn about it themselves. trying to help them notice the bullshit is better than being angry at them for not noticing the bullshit, and certainly more productive.

i'm going to write a response to some of the more egregious shit and submit it to The Moon. if i have enough time to work on The Moon and do the rest of my work, i think i might try. it's such a sorry-assed excuse for a student paper that i didn't even want to try getting involved with it, but despite being perpetually moribund, it's unlikely to die any time soon. as long as it's run by subliterate jackholes, it's going to be a wasteland of clever-kid cynicism and jokes about TEH OMG GHEY, so i might as well try to make it a bit less vile. it's better than seething with rage every time a new issue comes out.

i really don't know where to start, since we're already at a point where a privileged white kid attending a school for privileged white kids dresses up in blackface for halloween (as part of his Post-Assassination-MLK jr costume) and a bunch of other privileged white kids at same privileged-white-kid school write approvingly about it in their school paper, but all i can do is try. i can at least take down the sexist asshat who wasted a page-and-a-half of ink on an incomprehensible sexist rant, even if he is the senior editor.