2008 Woodie Awards
Protesting the lack of protests
Zach Brown
Issue date: 12/7/06 Section: Op/Ed
To the Editor:
After reading the article, "Local union challenges College's construction contract," in this week's Weekly, I was bothered by some of the administrations statements regarding the issue. Dean Shiner Wilson stated, "I do not consider myself or the College anti-worker, as is suggested in the flyer." Well, of course not. Who would consider themselves anti-worker? The College professor who recently coerced another campus organization to lower its student pay scale does not consider himself anti-worker, or anti-student. He did it because he believes other, higher paying campus jobs are stealing his work-study staff, even though the reality is that he and his staff are cultivating an environment where students feel disrespected and underappreciated. People who are generally reasonable wouldn't describe themselves in negative ways unless they have recently realized their shortcomings and are working to overcome them. For this reason, I wish to draw the attention of the College community to a troubling situation: the attitude of the College, and of many of its faculty, staff and students, tends to be very self-centered. We've all made and heard comments about the "Muhlenbubble," but very few people, including myself, actually try to make a connection with the world around us. As long as whatever we want happens and it doesn't cost us too much, we're fine with it. We all regularly make decisions which overlook the treatment of others; we just usually aren't aware of how those decisions affect others. When someone confronts you with the consequences of your decision, it is easy to accuse them of (in President Helm's words) using "insults, bullying, [and] sloganeering" and say that people should engage in "reasoned debate," but if a member of Carpenters Local 600 had walked up to the third floor of Haas and asked to speak to someone about the College's construction and contracting decisions, what do you think would have happened? My guess is that if he wasn't turned away, he would be granted a brief conversation, but the event would be kept quiet and we would never know about it. Think about every major social issue in history. Have any of them been decided solely through "reasoned and civil debate"? Of course not. In the world of academia, people like to think that we live in idealized world where civilized discussion will solve everything.Few such "reasonable" people, however, acknowledge that such discussion cannot be meaningful unless the parties involved are invested in the debate. And in our society, getting enough people invested in an issue to make a difference can be a challenge. Our country has a long history of demonstrations and pamphlet distributing going back to the Revolution. Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet "Common Sense," refers to monarchy as "the...invention [of] the Devil." Paine's text is quite "reasoned and civil," but given its tone and scale, it would be published in today's society as a book that confines its readership to academics and perhaps their unsuspectingg students. Modern pamphlets must be extremely concise and memorable to be noticed by our very short and selective attention spans. Insults in print are nothing new. The Declaration of Independence itself equates the King to a pirate ("He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns?"), as well as tyrant and barbarian ("...works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages..."). Personally, I would rather be called an underpaid rat than a barbarous, tyrannical pirate (even if I do enjoy a good swashbuckle now and then). There is a reason that freedom of speech was so important to early citizens of the United States. How can you have a decent society if no one is allowed to disagree with whoever happens to be in charge? People screw up; everyone makes bad decisions sometimes. Protests, demonstrations and pamphlets all serve one purpose: to draw people's attention to unnoticed consequences of certain decisions, in the hopes of sparking enough interest to start the "reasoned and civil debate" necessary to rectify the situation. The gentlemen who have been demonstrating at Muhlenberg have not been violent or disruptive; they distributed information and blew up a balloon. These are the same methods people use to increase awareness about health issues, charities and car sales. Don't criticize the methods of communication just because you don't like the message. If you wish to have a "reasoned discussion," you are obligated to research and fully understand the issues involved, which begins with reading past the first line of the flyer (or reading it at all). I hope we can have a productive discussion on this issue within the framework of, rather than isolated from, the society we live in.
Zach Brown '07
After reading the article, "Local union challenges College's construction contract," in this week's Weekly, I was bothered by some of the administrations statements regarding the issue. Dean Shiner Wilson stated, "I do not consider myself or the College anti-worker, as is suggested in the flyer." Well, of course not. Who would consider themselves anti-worker? The College professor who recently coerced another campus organization to lower its student pay scale does not consider himself anti-worker, or anti-student. He did it because he believes other, higher paying campus jobs are stealing his work-study staff, even though the reality is that he and his staff are cultivating an environment where students feel disrespected and underappreciated. People who are generally reasonable wouldn't describe themselves in negative ways unless they have recently realized their shortcomings and are working to overcome them. For this reason, I wish to draw the attention of the College community to a troubling situation: the attitude of the College, and of many of its faculty, staff and students, tends to be very self-centered. We've all made and heard comments about the "Muhlenbubble," but very few people, including myself, actually try to make a connection with the world around us. As long as whatever we want happens and it doesn't cost us too much, we're fine with it. We all regularly make decisions which overlook the treatment of others; we just usually aren't aware of how those decisions affect others. When someone confronts you with the consequences of your decision, it is easy to accuse them of (in President Helm's words) using "insults, bullying, [and] sloganeering" and say that people should engage in "reasoned debate," but if a member of Carpenters Local 600 had walked up to the third floor of Haas and asked to speak to someone about the College's construction and contracting decisions, what do you think would have happened? My guess is that if he wasn't turned away, he would be granted a brief conversation, but the event would be kept quiet and we would never know about it. Think about every major social issue in history. Have any of them been decided solely through "reasoned and civil debate"? Of course not. In the world of academia, people like to think that we live in idealized world where civilized discussion will solve everything.Few such "reasonable" people, however, acknowledge that such discussion cannot be meaningful unless the parties involved are invested in the debate. And in our society, getting enough people invested in an issue to make a difference can be a challenge. Our country has a long history of demonstrations and pamphlet distributing going back to the Revolution. Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet "Common Sense," refers to monarchy as "the...invention [of] the Devil." Paine's text is quite "reasoned and civil," but given its tone and scale, it would be published in today's society as a book that confines its readership to academics and perhaps their unsuspectingg students. Modern pamphlets must be extremely concise and memorable to be noticed by our very short and selective attention spans. Insults in print are nothing new. The Declaration of Independence itself equates the King to a pirate ("He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns?"), as well as tyrant and barbarian ("...works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages..."). Personally, I would rather be called an underpaid rat than a barbarous, tyrannical pirate (even if I do enjoy a good swashbuckle now and then). There is a reason that freedom of speech was so important to early citizens of the United States. How can you have a decent society if no one is allowed to disagree with whoever happens to be in charge? People screw up; everyone makes bad decisions sometimes. Protests, demonstrations and pamphlets all serve one purpose: to draw people's attention to unnoticed consequences of certain decisions, in the hopes of sparking enough interest to start the "reasoned and civil debate" necessary to rectify the situation. The gentlemen who have been demonstrating at Muhlenberg have not been violent or disruptive; they distributed information and blew up a balloon. These are the same methods people use to increase awareness about health issues, charities and car sales. Don't criticize the methods of communication just because you don't like the message. If you wish to have a "reasoned discussion," you are obligated to research and fully understand the issues involved, which begins with reading past the first line of the flyer (or reading it at all). I hope we can have a productive discussion on this issue within the framework of, rather than isolated from, the society we live in.
Zach Brown '07