Students and Class Consciousness: A story from the picketline

There is currently a strike taking place at the university I attend. The workers are part of the medical school on campus, which means that many students take the position that the strike doesn't concern them at all, other than to inconvenience them by making them wait in a short lineup and accept a piece of paper before arriving on campus despite the obvious connections between the medical school and the university more generally.

I am currently a teaching assistant for an intro to sociology course. The professor decided to hold class on the picketline yesterday rather than forcing students to cross in order to write their previously scheduled midterm exam. About two thirds of the class showed up on a very cold day to take part in this class (and witness the year's first snowfall at the same time). There was a really interesting series of events that took place during the class.

Part of my job was to take attendance, and a lineup of students were waiting to sign in. Two young guys were joking around, and one said something like "Imagine if a striker got hit by a car" and they both started laughing. I responded by telling him that several strikers have been hit by vehicles, one even went to the hospital. Keep in mind that because strikers must be off university property, the person who is going up to cars to hand out information and talk to drivers is in the middle of an intersection. The two students stopped laughing, but I'm not sure if they really thought much of it.

The professor asked how many of them would be interested in walking the picketline with the workers, and less than 10 of the 60 students present raised their hands, the rest agreed to watch from the side after the mini-lecture and conduct participant observation.

About 10 minutes later, a driver refused to stop for the picketers walking across the road at the entrace to campus. As the car inched forward slowly, one young male worker stood his ground and refused to get out of the way of the vehicle. The car drove slowly into his legs and continued to drive forward, pushing the striker backwards. He turned around, presumably so that the car was on the back of his legs so they would bend instead of break, the car continued to drive forwards, pushing the striker another 2 feet forward and he was almost seated on the hood of the car from being pushed. Meanwhile, a dozen strikers on the line were yelling at the driver to stop, and another striker ran accross the street to get the police officer who was nearby. When the police officer came, he pulled the driver over and made him wait for about 10 minutes while he talked to him (and hopefully wrote a ticket).

The students watched this transpire, some looked horrified by the event, others amused, but I think it affected most of the people who saw it in some way. After the lecture, most of them spent some time walking the picketline with the strikers and very few stood on the sidelines to watch. Seeing one piece of the abuse that these striking workers face every day seemed to bring about a form of class consciousness (or at very least solidarity) that was not there previously.

Now, if only I could find a way to take this experience and bring it on campus to show other students that we need to support these workers.

Tyra bullies contestants in an anti-bullying episode of ANTM

Today, I am going to do a post on reality television, more specifically, this week's episode of America's Next Top Model (which, unfortunately, means admitting that I do watch the show on occasion, lets just pretend it is for research purposes).

This weeks' episode really bothered me. The aspiring models did a photo shoot where they had words written on their bodies, one was a 'bully word' which was supposed to represent names that they were called by others. The other word was supposed to be an empowering word, reframing the bully word into something more positive and powerful. I like the idea of drawing attention to real world problems like bullying, however, I didn't like how it played out. Some of the women were obviously not comfortable with their 'bully word' and others did not seem very genuine (I guess not everyone has experienced bullying). Some of them even had fun with it, laughing at their bully name as though it were all a big joke, whereas others broke down crying at the thought of painting a word that has been used to hurt them so many times on their body.

One woman used the word Queer as her 'bully word' and Free as her 'power word'... it was a beautiful picture, but I wish she had used queer for both in order to further reclaim it, but that is probably hoping for too much on a show like this.


Then, in judging (where the judging panel rips apart the models' photos, poses, and overall appearance), they reverted to name calling. Here are a list of the words and phrases used in the 2 minute judging panel that appeared on television to describe these women

• dreckitude (This is a new word, which appears to be a combination of Dreck and Attitude. If I am not mistaken, the word Dreck is a German word, something like 'dirty' in English, used as a sexist and classist form of moral regulation)
  
• Gauche (can mean socially awkward, or lacking social class)
  
• Don't like her muscle (she had awesome biceps)
  
• her body does nothing for me (sounds very sexualized)
  
• Terrible picture of her
• she is trying to model
• hoochie, too overly ripe, almost stale (this woman had large breasts, but was not dressed or posed any more provocatively than many of the other women)
  

And these comments end with a panel member saying "This has been a wonderful wonderful first, cause it's really social consciousness. I think we helped so many of those young ladies."

Please don't help me Tyra. I'd rather be left out of all of this supposedly therapeutic coming-to-terms-with-bullying than have you and your elite friends tear my body apart like that (yes, I understand that this is a big part of what modelling is about right now, because only perfect female bodies sell clothing, but don't pretend that you are helping these women and fighting bullying when you are picking apart their bodies).

The episode got me thinking about my own experiences of bullying, and I realized that I could not come up with a bully word if I were asked to. I was tormented at school from grades 4-10, especially in grade 7 and 8. Acne combined with good grades and poor social skills led to bullying that made school a frightning experience for me. I would stay up all night worrying about how to try and avoid it the next day or how to convince my mother to let me stay home. Still, I could not take these experiences and sum it up in a single word or a short sentence, it was so much more complicated than that.

And I don't mean this to sound like an afterthought, but I think it needs to be mentioned that there was also a model who appeared as though she might have an eating disorder. She was quite skinny with protruding bones and she discussed being on a strict low calorie diet. Tyra told her to eat some bread and butter before eliminating her from the competition. I'm really hoping that there was more follow up for this contestant than just telling her to eat, because I'm pretty sure that is not how to help someone who may (or may not) have an eating disorder. I would suggest that it is a form of bullying to go up to a skinny person and just tell them to eat; if she is anorexic, it is so much more complicated than just going to the kitchen and buttering a slice of bread.

Another Montessouri ad

I just saw another bench today that compares to the one I previously posted advertising for Montessouri Schools. I am going to skip details about the school, but I do have a class analysis at the previous link, which was further discussed here.


Sorry about the image quality, but it was taken from a cell phone camera in a moving vehicle. The ad reads

1 to 8 VS. 1 to 30.
You do the Math. Our students can.

This refers to class size and student teacher ratios... Of course, it doesn't mention that they can afford to have extra teachers because parents are paying for their children to attend these schools, where as the government has been cutting funds to public schools.

This suggests that public school classes are too big and public school teachers are overworked, I agree so far. But rather than actually doing anything about it or trying to get additional funding to public schools, middle to upper class families should merely put their children in a private school and leave the large class sizes for the children whose families cannot afford this "better" education...

Who needs social mobility when the status quo is so much more advantageous to the elite who write our social policy and decide how much funding to put into our schools... all while sending their children to private institutions.

And, to add insult to injury, they need to include a comment implying that public school students cannot do simple math.

Great video about racism and the war in Iraq

I came across this video through a friend on facebook today.



It features a former soldier talking about his role in the war, calling himself a terrorist for following what sounds like rather standard orders that North American soldiers in that region probably hear every day. He blames racism for making ordinary working people willing to fight other working people, when they actually have more in common with those working people than the elites who sent them. He also says that elite people send us to war when it is profitable to do so, and that we agree to go because of racism.

So, if working people around the globe were to realize how much we had in common based on our status as workers and how different the lives and priorities of the elite actually are... it seems like Marxism 101. This theory is very well articulated in the video.