On Campus Blog 2

I attended the Make Peace event, hosted by Student Peace Alliance last week. I know we are supposed to do an event that is a stretch for us, but this event was so powerful for me personally, that I feel I should write about it for my on campus event. The event was in memory of Rob, and man you could feel his presence everywhere that night; it was incredibly powerful and really, really awesome. There were a multitude of musical acts that night, as well as other types of performances, but one in particular shook me to the core. An SU student, I believe a sophomore, composed an orchestral piece the night of Rob’s death, and it was performed by during the event by an orchestra (I think- I’m not really sure what an orchestra consists of) and the choir. I cannot even express how moving the piece was on a personal level; it was as though the spirit of Rob was in that piece. And anyone that knew Rob knows how beautiful his spirit is; he was one of the kindest, most compassionate, incredible souls I have ever encountered- honestly, there is no way to put into words how amazing of a person he was. Fortunately though, someone was able to put it into music. It was as though that composition took a snapshot of a smiling Rob, with his arms open to the world, and transformed it into a piece of music that touched everyone’s hearts in a way that only Rob could. I cried again that night for Rob, as did others, but it was a good cry. I think we all felt something that night; I can’t really explain what it was, but it was peaceful. It was essentially, in my very subjective opinion at least, the embodiment of the beauty and meaning of life. The atmosphere in that room was so perfect; it was constructive, caring, creative, impassioned, and incredibly, incredibly peaceful. We read Hannah Arendt in my political theory class, and she says that individuals must create their own meanings by creating their own worlds, and that night a beautiful world was created, one that Rob would have been so ecstatic to witness, and even more ecstatic to have inspired. I don’t believe in heaven in the traditional sense, but I do believe that wherever Rob’s spirit is, it was smiling his ridiculously bright, optimistc, beautiful smile, and for at least a night, I think all of us really experienced the compassion and peace that was Rob’s life.   

On Campus Event 1

For one of my on-campus events, I attended the SESA Take Back the Night rally and rave. We arrived at 8 on the mall to begin. There was a pretty decent sized group- I would say about twenty people or so showed up, both male and female. Brady was there, which was a pleasant surprise, because I was unaware that he is actually a member of SESA. I don’t know if you’ll read this Brady, but I think that the fact that you are a member of such an awesome group, who has such a powerful and important message is really, really amazing. Anyways, we met at the mall, and we walked around campus chanting various slogans. The two call and responses that we did were –SU Unite: Take Back the Night, and break the silence: end the violence! It was a pretty cool experience for sure; I’ve done peace marches in Austin before, and I really enjoy being out among other passionate people, trying to inspire change. Our path took us by Herman-Brown and Moody-Shearn, then to Lord Center, and down the road between McCombs and the DLC. We then went through the freshman dorms, finally ending at the mall. There, we went around in the circle and talked about our experiences with violence, or potential violence, and what taking back the night meant to all of us. I personally (and thankfully) have never been touched by sexual violence, but I have a good friend who has been, which absolutely breaks my heart. The worst part is that she has not yet come to terms with it, and she still blames herself for what happened, although if she saw herself as I (and everyone she meets) see her, she would know what an incredible, inspirational person she is, and how much I value her in my life. This event really inspired me to try and create in myself more understanding for the things she is dealing with, and hopefully one day I will be able to hug her and tell her how amazing she is, and that it isn’t her fault. Unfortunately, I can only wait though, because I know that this is something she has to come to terms with on her own, and all I can do is be a shoulder to cry on, or a friend to listen. I think that personally that is the worst part; the fact that she is dealing with this, and all I can do is wait. I think that is why sexual assault is so absolutely awful. From what I’ve seen, it affects people to their very core, and places the burden of getting over it entirely on them, while the perpetrator is free to continue. I am really glad I went to this event, although I didn’t stay for the rave after, because I had far too much homework. I hope that SESA continues doing what they’re doing, because their message is to important to be kept in silence. 

Last Session

Our last session went pretty well. I thought that we managed to salvage the program as much as possible. It would have been really, really nice if Daniel had given us more details on the program: what he was expecting from us, from the kids, and his expectations for future offshoots for the program. Also, I felt that the most frustrating aspect of our program was the lack of consistency in the students we had in our class. We did the human knot in our second to last session, and I thought that we had managed to find a pretty good group of kids that would work well together. But, in our final session, we had only two of the same kids, and the rest were ones that we had never met before. How Daniel expected to get a peer mediation program off the ground, under these conditions, is beyond me and I certainly would attribute the lack of organization in multiple areas to the inability of our program to be a success. Regardless though, I felt that our group managed to pull our program together towards the end, to where it was salvageable. We took the cards we were given and did our best to instill ideas of nonviolence in some of those kids, and I think that that is something to really be proud of.

              In our last session, we adapted our conflict resolution program to contain mostly elements of conflict and peer mediation. The kids that we had this time were insanely enthusiastic. I think that their enthusiasm really helped calm us down, and helped make the last minute, makeshift program that we brought in, a successful session. We started the session by going over the basic rules for how to conduct a peer mediation session. It seemed at first that they didn’t really get it, but when they got up to do it themselves, they showed that they really grasped the overall concept, though the specific steps seemed to be elusive.

            I would say overall the program was a success. Maybe not in the way that was expected, but a success just the same. We had the opportunity to teach a really cool subject that is undervalued and underrepresented in American schools. We teach kids in school how to share or help each other, ways to avoid conflict, but when faced with actual conflict we leave them without a guide. In our atomistic culture, independence translates into self-help, bootstraps mentality of solving problems that leaves little room for a healthy conflict resolution and dialogue among peoples. We should be teaching children at an early age how to resolve conflicts, and really begin emphasizing the qualities of violence, so these children know “not only not to hit, but WHY not to hit”. Emphasizing this is an essential part of a child’s education, and without it, they are left to continue a pattern that has for so long dominated our common history. For so long, violence has been seen as the best way to handle problems. There needs to be a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we view violence. This should be accomplished at a legislative level in order to produce effective, efficient results; states should put as part of the public curriculum a mandatory section on conflict resolution skills. This admittance of non-violence principle into curriculum could help raise the legitimacy of it in the opinions of ordinary people, parents, and school officials. This would help shape a more accepting view of conflict resolution and non-violence in the public eye.

Student Works Symposium

I found the Student Works Symposium to be pretty interesting. I think the project that caught my attention the most was the project on torture. The project examined the practice of torture, looking at its efficacy, and other consequences. We had just talked about the subject in my History of Human Rights class, so it was cool to see the argument in another setting. The project was arguing against torture, emphasizing that the typical negative consequences of torture far outweigh the benefits. I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly. Torture can never be an effective, positive activity, because of its very nature; by condoning violence in our government, we help to legitimize violence as an effective policy tool. This is so inherently dangerous- violence is not something that is well controlled or managed in our world; violence tends to continue escalating until a point of abject, pointless violence emerges. Violence is not constructive in anyway, and by condoning it in our government, we are setting a deadly precedent for the rest of the world to follow. Also, I think that if we are ever going to reach a peaceful world, we must start stamping out violence. Many people construct a means-ends argument for why torture is acceptable (lose one save hundreds etc.), but this seems to be such a myopic view of our world. By using this argument, one is still placing oneself within the system, they are still part of the problem; we need to learn to remove ourselves from the system of violence, and start tying establishing different ideals in people’s minds, regarding violence.

            I know that I’m sorta ranting about violence a lot in these blog entries, but honestly, I cannot even begin to explain how important I think this subject is, and how much attention it needs from everyone. It’s time that we stop just addressing the symptoms of violence and start addressing the root causes; only by doing that will we be able to rewire violence’s role in our world. We need to watch where we get involved in the world, and for what reasons, so as to not harbor violent sentiments abroad, if they are avoidable. Also, we need to focus on the problem of poverty in our own country to address the problem of gang violence and poverty related violence.

            Overall, I found the Student Works Symposium to be interesting, and the food was delicious. I really like that there is a space for students to share their ideas like this, and I think it is a great opportunity for those involved.    

Jesse Daniel Ames Lecture

I thought that the Jesse Daniel Ames Lecture was fairly interesting. The transgendered population is one that is characteristically underrepresented, and it was incredibly interesting to hear an usually quiet perspective. When people talk about equality, usually the groups that come to mind are women, children, gays, not necessarily the rights of transgendered groups. I can see how it would be more difficult to categorize and assign rights to the transgendered group, simply because of the nature of their situation. I think though, that this conflict of established groups and rights is something that can potentially be incredibly beneficial. By not categorizing a group by sexual orientation, gender or any other binary that presents an idea of the “other,” we can start to break down many of the walls of intolerance; rather than labeling people, hopefully we can begin to establish a pattern of looking at people as people, rather than overly simple categorization.   

The idea of state sponsored violence is interesting, because the idea of state sponsored violence indicates a problem at both the governmental and cultural level. To expand this idea outside of the United States, I think that one can look to the situation in Darfur. The government in Darfur essential orchestrates the violence occurring there, perpetuating an all out genocide; the Janjaweed are a mercenary group hired by the government to perform a sort of ethnic cleansing. The government even sends planes in to bomb villages before the Janjaweed arrives. The motive behind this is part economic, part cultural, and part racial, but the racial aspect is what often justifies the ethnic cleaning. This idea of intolerance in the United States is so inherently dangerous because of the myriad of potential, and no doubt harmful, ramifications. In the name of racism and discrimination all kinds of acts of violence and all manners of hatred can be perpetrated.

The idea of a political solution to the problem of discrimination is troublesome, but I feel that it is one of the only persuasive options. Both cultural and political reform must work in tandem to overachieve racism and discrimination; I don’t believe that there necessarily is a particular order to how these levels change, but it is far easier to create political “legal” change, than to change the ideals of a society. That can be seen with the anti-discrimination laws concerning African-Americans and the civil rights movement; the legislation passed far before people’s minds changed. I think that passing legislation is an important first step in acting as a catalyst for cultural change.

I also like that the lecture focused on the physical aspects of discrimination; I think that until we start being open about the differences of the juxtaposed groups (male and female, etc.), we can’t establish any sort off dialogue for fixing the problem.          

First Session of Conflict Resolution

So, our group had our first session at the Boys and Girl’s Club yesterday. I thought that although it could of gone better, it also could have gone much worse. Overall, I thought it was a successful visit, which is doubly impressive considering our subject material. There were about 8 kids in all, and we started pretty promptly. 

They responded really well to the wants and needs activity. I started that activity by asking them what made them happy, which garnered responses at first like break dancing, and basketball. Eventually though, they started saying some really cool intangible concepts, like loyalty, honesty, and respect. They also said various people, such as family and friends. We then differentiated between the concepts of needs and wants. As a group, we determined that needs are something that everyone has a right to, while wants are not necessary for everyone. Following this, we categorized the things on the list into wants (i.e. basketball), and needs (i.e. food, sleep, respect, love), and looked at how common needs play an important role in conflicts. 

Following this, Brady introduced the concept of conflict resolution, and then we focused on various situations in which conflict was present, and how they typically handled these conflicts. We then tried to introduce different ways of handling conflicts, with an emphasis on respecting your feelings as well as the feelings of the other person. At that age, and with such a (fairly) abstract topic, I knew that we would have some trouble. They seemed to grasp pretty quickly the “how”, but I think that the “why” is something that takes a while to sink in, and I think as our sessions progress, it’ll get easier. 

Conflict Resolution can be a pretty corny topic when presented in a certain way, so I really tried hard not to sound too preach-y during the session. I found that when I talked about conflict in my own family, specifically with my little brother, they all seemed to connect with that. I could tell that most of them had siblings that were older, and who they really looked up to, or younger, who they loved and felt protective of. I feel that that could be a good way to approach some of the trickier topics in our next sessions. Also, I really felt that these kids responded really strongly to sincerity; if I was being bogus on anything, they could totally see through it, but when I talked to them as equals, with sincere respect, I felt that I connected much more with them. I think that we will continue to make a lot of progress, and this will be a pretty successful program overall.       

We had a few problems with talking and cell phones, but I think that that can be addressed pretty effectively in our next session, and function as an example of conflict resolution. 

 

Brown Symposium

I thought that the topic for this year’s Brown Symposium was pretty interesting. Sadly, the conference’s bite was not as big as it’s bark. The second conference was so so so boring. While the idea of how God affects your brain was an interesting proposition, the research presented was lacking in significance, in my opinion, and the speaker was, to say the least, incredibly monotonous. The speaker presented images of a brain “on” God, and “off” God, and showed the changes that occurred. The changes were minimal to my eye at least, and the hidden brain the speaker pointed out in “The Creation of Adam” did not sway me. Though the idea of the evidence presented was compelling, I didn’t really see the purpose of deducing how God affects the brain. Sure, the idea of a positive God over a negative one may be beneficial for mental happiness, but one isn’t going to adapt something as personal as religion to a scientific study. I don’t think that science has any place in advising people what or what not to believe. It’s an interesting study, but fairly invasive into one of the most personal aspects of a person’s life. Most people’s definition of their religion, or spirituality, is not something that can fit neatly into predetermined categories that then can be measured according to their positive or negative effects. Additionally, one of the best parts of a religion or spirituality is its mystery. By reducing the positive feeling that stems from religion to merely a chemical reaction in the brain, the part of religion that encourages faith, and through that everything else, is stymied.

The first lecture was abvit more interesting; it revolved around the many faces of God. I was astounded by the statistic that 88% of people believe in some God. Our country has always been religiously influenced, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. The breakdown of that number into smaller categories of specific religions would probably highlight the strong Christian influences in our country.            

Overall, I thought the conference didn’t deliver, but they were also working with a very difficult topic. Reconciling religion and science has been a challenge of people for centuries, and I don’t think there will ever be a way to fully integrate the two, nor would I want too much science interfering in my spirituality. 

Tuesdays with Morrie

I really enjoyed Tuesdays with Morrie. So much so that I think that I am going to buy it when the funds become available. I thought the whole book was excellent, from plot to dialogue, and although he is not the greatest writer for anything other than sports apparently, I enjoyed his writing. I think my favorite parts of the book were the aphorisms of Morrie, and the underlying tale of redemption that the author embarks upon, when he decides to visit Morrie. I did think it was sad that he only decided to visit because of the strike, but I feel that by the end of the story, he grew because of Morrie, and was as grateful to a person as one can be.

I think that I liked Morrie so much because many of his views reflect what I strive for, but he is far more elegant than I in expressing them. I loved that he said that money is way overrated; his diatribe against money is really indicative, I feel, of many of the tensions in our society that revolve around money, and also how money and the accumulation of crap has become one of the bedrock principles of our society. This in itself is sad, but Morrie truly highlights what is omitted from society, and the life of an individual, because of money and the idea of stuff. Trying to fill their lives with all these material things, and titles, and perceived esteem distracts people, but in the final analysis, what do they have? Morrie hits the nail on the head when he grapples with the idea of love; the most important thing a person can do in their life is really love someone or someones, and create a community of love around them. This may sound a little trite, and perhaps I’m a bit of a hippy, but I don’t think it gets said enough in our world. Love constantly takes the backseat to money, power, and prestige, but the only one of those things that is eternal is love. One of my favorite quotes (sorry to sound like a total hippy) is by Jimi Hendrix- “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” There is such an eternal and undeniable truth in this message, and I think that is why I enjoyed this book so much.

 Not only does Morrie preach about the power and importance of love, he lives it with every breath or, towards the end of his life, every cough he takes. His family, friends, colleagues were all there constantly, to offer anything Morrie needed, and usually more love went out to them from Morrie than anything else. Morrie’s thesis, if he had one, would be when he says “The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” Morrie loves those around him, but he also loves himself, which is essential, by finding something truly important to invest his life in; nothing is more important than that, and the shortest distance between an unhappy meaningless existence, and one full of wonder and meaning is through loving and helping others. This is what Morrie believes, and what I believe, and his words are inspirational not only in their message, but more importantly personally, for how they strengthen my beliefs which are similar, and often overlooked in our society.      

Civic Engaging Thoughts

I’m incredibly excited to start working with the Boys and Girls Club. I really think everyone will get something out of the experience, and it’s really cool that there are so many different expectations among different people. Personally, I just want to do what I can, where I can, to help, and if I can accomplish that goal I will be happy. Regardless of how we structure our civic engagement with the Boys and Girls Club, I believe it will be a really fulfilling and cool experience.

 With that said, I think there should be some parameters for our visits. While I would not mind going alone, I think that I would get more out of a group working together. This would be better for bonding with each other, and I think, make sure everyone is comfortable around everyone else.  As for whether our activities are structured, I would say that this question depends entirely on the person or group. For instance, I would not want to put together a structured anything; I’d rather just spend my time playing soccer with the kids. Some people have interests though that would work very well with a structured program, like an interest in art. Honestly, I think the most important thing is just going and having fun with the kids, regardless of how structured or non-structured it is. Personally, I connect with people through games or sports, so that would be the area that I would be interested in, as opposed to structured activities.

 I would be fine with going at least once a week. I’d like to be able to make a commitment to more than once a week, but I can’t be sure yet that I can fit that into my schedule. I think that as long as we have someone there or a group of people there once or twice a week, our attendance as a cohort would be pretty successful. I don’t believe I have any worries; a new volunteer experience is always a bit unnerving at first, but that just comes with the territory until you get used to everything.