Madeleine Chang – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 26 Feb 2016 03:16:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Madeleine Chang – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 How do we know what we don’t know? https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/25/how-do-we-know-what-we-dont-know/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/25/how-do-we-know-what-we-dont-know/#respond Fri, 26 Feb 2016 07:59:56 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1111568 Colleges this year are said to be experiencing a “surge” in student organizing. According to a recent study from UCLA, more American college students participated in protests in 2015 than in any year in the past fifty. This moment of increased student activism has fostered a culture of competitive social consciousness. We trade in knowing […]

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Colleges this year are said to be experiencing a “surge” in student organizing. According to a recent study from UCLA, more American college students participated in protests in 2015 than in any year in the past fifty. This moment of increased student activism has fostered a culture of competitive social consciousness. We trade in knowing the latest Twitter debacle, using jargon like “folx” and having read the most radical think-piece on “Formation.” This hyper-social awareness makes sense given the role student movements have historically played in social progress. How do students define social awareness?

The newest measure of social consciousness is in terms of “woke” or “not woke.” Like other words on the vanguard of the English language, woke has its roots in Black Twitter (and before that in Erykah Badu’s 2008 song “Master Teacher”). #StayWoke emerged alongside #BlackLivesMatter in 2012 after the non-indictment of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting. It meant: Stay aware of the systematic racism in criminal justice. “Woke” on its own has since entered general American vernacular as an adjective used to describe someone aware of social, racial and/or economic injustice.

“Stay Woke”’s innovation is the suggestion that knowledge is ever-evolving – one must “stay,” that is, continue learning and becoming aware. There is no set list of books to read in order to be woke. It is a form of knowledge that rests on both traditional sources of information like literature, history or critical theory, and contemporary Internet discourse like Reddit (forums), Tumblr (blogs) and Instagram (picture-sharing). True to the medium that created the term itself, wokeness is a process that involves popular feedback and participation – a two-way street of social consciousness.

Confronting this feedback can be uncomfortable. I recently posted a picture on Facebook with the hashtag “#womyn.” A friend commented back: “PSA: womyn is transmisogynistic.” I was embarrassed to be called out in (online) public –“But I swear I’m not a transmisogynist!” I wanted to protest. I considered deleting the picture with hopes of erasing the evidence of a misstep; after all, I didn’t want to seem not woke! While thinking about it I googled “womyn + transmisogyny” and learned about the Michigan Womyn’s Festival that excludes trans women. In the end, I didn’t delete the picture for the sake of transparency. I couldn’t pretend I was born knowing that history. This was merely me learning (also offending, for which I apologized). If awareness is truly a process, then this incident was a normal step along the way.

I could have avoided the offense all together had I done some Googling before posting. Proactive research also reduces the burden of teaching that often falls on people with marginalized identities. The Internet has given us all access to limitless information, but the Internet also requires knowing where and how to look. Like any tool, Google is only powerful with some directions. I would not have thought to research “womyn” because I didn’t know it needed researching. In other words, it’s hard to know what you don’t know.

Another challenge of using the Internet to see our blind spots is that more and more social media curate the content that pops up on feeds. Facebook’s news feed algorithm, for instance, features people, photos and articles similar to that which the user has previously liked or viewed. By design, users are less likely to see information or opinions that differ from their own. The result is an ideological bubble that gets thicker and thicker.

In theory, the Internet has put the world at our fingertips. In practice, that world can be hard to navigate, and can be filtered to reinforce our pre-existing preferences, rather than challenge them.

Views are contested offline when people with different life experiences or divergent opinions come into contact. School, for many of us, is the place where that will happen most. In these crossover interactions, being called out becomes merely finding out what we don’t know. This willingness to be wrong, to learn and to teach creates social awareness. Of course, there is some baseline level of knowledge to which all students should be exposed, so that we are at least speaking in mutually audible registers. A debate over the content of that baseline – a core curriculum – is currently underway on campus. The outcome matters because it will shape the conversations we have, the worldviews that are challenged and what we as students will collectively contribute to society.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madeleinechang@stanford.edu.

 

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#SyllabiSoWhite https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/09/syllabisowhite/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/02/09/syllabisowhite/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2016 07:59:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1110543 The glaring exclusion of black actors from this year’s Oscars nominations has sparked a conversation about the whiteness of the nominating body and of the movie industry at large. The New Yorker’s Andrew Brody elaborates: “The underlying issue of the Academy’s failure to recognize black artists is the presumption that baseline experience is white experience […]

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The glaring exclusion of black actors from this year’s Oscars nominations has sparked a conversation about the whiteness of the nominating body and of the movie industry at large. The New Yorker’s Andrew Brody elaborates: “The underlying issue of the Academy’s failure to recognize black artists is the presumption that baseline experience is white experience and that black life is a niche phenomenon, life with an asterisk.” This is why movies about white people are just called movies, whereas movies about black people are specifically black movies. White is the default, and everything else is additive.

How does this peripheralization of non-white experiences take shape within our own academy? Just as the film industry produces art assuming a certain white baseline, so too does the university produce knowledge built on a certain definition of excellence. Our academy’s definition of excellence is most visible in the subjects we are taught and texts we read, featured in the syllabi we comb through at the start of each new quarter.

Syllabi, according to a recent New York Times piece on the topic, “represent the best efforts by faculty and instructors to distill human knowledge on a given subject into 14-week chunks.” It follows then, that the most frequently taught texts make up knowledge worth knowing, according to the University. A new set of metadata, which culls one million syllabi from universities across the U.S., reveals the top 10 most taught texts all come from the Western tradition: 1) William Strunk’s “The Elements of Style” 2) Plato’s “Republic” 3) Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” 4) Neil Campbell’s “Biology” 5) Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” 6) Aristotle’s “Ethics” 7) Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” 8) Niccoló Machiavelli’s “The Prince” 9) Sophocles’ “Oedipus” and 10) William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” This list conveys that books worth reading are written by and about white Westerners.

While individual Stanford professors may be aware of academia’s Eurocentric bend, they may not always have the expertise to reorient their fields of study. For example, at the first session of a comparative literature course called “The Novel,” the professor asked us to weigh in on the almost exclusively white syllabus, because admittedly, he specializes in European literature and wasn’t sure who else to include. As we went around the room, each person of color (and a couple of white students too) listed off as many non-white names they could conjure, frantically trying to maximize this rare opportunity to make the syllabus reflect a broader intellectual field. It was clear, however, that the European authors were the baseline, and if we were lucky, a few authors from the alternative canons we presented would make the list.

To some extent, a European professor highlighting literature written by people like him that feature people like him is only natural. If I knew of books about half-Korean, half-Jewish American females, you bet I’d include them in my syllabus. We often value books and movies that depict our own realities. In theory, this is not a bad thing — we are indeed most qualified to speak about that with which we have personal experience.

The problem arises when there is a disproportionate number of professors from the same tradition, teaching the same tradition. At most American universities, that means the European tradition. This creates the illusion of a white baseline and obscures the subjectivity behind our understanding of excellence.

What we are taught depends in large part on who’s teaching us. Learning texts that capture the breadth of human experience requires an equally broad range of professors equipped to teach beyond the traditional canon. Those professors will need to be hired by a university that values their expertise, and the university will only value their expertise once they are hired. But they won’t be hired in the first place if their expertise is not valued. Therein lies the tricky catch-22 of changing an institution designed to replicate itself.

In response to the recent Oscars controversy, the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has committed to “doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.” Many were quick to point out that the problem of minority underrepresentation stems from the homogeneity of the larger film industry. That is, the pool of films to choose from is itself not diverse enough. And that’s because directors and producers are not diverse enough, which is because studios don’t fund projects outside the bounds of “excellence” as determined by bodies like the not-diverse-enough Academy. A familiar cycle emerges.

In both Hollywood and academia, the solution rests on simultaneously diversifying the pool of production (movies and syllabi), the producers (directors and professors) and those who deem the producers excellent (the Academy and older professors/administrators).

In the meantime, the best I can do as an individual is become a conscious consumer of both media and academia. On Netflix, this might look like watching shows by people of color about people of color, like “Master of None” or “How to Get Away with Murder.” At school, this might look like choosing classes that center non-white experiences taught by professors with those experiences, like Jeff Chang’s “Who We Be: Art, Images & Race in Post-Civil Rights America” or Allyson Hobbs’ “Racial Identity in the American Imagination.”

As a collective, we can join our peers at a growing list of universities demanding better institutional representation. It is high time to center the periphery.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madeleinechang ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Home coming and going https://stanforddaily.com/2016/01/13/home-coming-and-going/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/01/13/home-coming-and-going/#respond Thu, 14 Jan 2016 07:59:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1109325 The first few weeks of January on college campuses are full of syllabi, unrusting rusted bike locks, (broken) new year’s resolutions, and three-sentence conversations in dorm hallways and bookstore lines that always begin: “How was your break? How was home?”

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The first few weeks of January on college campuses are full of syllabi, un-rusting rusted bike locks, (broken) New Year’s resolutions, and three-sentence conversations in dorm hallways and bookstore lines that always begin: “How was your break? How was home?”

I usually dig up a stock answer like, “Lots of food and family; good to be back though!” What I want to say is: “Home was home.” Of course, this only means something to me. Home is as big as the map of San Francisco and as small as the chipped paint on the green chair at the kitchen table. Home is a smell, a feeling, a rhythm. More than anything, home is familiar. It never used to need words, because it was common sense — the world around me in which everyone I knew was also living.

The same loss for words arises when trying to describe school to aunts and high school friends over break. “School is school,” I think to myself, knowing they want to hear about classes and parties. But school too, is a smell, a feeling, a rhythm. Now school is familiar, just like home used to be. In fact school is in some ways more familiar than home — no new refrigerators popping up while gone, no old self to reencounter. So perhaps school is home. But then where am I going back to over break? A house where I once lived? Home seems neither here nor there.

Home, according to the dictionary, is “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” It offers the example: “I was nineteen when I left home and went to college.” The dictionary itself defines home in contrast to college. But the reality of college is much blurrier.

First-Generation and/or Low-Income Partnership (FLIP)’s new social media campaign “#PieceOfMyHome” explores this apparently common crisis-of-home. FLIP features a picture and caption students send in showing something “connecting our different​ ideas of ‘home’ and ‘community.’” The email advertisement reads: “Has Stanford been the closest you’ve felt to being ‘home’ or having community? Have you struggled to make Stanford your ‘home’ because it differs so much from the ‘home’ and community you know?” Most of us could answer yes to both.

As FLIP points out, home and community come hand-in-hand. The dictionary would agree that “a family or household” make a home home. If home is about people, how does school measure up?

School is where people know me the most and know me the least. A funny thing happened the other day when my roommate from this year met my roommate from last year. After the requisite small talk, they started narrating my routine and naming my idiosyncrasies to each other as if recapping a funny T.V. show they both watched religiously. “The way she sets alarms at 8:01, 8:02, 8:03, 8:04!” they squealed. I realized then that they know me better than I know me, or at least, they know the things that are so second-nature that I could never articulate them about myself. This, I thought, is home!

And yet, my roommates know very little of my history pre-Stanford, and I too know only the rough outlines of theirs. A school friend just recently told me about her experience with a serious childhood illness—how she considers it a core part of her identity, and how the ordeal crosses her mind almost every day. I asked myself, What kind of friend was I if I didn’t know this massive part of her life? She assured me, preemptively, that most of her friends at school don’t know, not out of neglect, but because it doesn’t usually come up in conversation. “It’s the past,” she added.

Part of building a new home at school is accepting that all of us tenants see only the very tip of a twenty-year history. And part of going back to the places we came from is noticing what we’ve added to that history. Home, for the time being, lies somewhere in between.

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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White girls only https://stanforddaily.com/2015/11/17/white-girls-only/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/11/17/white-girls-only/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2015 07:59:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1107368 It was powerful to witness and take part in this tide of collective consciousness. It was also easy to copy and paste, pat myself on the back, and forget about racial justice in the long term. Now that the news cycle is done with Mizzou, how can we, who declared our allyship last week, outlive the transience of hashtag activism?

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Amidst last week’s protests at Mizzou and Yale, thousands of us college students across the country turned to Facebook to express solidarity. We posted the status:

“To the students of color at Mizzou and Yale, we, student allies at [insert school name], stand with you in solidarity. To those who would threaten your sense of safety, we are watching. ‪#‎ConcernedStudent1950‬ ‪#‎InSolidarityWithMizzou‬

It was powerful to witness and take part in this tide of collective consciousness. It was also easy to copy and paste, pat myself on the back and forget about racial justice in the long term. Now that the news cycle is done with Mizzou, how can we, who declared our allyship last week, outlive the transience of hashtag activism?  

Acting on our social media solidarity, we showed up in person to the Stanford #InSolidaritywithMizzou gathering in White Plaza. We took a photo of the crowd with a poster that read, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” I was proud to see and be part of the 1,000 Stanford students, faculty and staff who supported this message. I also had to face up to my hypocrisy in standing behind the sign: I actively partake in Stanford institutions that are neutral on racial justice. I should not get credit for “standing in solidarity” on Facebook while failing to speak up within groups that despite best intentions, tacitly uphold racist structures.

Nowhere have I been more “neutral” than in Stanford Greek life. Protests at Yale erupted in part because a frat party turned away “dark-skinned students” at the door because they wanted “white girls only.” This rule is already in practice, unspoken, at most Stanford frat parties I’ve attended.

From a bird’s-eye view, my pledge class is white (85 percent). We are 45 women total, with two black members, three half-Asian members and two Indian members. This whiteness exists not necessarily because the sorority is literally turning away people of color but because we started white, which in practice attracts other white people of similar class backgrounds to the exclusion of others. It sounds innocent and understandable: People just want to hang out with people who look like them, so mostly white girls rush and mostly white girls join.

The problem arises when we are overwhelmingly white and doing nothing to address it. If we are complacent in our white homogeneity, then in effect, we are saying “white girls only.” And we as an institution are certainly complacent.

A few weeks ago I filled in for a friend as my sorority’s representative to the Inter-Sorority Council meeting, along with representatives from all seven sororities on campus. I was placed on the Diversity Committee for that meeting. The committee’s director started by saying how important diversity was and that therefore, ISC would kick off the year with an exciting event: a speaker event on the Syrian refugee crisis. When I asked what that had to do with diversity, I was told, “it shows that we in Greek life have a diversity of interests!”

I weighed my reaction for a moment. I could say what I was thinking: “That’s ridiculous! A commitment to ‘diversity’ does not mean a diversity of interests — it means having more than one (token) woman of color in this room, it means not appropriating black culture (see: white girls getting cornrows during spring break), it means reducing sorority dues to include low-income students, to name a few.” But I looked around, and worried I’d sound like an angry woman of color — that what I said would fall on deaf ears (though perhaps I was wrong). So instead I said, in my most measured, palatable tone, “what about racial diversity?” The committee director said that it was too complicated for now and would be taken up in a later quarter. This is all to say what is probably already obvious to many: ISC, which represents Stanford sororities, is not diverse and does not care.

Our “white girls only” attitude has implications beyond the exclusivity of parties and mixers. Fraternities and sororities are as much professional networks as they are social. We give each other internship leads during school and hiring preferences once we graduate. Closing off these opportunities and corollary social mobility to students of color is not just “neutral” but harmful.

Many of us as individuals have declared our solidarity with students of color at Mizzou and Yale. But to really mean it we must be willing to examine the institutions we hold most dearly whose operating principles are in opposition to the demands of our allies. These institutions must do better. If they cannot, we should ask ourselves why they exist at all.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Saving the city from ourselves https://stanforddaily.com/2015/11/11/saving-the-city-from-ourselves/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/11/11/saving-the-city-from-ourselves/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2015 07:59:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1106820 San Francisco’s municipal election last week was a victory for developers and the gentrification they facilitate. As a good liberal, I oppose gentrification’s dislocation of low-income residents, who are disproportionately people of color. As a Stanford student who loves the Bay Area, I will hopefully use my degree to get a good job and will then want to live in a hip neighborhood that once belonged to deeper-rooted residents. In other words, I will be a gentrifier. Can gentrifiers earnestly oppose gentrification?

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San Francisco’s municipal election last week was a victory for developers and the gentrification they facilitate. As a good liberal, I oppose gentrification’s dislocation of low-income residents, who are disproportionately people of color. As a Stanford student who loves the Bay Area, I will hopefully use my degree to get a good job and will then want to live in a hip neighborhood that once belonged to deeper-rooted residents. In other words, I will be a gentrifier. Can gentrifiers earnestly oppose gentrification?

I conveniently avoided this quandary because I forgot to vote in the election. My absentee ballot is sitting under a pile of notebooks and binders somewhere in my room, unopened and awaiting its fate in the recycling bin. I had midterms!

While I was studying (procrastinating), San Francisco voted no on two important measures meant to curb the city’s affordable housing crisis: Proposition I proposed a moratorium on luxury apartment construction in the Mission district and Proposition F proposed restrictions on short-term apartment rentals, which was meant to limit Airbnb’s takeover of the city’s living space. Both were rejected by record-low voter turnout.

I came across an article that perfectly sums up my and many of my peers’ position: “Hates gentrification in theory, loves artisanal donuts in practice.” Computer science is the most popular major at Stanford and 90 percent of undergraduates will have taken CS during their time here. We are training to become the techies we decry. We will ride the very Google buses we scorn. We will earn tech-industry salaries and be able to afford $3,000 a month for a one bedroom, evicting the very people we claim to support. We are the bad guys with the gall to say we care.

But at the same time, we as individuals are not bad guys. We happen to be living in the time and place where tech companies reign supreme. We have worked hard in the system available to us, and just want to have good jobs and live in cool places. But so do the people already living in San Francisco. And so did the people living there before they did. Wasn’t everyone a gentrifier at some point?

This moment’s gentrifiers seem worse than previous incarnations because they (we) want to live in the city and work outside of it. In previous generations, the upwardly mobile lived outside of the city and worked in it. This white flight from urban centers did not displace lower-income urban residents of color, as today’s gentrification does. It did, however, create huge urban-suburban segregation and school system inequity, and it deepened urban poverty.

Today, due to massive rent increases, San Francisco’s black and Latino populations are being forced to move to suburbia. Between 1970 and 2010 (most recent census data), San Francisco’s black population fell from 13.4 percent to 6.1 percent of the total population (and meanwhile constitutes 56 percent of San Francisco’s current jail population). According to a January 2012 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco report, the number of poor blacks living in urban neighborhoods decreased by 11 percent while the number of poor blacks in the suburbs increased by 20 percent. This suburban forced migration to places like Antioch, Stockton and Vallejo distances formerly urban residents from sources of employment, which increases commute time (and gas and opportunity cost), which further entrenches those displaced into poverty.

The fact that this cycle of capitalism-driven gentrification may exist beyond any of our individual control does not absolve us of personal responsibility. How can we be the most responsible pawns possible? Or, how can I align my broad notion of racial-socioeconomic justice with my actions, knowing I am part of the problem?

It is hard to avoid giving business to stores and companies that benefit from gentrification. I will still probably eat at the city’s latest bahn-mi (or whatnot) restaurant. I will still use Airbnb when I travel because it’s convenient and cheap. That leaves me with legislative action. City voters did vote to pass Proposition A, which will provide $310 million to build affordable housing units. But, as mentioned, the other two propositions meant to target gentrification’s most direct cause — development — failed. Airbnb spent $8 million to defeat Prop F, while its proponents spent $300,000. Only 30 percent of eligible voters voted. Organized money defeated organized people.

Perhaps our role as gentrifiers against gentrification is to organize some of the money and resources of our institutions in support of those already organizing on this issue (in our effort to affect change, we must not speak louder than those most directly affected by gentrification). At the very least, next time, I will put down my $4 almond milk latte long enough to cast a vote in line with my values, in hopes that good legislation will step in where my ethical gap persists.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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A hollow yes in the era of consent https://stanforddaily.com/2015/11/04/a-hollow-yes-in-the-era-of-consent/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/11/04/a-hollow-yes-in-the-era-of-consent/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2015 07:59:06 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1106340 This practice began earlier this year at EBF’s Wednesday happy hour, with the intent of encouraging a “pro-consent community,” and has since spread to other parties. This was my first time seeing it in action. After defining consent, we were allowed to join the fun inside. A small line had accumulated behind us, and I held back for a minute to watch in happy disbelief as the next group of partygoers recited the pledge. A humble but important cultural shift was occurring in real time.

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On Saturday night two friends and I schlepped up the hill to Synergy for an annual Halloween party. A house resident stopped us at the door and said, “Before entering, please say this statement aloud.” She held up a small whiteboard. We gathered close and read in unison:

Getting consent means asking for and receiving verbal affirmation before engaging in any action that involves someone else’s personal space or belongings. Consent is not a single question but a continued conversation. This means that someone who gives consent can change their mind at any time.

This practice began earlier this year at EBF’s Wednesday happy hour, with the intent of encouraging a “pro-consent community,” and has since spread to other parties. This was my first time seeing it in action. After defining consent, we were allowed to join the fun inside. A small line had accumulated behind us, and I held back for a minute to watch in happy disbelief as the next group of partygoers recited the pledge. A humble but important cultural shift was occurring in real time.

Normally, at university functions of this sort, we hold up our student IDs, push past the student door-person in a drunken haze and make our way to the dance floor without a second thought. Large college parties are often ground-zero for incidents of sexual assault: seemingly taboo-less spaces in which boundaries of sexual respect are regularly transgressed under the perfect storm of loud music, intoxication, no personal space and a pervasive culture of misogyny.

This Halloween party was the first time I have been forced to contend with consent in the setting where it matters most. I realized that up until this point, I have consented in practice, but not in theory. Even when asked, I have said yes and not meant yes. This is troubling because I’ve always assumed I’m in the driver’s seat of my interactions at parties and beyond. After all, as the sticker on my water bottle declares, “OF COURSE I’M A FEMINIST.” Going forward, how can saying yes mean yes at the same time?

Anti-sexual assault student activists have made huge strides towards creating a culture of genuine “yes”es and consent in recent years. Stanford administration has followed suit and learned to speak the language of consent as well (even while egregiously obfuscating the rate of sexual assault). The Dean of Students sent an email to the student body before Full Moon on the Quad, reminding us that “Kissing is NOT required. If you choose to participate, then make sure to get affirmative consent — an uncoerced YES.” During freshman orientation, we are made familiar with California’s “yes means yes” legislation and our rights under Title IX. But acting on this knowledge in the heat of sweaty dance floors has proved a separate challenge.  

This is partially because my hollow yes has been been preconditioned from a time far beyond college’s reach. Looking back, Bar Mitzvah parties were essentially frat parties sans alcohol. It was grinding to T-Pain on the vinyl dance floors in the basements of synagogues, of all places, where I first said yes without knowing how to say no. We considered it a badge of honor if a boy came up from behind and grabbed our hips. This dynamic played out at middle school dances and then at high school dances, and then when I saw it again at frat parties, I knew exactly what to do and how to act — how to deliver an unexamined yes.

Practically speaking, consent is easier said than done because, as a fellow columnist pointed out, “Real-life intimacy rarely matches up with the theory espoused by ‘enthusiastic consent’ in clear-cut ways.” It feels awkward to always be checking in with “Do I have your consent?” and even more awkward still to answer “No.”

Asking that we elicit an “uncoerced yes” is a crucial first step, but so is acknowledging that truly “uncoerced” is a rare find. We may not be coerced by another individual, but we are certainly coerced by our cultural context that valorizes female promiscuity at the expense of personal security. Consent, in this light, is a not an end-goal in and of itself but a benchmark on the way to a culture of sexual respect.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Class endogamy and dating apps https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/27/class-endogamy-and-dating-apps/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/27/class-endogamy-and-dating-apps/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2015 06:59:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1105803 American debutante balls have served to introduce elite women to “society” since the 1950s. The tradition began in 18th century Britain, with the idea of matching young women with suitable husbands. Now, there’s an app for that. It’s called the League. Contrary to the Silicon Valley ethos in which the League was conceived, this app is not “disrupting” but rather reinforcing traditional notions of dating and marriage.

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American debutante balls have served to introduce elite women to “society” since the 1950s. The tradition began in 18th century Britain, with the idea of matching young women with suitable husbands. Now, there’s an app for that. It’s called the League. Contrary to the Silicon Valley ethos in which the League was conceived, this app is not “disrupting” but rather reinforcing traditional notions of dating and marriage.

The League was inspired by Tinder, which revolutionized the world of dating. From the comfort and convenience of the palm, a user can prowl the local singles scene and arrange a date in minutes — while waiting at the bus stop, in a dull moment in lecture or even at a bar itself (attempting to meet people the old-fashioned way). It is populist by nature: Anyone who has Facebook can join, and all you have to represent yourself is your picture, age and general location.

 

Some sought a more “curated” experience. At the end of 2014, Stanford GSB alum Amanda Bradford launched a new app called the League, branding itself “Tinder for elites.” She said of its founding: “I saw all these couples forming as soon as we enrolled [at Stanford]…so people thought, ‘Well, Stanford put their approval on me and Stanford put their approval on you, so we should get together.’ We wanted to mimic that digitally.” As the League tweeted, “If you think of Tinder as an all-you-can-drink bar in Cancun, we are a high-end bar where you can’t wear flip-flops.”

Entrance to the “high-end bar” is determined by an algorithm that scans a potential user’s LinkedIn and Facebook, looking for success, ambition and pedigree. As quoted in the Guardian, Bradford explains: “‘Let’s say you didn’t go to college or you went to college that is not known for being a Tier One establishment, that’s okay. But we are going to be expecting you to have accomplished something in your professional career to compensate for that.’” Only three months after its launch, the League had already accumulated a 75,000-person waitlist.

Luxy, another Tinder spinoff, states their goal a little more bluntly: “With the rise of high-speed digital dating, it’s about time somebody introduced a filter to weed out low-income prospects.”

These apps have caused public outrage. Luxy’s CEO has remained anonymous for fear of violent backlash. The League has faced severe criticism across media outlets, rightly dubbed “a dating app for shallow people who deserve each other” by the New York Post.

Saying what the League and Luxy have said aloud sounds bad, but is this really different than how we already date along class lines? The disgust is well-placed — these apps systematically and unabashedly exclude lower classes. But this is nothing new. It is just, for the first time, coded into an app.

There is a classic Stanford myth that 70 percent of Stanford students marry other Stanford students. It turns out that the rate of Stanford inter-marriage is 15-20 percent, but that is still a significant portion. Those of us who don’t marry our direct peers are highly likely to marry people with similar educational backgrounds. Having attended college, in other words, is one of the greatest determinants of whom we marry. More fundamentally, college puts us in a class position to marry.

This is reflected in broader marriage trends. A New York Times analysis of American marriage study concluded that “rich men are marrying rich women, creating doubly rich households for them and their children. And the poor are staying poor and alone.” Underlying this statistic is the fact that the rich are more likely to marry in general. A different New York Times piece reports: “Among 20- to 49-year-old men in 2013, 56 percent of professional, managerial and technical workers were married, compared with 31 percent of service workers, according to the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau.”

We often imagine marriage as an act of free will — we marry for love, not for money! But the League and its counterparts would suggest otherwise: We date and marry to find other people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Marriage, in that sense, is not an expression of true love but a means to uphold class structure.

 

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Not in my name https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/20/not-in-my-name/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/20/not-in-my-name/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2015 06:59:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1105281 This time, I was at a “Vigil for Recently Murdered Israelis,” an event that refused to acknowledge Palestinian lives lost, excluded mainstream Jewish perspectives on the conflict, and branded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as anti-Semitic. I could not sing about shalom/salaam/peace in good faith at an event that leveraged Jewish identity to legitimize ongoing suffering and violence in Israel-Palestine.

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On Sunday night, I stood in White Plaza and for the first time in my life felt embarrassed to be Jewish. On stage, members of Cardinal for Israel (CFI) led the small crowd assembled below in a Jewish song for peace that goes, “indeed, peace will come upon us” in Hebrew, and then says “peace” in Arabic. I have sung this song countless times: amongst peers at Jewish day school, in my community at synagogue and with friends and mentors at Hillel at Stanford, and have always felt a soaring, perhaps naive, sense of hope. This time was different. This time, I was at a “Vigil for Recently Murdered Israelis,” an event that refused to acknowledge Palestinian lives lost, excluded mainstream Jewish perspectives on the conflict, and branded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as anti-Semitic. I could not sing about shalom/salaam/peace in good faith at an event that leveraged Jewish identity to legitimize ongoing suffering and violence in Israel-Palestine.

Rising tensions in Jerusalem have reignited the Israel-Palestine discussion on campus. Last year saw a fierce debate over Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP)’s proposed divestment bill. The undergraduate senate ultimately voted to pass the resolution calling on Stanford to divest from “corporations identified as complicit in human rights abuses in Israel and Palestine,” as reported by The Daily. It was a largely symbolic victory for SOOP, as the resolution had no effect on Stanford’s investment practices.

A faction of the resolution’s losing side, Coalition for Peace, has since intensified its rhetoric. The resolution’s opposition comprised Hillel at Stanford, prominent Jewish professors and the Stanford Israel Alliance (SIA). SIA has rebranded itself as Cardinal for Israel (CFI) and has adopted a stance that is an affront to campus discourse and the Jewish community.

In terms of campus discourse, this event was troublesome because it ignored the fact that both Palestinians and Israelis have suffered as a result of the same wave of violence. There have been innocent people killed on both sides. Most recently, an Israeli mob mistook a man in Be’er Sheva bus station for a “terrorist” and beat him to death. Failure to condemn this type of violence or even acknowledge that Palestinians have died is deceptive and ethnocentric.

The event also conflated Judaism and Zionism, deeming valid critiques of Israel automatically anti-Semitic. A CFI leader told the crowd: These people were murdered simply because they were Jews. Anyone who says that there was anything else, that they were murdered for any other reason, is “a liar and an anti-Semite.” She added that some of those people were here three days ago.

“Three days ago,” SJP was at White Plaza leading a silent protest of the recent violence. Broadly (and falsely) accusing pro-Palestine activists of anti-Semitism is not only morally reprehensible, but also self-sabotaging because it creates a disjuncture between current Jewish institutional access (in Israel and in the U.S.) and past systematic violence against Jews. How can American Jews claim to be an oppressed minority when we have so much institutional power? Within this gap is an observer’s tendency to then deny past systematic injustices against Jews (and contemporary incidences of anti-Semitism).

In the Jewish community, we have allowed marginal views like those of CFI more airtime than we should. Judaism and Zionism are not one in the same. Though today many American Jews are Zionists, it does not mean we should stay silent when the Israeli government expands settlements, or when members of our own community would like to pretend an occupation is not happening. CFI initially invited other members of the Jewish community to speak at the vigil, but at the last minute wouldn’t let them on stage unless they omitted the word “occupation” from their speech. I witnessed this conversation, and was horrified to watch CFI bury its head in the sand.

Where members of the Jewish community enforce silence, mainstream American politics are filling in. In reference to the current situation in Jerusalem, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years, and now you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing.” A large sector of the Jewish community would agree. We just have not been as vocal for fear we will labeled “self-hating Jews” or terror apologists.

Despite my grievances, I am glad I went to the vigil. It shed light on perspectives that I had not fully considered, and has made me more empathetic to students with intimate connections to the conflict. A freshman spoke movingly about a stabbing taking place near his cousin’s house in Jerusalem, and how he fears for his family’s safety. I only wish he had gotten the opportunity to hear different perspectives as well.

On my way to a meeting earlier that Sunday, I passed a line of posters advertising the vigil. Another student was there reading the posters, shaking his head in disgust, and muttering, “What about the Palestinians?” I inspected the poster that listed only Jewish-Israeli names, and saw no written mention of CFI hosting, but instead a big Stanford “S” and a Jewish star on top of it. By the time I looked up he had biked away. I wanted to chase after him screaming, “Wait! I’m Jewish and they don’t speak for me!” But it was too late. So instead, I am writing it here: Not in my name!

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

An earlier version of this article stated that the Jewish Student Association comprised part of the opposition. The JSA did not take a position on Divestment. The article has been updated to reflect that.

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Asian invasion https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/14/me-kk-asian-invasion/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/14/me-kk-asian-invasion/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2015 16:00:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1104803 A sign on the door of Margaret Jacks Hall (building 460), home to English and Linguistics Departments, reads: “Building access for Stanford business only.” Below, the phrase is translated into Chinese and Korean. I passed by this notice on my way to class the other day and wondered, why single out Chinese and Korean?

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A sign on the door of Margaret Jacks Hall (building 460), home to English and Linguistics Departments, reads: “Building access for Stanford business only.” Below, the phrase is translated into Chinese and Korean. I passed by this notice on my way to class the other day and wondered, why single out Chinese and Korean?

And then I remembered: the tourists. The building faces the Oval, where large tour groups often gather and disperse, selfie-sticks and DSLRs in hand. When I asked the English Department, I was told tourists enter building 460 in search of bathrooms and it has disrupted the departments to the point of posting a sign. Having it written in Chinese and Korean is quite practical, as indeed, the vast majority of non-Stanford-led tours include Chinese and Korean speakers. So I must assume good will on the part of the building staff.

Yet as an Asian American student, I momentarily asked myself if I did not count as “Stanford business” because I could recognize (but sadly, not read) the Korean script. To me, the sign says, “Asians not wanted here.” If I came in tomorrow carrying a Stanford Bookstore shopping bag and using an iPad as a camera (like a classic tourist), would I be turned away because I look like I speak Chinese or Korean?

I was tempted to try. I ran through the scenario in my head: I would come in, be mistaken for a tourist, would whip out my student ID and triumphantly declare, “Ha! I go here!” All I would have gotten is a villainized front desk person just trying to do their job coupled with a festering and familiar indignance crawling up my windpipe struggling to yell, “I am not like those Asian tourists, I belong!” despite my squinty eyes and yellow skin.

My fear of being associated with Asian tourists stems from the way we Stanford students imagine Asian tourists as quintessentially foreign (but not in the trendy way, so I suppose I mean Other). The phrase “Asian tourists” elicits a universal eye roll, and for founded reasons. These tourists are known for invasively peering into classrooms, talking too loud, blocking bike paths and crowding the main quad. Five different articles in this paper attribute this behavior to “Asian tourists.” They make us feel like animals in a zoo — observed, photographed, awed at.

What they don’t know is we see them as the animals — faceless beings travelling in packs, entering buildings meant “for Stanford business only.” When we say “Asian tourists,” we mean “annoying tourists.”

Extreme Chinese economic growth in the past two decades has created a new class of people with enough money to travel but, perhaps, unequipped with traveler’s savvy. As quoted in the New York Times, China’s vice premier Wang Yang addresses the issue: “They make loud noises in public, scratch graffiti on tourist attractions, ignore red lights when crossing the road and spit everywhere.” According to the same article, Chinese tourists spent $8.8 billion in the United States in 2012, and now constitute the “world’s biggest tourism spenders.” This has left us in a situation in which we want Chinese money but not necessarily the people themselves.

Where does that position diasporic brethren? I feel zero connection to China but am often seen as from there, and worry I will be lumped-in with my less “attuned” lookalikes. But perhaps they are not less attuned travelers, just less white travelers. Part of the Stanford attitude towards tourists is the fact that white tourists can blend in, and Asians cannot. You don’t see the sign written in German or in French, though I am sure there are visitors (tourists) from Europe.

A similar phenomenon exists internally on campus: we have many Asian American students but still undervalue Asian culture. One in five Stanford undergraduates are Asian (excluding non-American Asians, who fall under the “international” category). Yet there is only one class this quarter listed under the Asian American Studies department, a class called “Transforming Self and Systems: Crossing Borders of Race, Nation, Gender, Sexuality, and Class,” which as the name would suggest, includes but does not focus on Asian America. We have achieved representation in numbers, but not in academic importance.

This is especially disheartening in the Stanford context because Asians have been in the area since the mid-1800s. Chinese immigrants first arrived to work on our very own Leland Stanford’s Central Pacific Railroad. Stanford built his fortune, in part, by underpaying Chinese workers (60 percent of what Europeans were paid). I bet he never could have imagined his university’s halls full of students who look like his laborers.

Here we are, 178 years since the first Asians arrived on these shores, now comprising 22.6 percent of undergrads, and still being made to feel out of place by the pejorative “Asian” in the phrase “Asian tourists” — not the model minority but the perpetual foreigner.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Ghosts of Internets past: Wrestling with the permanence of the online https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/07/me-kk-ghosts-of-internets-past-wrestling-with-the-permanence-of-online/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/10/07/me-kk-ghosts-of-internets-past-wrestling-with-the-permanence-of-online/#respond Wed, 07 Oct 2015 18:00:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1104417 In the age of “pics or it didn’t happen,” our narratives exist in two parallel spheres: the real life, and the online. The two sometimes converge (#nofilter) and sometimes remain separate (un-tag that unflattering picture please). Unlike the real self, aspects of the online self can be edited, highlighted, and deleted. But memories can also be tweaked and blocked. So to which self do we turn for an accurate version of our personal histories?

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In the age of “pics or it didn’t happen,” our narratives exist in two parallel spheres: the real life, and the online. The two sometimes converge (#nofilter) and sometimes remain separate (un-tag that unflattering picture, please). Unlike the real self, aspects of the online self can be edited, highlighted and deleted. But memories can also be tweaked and blocked. So to which self do we turn for an accurate version of our personal histories?

The other day, my history professor told the class, “all history is revisionist history,” as in: There is no truly objective record of events. When it comes to my online record, I am the guiltiest of revisionists. I have hidden profile pictures from eighth grade taken in the sepia effect on Photo Booth (oy vey, the braces!), edited captions deemed not witty enough, and deleted tweets I wrote before I understood how hashtags worked. In other words, I’ve revised parts of my online history to more cohesively reflect my current tastes and narrative down here in real life. (Is it working?!)

Fortunately, there is a growing sub-genre of acceptable-for-social-media content that celebrates embarrassing histories. Facebook has created a feature called On This Day, which, according to the Facebook help center, automatically “brings you memories to look back on from that particular day in your Facebook history.” If the old picture or status is funny enough, people share it with the rest of their friends. The help center’s next section is an instructional on “How do I share a memory?”

Back in the day, we didn’t need a five-step plan or special prompting. We just recalled a relevant story and then talked about it. But why bother remembering your own personal history when Facebook can do it for you?

Perhaps our online histories reveal more truth than our real memories would allow us to admit. In social media-fueled scandals, Twitter often provides the most solid evidence. New York Congressperson Anthony Weiner infamously tweeted an inappropriate photo of himself to a college student and then lied about it. “Weinergate,” as the media called it, cost the representative his career, and showed the rest of us that when human memory conveniently fails, online history, deleted or not, can remember. Tweets are forever.  

The longevity of online personal history is a shame considering we often say things we don’t mean in the heat of the moment. More dangerously, in the bendy, all-access channels of online forums, blogs and social media, individuals can be unfairly slandered or misrepresented. Among the web’s most deplorable examples is a blog called Canary Mission, which aims to blacklist college activists and close off future job opportunities. Online history, just like real history, can be twisted and misused in the wrong hands — only worse, because even after lawsuits are won and names cleared, the page will always be archived and findable somehow.

This archiving also leaves us with a more limited space to change our views or narratives. As I write this column, for example, I know it will be part of my online personal history forever. I have the immense benefit of authoring that which will be attached to my name (unlike Canary Mission), yet I still worry I will disagree with what I’m writing twenty years down the road and wish I had taken a few deep breaths before hitting “submit.” That, I suppose, is the point of history—to show us how and when we changed. Hopefully I will think differently in 20 years than I do now, and this (and all other forms of social media and Internet activity) will be my witness.

When we tweet, blog and post on Facebook, we gradually plant a dynamic time capsule of our own histories. Its permanence is intimidating but reassuring. When our real-life selves would like to think we’ve always been the way we are, our online selves will remind us: You were once different. We are always changing, and that’s where our consistency lies.

Contact Madeleine Kyung-Hee Chang at madkc95 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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The politicization of learning Arabic https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/30/me-kk-the-politicization-of-learning-arabic/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/30/me-kk-the-politicization-of-learning-arabic/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2015 18:00:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1104015 Why does Stanford require its students to study foreign languages? According to the Stanford Language Center, it’s because “Stanford students need to be able to initiate interactions with persons from other cultures but also to engage with them on issues of mutual concern.”

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Why does Stanford require its students to study foreign languages? According to the Stanford Language Center, it’s because “Stanford students need to be able to initiate interactions with persons from other cultures but also to engage with them on issues of mutual concern.”

It follows then, that most first-year language classes begin with simple interaction phrases such as “my favorite TV show is” and basic cultural information. Chapter one of Stanford’s Spanish textbook Protagonistas teaches “where are you from?” and asks students to identify photos of paella, Salma Hayek and Santiago de Chile. Language, as is said, is a window into culture.

But not all windows are created equal. Chapter one of Stanford’s Arabic textbook al-Kitaab teaches students the phrase “Who wants to work at the United Nations?” In chapter two, students learn “translator, employee” and how to write the names of academic institutes like “Australian National University, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.” Chapter three’s vocabulary list contains “army” and “officer.” Chapter seven: “Who would like to work for the State Department? Why?” Colors didn’t make it in the book. The verb “to think” doesn’t appear until the final chapter.

There are some cultural points woven in — students learn about kebab and “the Arab family,” and individual teachers go above and beyond the textbook to humanize the language. The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies hosts events in Arabic that feature contemporary artists, writers and public intellectuals. But these are extra opportunities. The standard still emphasizes diplomatic and academic competencies. As a student of Arabic myself, I wonder for which “interactions” and “issues of mutual concern” I am prepared. I’m afraid I’ll get to the Middle East and only remember “so, how ’bout them United Nations?” It was our first lesson, after all.

Arabic learning’s political emphasis is not unique to Stanford. Nearly every university in the English-speaking world uses the aforementioned textbook, al-Kitaab — a textbook that responds to American relations with the Middle East.   

Mahmoud al-Batal, one of the textbook’s authors, writes in the Modern Language Journal that “the post-9/11 era represents the Sputnik Moment for Arabic” — that is, an “era of increased national attention to Arabic as a language vital to national interest and security.” During the original Sputnik Moment, American students learning the Russian language became part of the Cold War strategy. Likewise, American students learning Arabic have become a part of the War on Terror.

Arabic language’s “moment” is being funded in a joint effort by the Departments of Defense, State and Education, which have established various federal programs aimed at teaching college students Arabic and other critical languages. The al-Kitaab textbook was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (an independent federal agency). Increased funding has seen increased student enrollment. According to the most recent study of its type from the Modern Language Association, American student enrollment in Arabic increased by 126.5 percent from 2002 to 2006 and then an additional 46.3 percent between 2006 and 2009.

So perhaps the question is not why we study language, but rather, whom and what does language education serve? What gets taught is not agenda-free nor politically neutral. The way we learn Arabic reveals more about our own, American political climate than about Arab culture. I will keep this in mind as I move through my Arabic education and continue to seek opportunities to see Arabic (and by extension, Arabic speakers) beyond chapter two’s “translators” and “employees.” If language is really a window into a culture, we must expand the current frame to see the full picture.

 

Contact Madeleine Chang at madeleinechang ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Am I having fun yet? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/23/am-i-having-fun-yet/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/09/23/am-i-having-fun-yet/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2015 17:00:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1103642 The well-intended emphasis on having a good time, however, sometimes has the opposite effect: a sense of lonesomeness rooted in the worry that you yourself are not having the fun you think you’re supposed to be having.

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The #StanfordExperience teems with official fun. Fun is rally clothes; fun is kissing a random person at Full Moon on the Quad; fun is playing sand volleyball on Wilbur Field; fun is 72 degrees in February. Many of these Farm experiences are indeed fun. And they are central to the Stanford ethos (read: brand), right up there with the palm trees and Silicon Valley. The well-intended emphasis on having a good time, however, sometimes has the opposite effect: a sense of lonesomeness rooted in the worry that you yourself are not having the fun you think you’re supposed to be having. At the start of this new year, I find myself asking: Is everyone faking just a little? Does the standard of official Stanford fun inadvertently create artificial fun?

Nowhere is this official fun more enforced than during New Student Orientation (NSO).

Freshmen spend a week before classes learning all things Stanford, from how to do laundry to Title IX policy. Looped in is a lesson on the culture of Stanford fun.

Around this time last year, I arrived at my freshman dorm, suitcases in hand, and was immediately greeted by a line of smiling, cheering people in tutus and leopard print. They screamed my name as I walked up the ramp. I smiled awkwardly and panicked on the inside — how did they know my name? Why were they dancing? Is that Demi Lovato playing? I would soon learn these were my RAs, dressed in rally (Stanford’s uniform of fun). Indeed it was a warm and cheery welcome, one I so desperately wanted to appreciate. But at the time all I could focus on was that I just wasn’t having the fun they seemed to be having. I’d been on campus all of 10 minutes, and was convinced I was doing Stanford wrong.

The first night of NSO we were told to wear comfortable shoes, and led outside to join a thick procession of jogging freshmen. Together we ran not knowing why or where we were going until we reached the Main Quad. There, the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band assembled and performed in an electric blur of horns, drum beats, high kicks and sequins. Sixteen hundred of us danced and the quad shook beneath our feet. I was hot and wanted to be asleep but swayed my hips anyway and pretended to be into it. And then, magically, I fooled myself into the fun! For a few moments, at least.  

I remember telling people afterwards, “Wow, that was so fun!” and yes; perhaps it was for an interval, but the reality was sweaty, overwhelming and scary. Scarier still was to admit the fear, because after all, it was supposed to fun! The schedule said so!

Top-down fun is reinforced by social media documentation. Big, photographable events beat out the normal, quiet moments because the former live on ad infinitum on Facebook or Instagram. Formal fun becomes a certified memory in the rolodex of experiences called tagged photos. And so we remember the event as more fun than it was, and brag in a socially acceptable way to our sphere: Look, this was so awesome!

I was recently perusing my freshman year Facebook album with my sister and came across an early fall picture of a pool party (with none other than the “Farm Life” Snapchat filter). “Wow, that looks so fun!” she exclaimed. My Facebook memory would agree. There are kids with floaties in the big outdoor pool and it looks like paradise. My real memory recounts coming to the pool party with a friend who left and being alone in the pool amongst groups of strangers, trying to muster the courage to introduce myself while clutching a foam noodle. After complimenting a girl’s swimsuit and forgetting to say my name, I got out and ran to my dorm — in short, a painfully awkward hour immortalized on Facebook as a fun day in the sun.

Social media can re-imagine unejoyable events as enjoyable, a fun façade of sorts which pressures our friends/followers to project fun as well, which makes us seek more fun — a silently upheld agreement to pretend we’re having the best time ever, all the time. The truth is: most people aren’t.

This is all to say: Dear freshman, do not despair if you haven’t had as much fun as you think you everyone else is having! Fun, by definition, is unofficial. Fun is not dressed in extravagant fanfare, nor is it printed in glossy pamphlets. Fun is humble – it prefers to sneak in between the cracks of all the events, games and activities. And fun is not preserved in an impeccably curated Facebook album of freshman year memories. It lives on only in you. It takes a bit of time and willingness to wade through the force-fed cheer and glitter and perhaps requires a bit of faking along the way. Waiting on the other side of NSO and the first few weeks is a not a pot of golden fun but a sense of normalcy with fun and not-so-fun moments mixed-in. Have fun finding your way!

Contact Madeleine Chang at madeleinechang ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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