Sejal Jhawer – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 22 Oct 2018 07:34:45 +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 Sejal Jhawer – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Don’t voluntour https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/19/me-asl-dont-voluntour/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/19/me-asl-dont-voluntour/#respond Fri, 19 Oct 2018 08:00:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1145173 Coming back from the summer, my Instagram feed has been filled with photos of my peers in developing countries, posing with smiling children draped across their arms along with a predictable caption along the lines of: “So thankful for this life-changing experience!” These pictures are posted with a very clear message: I travel while helping […]

The post Don’t voluntour appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Coming back from the summer, my Instagram feed has been filled with photos of my peers in developing countries, posing with smiling children draped across their arms along with a predictable caption along the lines of: “So thankful for this life-changing experience!” These pictures are posted with a very clear message: I travel while helping humanity in my time off. While I applaud charitable efforts, I can’t help but cringe a little bit at the gimmicky-ness of the whole situation and roll my eyes at these well-intentioned humanitarians who have deluded themselves into thinking they’ve truly helped the world in some way.

Voluntourism is the latest fad in which people – typically those who are young, wealthy and from first world nations – travel to a developing country, and then participate in acts of charity work for the duration of their trip. This service might involve visiting various facilities “in need of volunteer help” and helping with other forms of local community development.

The crux of the issue is that voluntourism is a for-profit scheme: Voluntourism is a multi-billion dollar industry. Companies offering volunteering experiences charge prospective customers anywhere from $1,000 – on the lower end – to a whopping $10,000 for a trip that lasts just a few weeks. Where does all this money go? A decent amount is spent on airfare, food and accommodation costs associated with travel abroad – but it’s hard to know how the rest is spent, given the lack of transparency involved in profit-oriented endeavors. Ultimately, most programs enabling voluntourism are designed solely for the benefit and experience of the consumer – that is, the volunteer – and not the locals being “serviced.” It is first and foremost a lucrative, hypocritical endeavor, hypocritical on both the industry and consumers’ parts in that their primary concerns are far from prioritizing humanitarian efforts like a non-profit that truly aims to help impoverished global communities, and are more directed towards the consumers’ experience.

Supporters of volunteering abroad often argue that volunteers are “making a positive difference” in the locals’ lives. This sentiment is too optimistic. Voluntourism produces several unintentional harms to impoverished communities. A revolving door of volunteers often displaces locals from working and being able to sustain their own livelihoods in the long-term. A family’s $10,000+ service trip could probably be better allocated towards financing a local endeavor that recruits local people. Furthermore, many of the short-term “projects” that unskilled volunteers take up – whether it be painting, building, or other similar tasks – are of shoddy quality; they sub-optimally waste precious resources, serving no one but themselves. Another common but misguided volunteering experience (often coordinated without completing background checks on participants) involves going to orphanages or schools and providing “care, affection and love” to destitute children, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as “AIDS Orphan Tourism.” However, studies have found that this form of volunteering produces negative psychological effects in young, vulnerable children, who develop many “short-term attachments.” They grow up accustomed to strangers walking in and out of their lives, ultimately abandoning them. All variations of voluntourism foster a dependence upon external help and generate negative, unintentional side effects. How advanced can a community truly become if it is the target of continuous charity?

The more realistic, consumer-focused argument in favor of voluntourism is that people from wealthier backgrounds who travel to impoverished communities abroad become more aware of global disparities. But it’s unclear what the result of such “awareness” actually is. Many come back from their experiences abroad believing that such service is the best way to meaningfully act on their awareness, and continue to do so in future years without real impact, fulfilling a self-perpetuating cycle.

Voluntourism may instead reinforce negative stereotypes regarding people in developing countries, especially when compounded by the existence of language barriers. Rather than really learning about local people’s abilities and empowering them, the short-natured “jump in, jump out” nature of voluntourism fortifies foreigners’ belief that people in developing countries are unable to support themselves and need outside help. After all, companies offering volunteer abroad opportunities advertise that, “Just one week of your time changes their lives!” This volunteering mindset – whereby people from wealthier nations think they can just jump into a foreign land without knowing the language or dynamics of a local community, and “fix” regional problems – is a modern-day reincarnation of the White Man’s Burden. How much help can you, as an unskilled foreigner, really provide to the local community? The superficial nature of voluntourism fosters a sense of pity towards impoverished people, inflates an underlying notion of first-world superiority, and does not actually do anything meaningful to empower locals in the long-term.  

To some extent, all volunteering is self-oriented: Volunteers want to feel good about themselves. But next time you consider going abroad to do it, be real with yourself about why you’re going. If you’re in it primarily to travel “but also do good,” just travel. Your contributions to the local economy through cultural exchange will be better in the long term for their economic sustainability. If you actually want to volunteer, consider the importance of being local. The funds spent on your trip just in accommodation and airfare alone can be better allocated by donating that money to an already on-ground organization, with skilled volunteers who can actually empower locals. Spend your time instead volunteering somewhere close to you where you won’t face high travel costs, so your funds are being optimally allocated. If you are still set on volunteering abroad, ask yourself whether you’re going for a long enough period of time such that you can receive training, develop meaningful connections with locals and actually have a long-term impact. A few days or weeks probably won’t do anyone much good. If you really want to have an impact, do you really need to “voluntour”?

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at ejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Don’t voluntour appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/19/me-asl-dont-voluntour/feed/ 0 1145173
The harm of distributing lectures online https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/21/the-harm-of-distributing-lectures-online/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/21/the-harm-of-distributing-lectures-online/#respond Mon, 21 May 2018 12:00:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142480 Sejal Jhawer evaluates some of the pitfalls created by making lectures available for students to watch online.

The post The harm of distributing lectures online appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
At the beginning of the quarter, I promised myself that I would attend all my lectures. Which I did manage to do — for about three weeks, until accidentally sleeping in one day. However, in this case missing class wasn’t catastrophic. I simply watched the missed lecture from the comfort of my own bed. The reason I have this luxury? Two of my classes are recorded and posted online by Stanford, for Stanford students only.

With recorded lectures, my stress surrounding class and work time has significantly decreased, as I now have better flexibility and can make my schedule fit around my needs. I don’t feel like I’m missing much either. In large lecture classes, there’s a very low probability that I’d ask the professor questions. In fact, I feel I’m able to learn better by rewinding, slowing down or speeding up the recording as needed.

As I indicated, having online lectures has mostly positively changed the way I go about my daily and weekly schedule. But it has raised many questions for me, as I’m sure it has for other online-lecture viewers. Watching lectures from bed, half lying down in my pajamas, I can’t help but wonder what the majority of my tuition at college is paying for, when I could just as easily watch lectures from back home. And moreover, when I’m confused about the way material is taught in a certain offering of a class, I wonder why Stanford and other universities bother to have sub-par professors give lectures, given the advantages of online lecture videos. Why can’t I just watch a better — no, the best — lecturer in the world teach this subject?  

At initial glance, it seems somewhat arbitrary and artificially contrived that universities still deliver the same content year after year to students, by professors of sub-par and inconsistent quality. From an educational standpoint, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to standardize lecture quality across quarters, by recording a single professor to deliver the material, and providing this same resource to all future students? If universities moved towards an online video distribution system, lecture videos could be standardized to present only the better lecturers within a university.  

In fact, considering how easy it is to distribute online lectures, it would even be plausible for universities to deliver content from lecturers who may be outside the university’s scope. And this would make educational sense too. Students would learn the most if they weren’t restricted to professors employed by the university, but who were deemed the “best” lecturers in the world (where we define “best” lecturer as the person whose explanations of concepts are most understandable and thorough). Why should anyone watch or create videos from sub-par, average or even above-average lecturers, when a single video from the best lecturer will more than suffice? It is entirely plausible, and even likely, that with the increased distribution and adoption of online lecture videos, many universities would assume educational content from the same “best” lecturer or series.

The need for lecturers who are not the best in their domain would disappear, given the equal availability of the single-best lecture. However, although there is an entire economic discussion to be held regarding the occupational displacement that may occur as a result of only hiring the “best” lecturers, this displacement itself isn’t inherently bad; it is the effect of favoring the same, single teacher throughout society that is concerning.  

If students across colleges learn from the same teachers, the single “best,” most-understandable lecturers, society will lack diversity in problem-solving approaches. Think of all the times that you’ve learned about the same concept twice, from different educators (perhaps once from a high school teacher, another time from a tutor or from a college professor). There are a multitude of ways for a single calculus concept to be explained. The particular way in which you are taught doesn’t just greatly affect your understanding of the current topic, or your foundational understanding of future concepts. Most importantly, it shapes the way you approach analogous problems. The real value of education comes not just in the content learned, but also in the way it develops a student’s approach to problem-solving. Hence, largely favoring a select few “best” lecturers over others, the natural outcome of open distribution of online educational videos across colleges reduces educational diversity and how individuals tackle problems — which can have drastic effects for society in the long-term.

Even the search for several alternate, better explanations of a concept to reconcile with a mediocre explanation is a problem-solving strategy that teaches one to take a multi-dimensional approach to understanding. Struggling to immediately fully comprehend something can often lead to an increased understanding through the student’s resulting, simultaneous understanding of multiple, better explanations. If a single “best” conceptual understanding is immediately presented to most students, then they will not have an incentive to seek multiple angles from which to view the problem.

Still, this doesn’t mean we should discourage the benefits of open distribution of online lectures. For one, the search for better answers may not be ideal if the student has no understanding of the concept whatsoever. In many cases, providing the “best” explanation for foundational, remedial purposes outweighs the benefits of encouraging supplementary searches for understanding. The most significant argument for free distribution of online lectures is the transformative impact it would have for people in developing countries, or those who can’t afford to attend college — basically, for the whole subset of people who didn’t already have access to an education. As one would expect, education has the ability to lift people out of poverty, serve as a catalyst for economic growth and lead to development in all aspects of society. Even for the average person who already has access to an education, making more content and resources available online could theoretically only serve to benefit them.

Ultimately, free distribution of online lectures may lead to a society-level lack of diversity of thought and problem-solving approaches, if demand only exists for the single-best lecturer. Even if open distribution of online lecture videos helps the average person to understand a concept better and a certain problem-solving approach, equipping everyone with the same approach to problem-solving is not ideal on a society-wide basis. This does not mean that we shouldn’t strive for open distribution of online educational content, especially in cases where people don’t have access to any education or need it for entirely foundational purposes — here, the immediate gains outweigh the potential long-term risks to society. But, we should be aware of the societal-level risks posed in the long term for open online content distribution.

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at sejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post The harm of distributing lectures online appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/21/the-harm-of-distributing-lectures-online/feed/ 0 1142480
The art of small talk https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/20/the-art-of-small-talk/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/20/the-art-of-small-talk/#respond Fri, 20 Apr 2018 12:00:01 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139685 Sejal Jhawer discusses how rush is really about small talk, a skill that anyone can learn, even though it may cause a little bit of discomfort.

The post The art of small talk appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Over the past few days, I have personally witnessed the stress, anticipation, exhilaration, despair and self-doubt that the sorority rush process exerts over its participants. After being “cut” from a sorority that girls had envisioned themselves in, many began to wallow in self-doubt. While sadness is expected, I’ve heard many girls say that recruitment made them feel “fat,” “ugly” and “unlikable,” amongst other negative characteristics, despite the fact that none of these attributes were true.

 

Many of these girls exhibit the classic signs of cognitive dissonance. While feeling despondent about being cut, they also simultaneously acknowledge that the process is extremely superficial and that they probably didn’t get in because of these superficial elements. They can rationally analyze why they were rejected but still do not feel better.

 

They’re not wrong about rush’s superficiality. How well can two people really get to know each other in the span of a five-minute long conversation? In a hot, sweaty room full of girls flitting back and forth, barely able to hear each other or keep track of each other’s names, creating a more intimate connection is an impressive feat. And because of this, it is inevitable that certain immediate characteristics give those girls who possess them an upper hand in the Greek rush process.  

 

Of these characteristics, there are two that are widely acknowledged as the most advantageous. For one, attractiveness is perceived as correlated with a much higher chance of receiving a bid, especially with certain sororities. And secondly, athletes, or anyone with friends and siblings in a sorority, also have an upper hand in the recruitment process, since members within the organization will be more likely to vouch for them rather than people they’ve only met for a few minutes.

 

While these more superficial aspects are definitely influential to a significant degree, the problem is the misconception associated with them. Girls think that if they don’t get in a sorority, it means they aren’t pretty or aren’t well-connected,and are intrinsically lacking in some way. Because of sororities’ low acceptance rates, many tend to think getting a bid ends up solely being based on whether one possesses these advantages — leading many to enact the mental gymnastics of deeming the process entirely unfair, while simultaneously becoming entrenched in self-doubt.

 

In fact, there is one advantage that is the most important and has the ability to far outweigh all of these. This is what many refer to as “girl flirt” — aka, the art of small talk. Clearly, there are perfectly ordinary girls who get into sororities without any of the aforementioned “assets” — girls who were accepted mostly based on the impressions they were able to make in a few minutes’ time. This is an impressive feat, and I am truly in awe of those who have honed this ability to turn small conversations into standout ones.

 

Being perceptive enough to ascertain whether the other person reciprocates your feelings, reacting to subtle cues, judging how to steer the conversation and remaining not only likable but memorable all within the span of minutes is an art form. By the second day, I found myself very intrigued by the thought of what conversations other girls were having with their “interviewers,” wishing I could see how theirs were proceeding differently than mine.

 

Small talk’s ability to be learned by everyone places it in a non-superficial category. As opposed to attributes like attractiveness or connections, small talk is something you can actively and intentionally work on. Hence, it reflects most upon why you may or may not have ultimately gotten into a sorority compared to other people on a similar playing field and can provide the most insightful information regarding acceptance or rejection in a sometimes arbitrary selection system. The entire process is unfair in that it gives some an undue advantage, but it’s also unfair of many girls to say they had absolutely no control over the situation and blame sororities entirely.

 

Girls should recognize that they are not inherently lacking or that it’s entirely the sororities’ faults if they get cut — they just were unable to bond immediately. This may seem counterintuitive to sororities claiming they just want girls to be themselves. Isn’t the pressure on girls to be good at small talk when they don’t want to be superficial in some sense? However, given the way our society operates, an extrovert bias in time-sensitive situations is just an unfortunate reality that everyone has the ability to overcome.

 

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be yourself, but if it’s not working, there is definitely something to gain if your best self also knows how to small talk. I doubt anyone really likes doing it, but sometimes our “true self” is best demonstrated when we know how to reveal it (even if leveraging this ability isn’t necessarily enjoyable). If small talk helps us obtain the things we truly desire, then it’s a skill worth investing in.

 

Ultimately, the Greek rush process exemplifies just one of the many ways in which our society demonstrates an extrovert bias. While extroverted skills like knowing how to small talk may be unpleasant for many of us and counter to our nature, it is necessary to learn them, at least in part, given their prevalence and ability to aid us in obtaining the things we want.

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at sejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu

 

The post The art of small talk appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/20/the-art-of-small-talk/feed/ 0 1139685
What I learned from almost falling off a cliff https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/18/what-i-learned-from-almost-falling-off-a-cliff/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/18/what-i-learned-from-almost-falling-off-a-cliff/#respond Thu, 18 Jan 2018 11:00:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1135218 Over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, I went to Pinnacles National Park with a few friends. I enjoy mild hiking. I don’t derive any great pleasure from the physical act of hiking itself, but I like being on top of a mountain and taking in the scenery. A 5-mile hike sounded like a great return […]

The post What I learned from almost falling off a cliff appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, I went to Pinnacles National Park with a few friends. I enjoy mild hiking. I don’t derive any great pleasure from the physical act of hiking itself, but I like being on top of a mountain and taking in the scenery. A 5-mile hike sounded like a great return on investment for spectacular views.

When I got in my friends’ car, they decided to inform me that the hike was actually 10 miles total. I found everyone equipped with CamelBaks, water packs and hiking shoes. I had a drawstring bag and a very ill-fitted pair of sneakers. I quickly realized that I was rather underprepared — at least relative to my peer group. But how bad could it be? I decided to take the calculated risk. Worst case, I slowed the group down or turned around.

I don’t know if you’re like me, but usually when I go hiking with my family or friends back home, our hikes are relatively low-stress. A medium-sized hike, sticking to the trail, completing it at a moderate pace. This experience was unusual with this set of friends. They were eager to complete a much longer hike, at a much faster pace than I was used to — but more notably, they loved to climb. I mean, they climbed everything. If there was a tall rock, or ledges hanging off a cliff, or a gulch/ravine/gully, they wanted to climb it — very freestyle. They were always up for the challenge — and coming down after scaling a steep rock was something they didn’t think about until they were already up there. It didn’t matter that there was no safety net. It was cool to be with such a different set of people and have such a different hike.

I like climbing things in general, so I decided to climb most of the things they did, which probably wasn’t the safest option, considering I didn’t have as much climbing experience as the rest of them. But there were multiple times when I legitimately thought I was going to die. In one of my most significant of these experiences, we were in the middle of climbing a ravine on the side of an extremely tall cliff. The uncertainty of this particular situation was exacerbated by the fact that we were freestyling — meaning we didn’t know if there’d be a way to get down, or even a way to climb all the way to the top. There were no safety nets and no directions. I would never have considered the possibility of doing this in a million years if it weren’t for them.

I decided to go with them and climb the gully by telling myself: “Well, if I don’t think I’m going to make it, I’ll just climb back down” — what I’d been telling myself all day. But midway through, I suddenly came across an extremely smooth and steep portion ahead — I could not see any footholds or handholds within my reach that I was mildly confident would support me and my oversized sneakers. I looked below me, thinking maybe this was the time to start going down. I gulped, realizing that we were already very, very high up; somehow, we had already scaled a steep portion of the cliff. Going down seemed like near-certain death for me.

I couldn’t see a way up, and I couldn’t see a way of going down. Paralysis took hold. Everyone says paralysis is supposed to be scary. But in paralysis, I found a disturbing sort of comfort. In staying in my current position, at least I would remain alive, right? I was scared, but comforted by my paralysis. I could stay “paused” like this, forever, until theoretically there was a somewhat better option (maybe someone could tell a park ranger to come get me, or call a helicopter to come pick me up?).

But it’s morbidly deceptive. The danger that I didn’t realize about paralysis is that while it seems like it has a net zero impact (better than the other alternatives), it is actually slowly, incredibly tiring, and there is no such thing as a true “pause” or net zero impact. I was wasting time, and eventually I would get tired. I couldn’t just stay put there forever, waiting for an indefinite amount of time for something better to come along; that wasn’t realistic. What kind of person would I be if I just stood there forever?

In that moment, I realized it was better to just look forward to all that I had to gain — like keeping my life, enjoying nice views at the top and a sense of accomplishment — rather than thinking about what I didn’t want to lose (a.k.a. my life). If I lost it, I lost it. Staying here wasn’t an option — so the only thing to do was take the risk. I forced myself to go on, stepping on what felt like a smooth vertical wall, somehow defying the laws of physics and disregarding the fact that I had absolutely zero trust that I would be supported, and willing my body upwards. Eventually, I did make it to the top, and I’m glad I did.

The thought process of assessing my options and what risks to take in that very precarious moment was an epiphany for me. My new outlook on the dangers of comfortable paralysis, and being risk-averse versus risk-prone, seemed applicable to my entire life. So despite nearly falling to my death a few times, I can honestly say I enjoyed my risky hiking experience — not because of the physical or external aspects, but because of the appreciation I gained for its contributions as a mental exercise and philosophical life framework.

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at sejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post What I learned from almost falling off a cliff appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2018/01/18/what-i-learned-from-almost-falling-off-a-cliff/feed/ 0 1135218
Why glorify drugs in hip-hop? https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/23/why-glorify-drugs-in-hip-hop/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/23/why-glorify-drugs-in-hip-hop/#respond Thu, 23 Nov 2017 11:00:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1133838 When I first heard about Lil Peep’s death, I was very, very shook. Lil Peep?! Of all rappers?! For those who don’t follow the hip-hop scene, Lil Peep was an emerging rapper who brought an emo twist to today’s spectrum of rap — until last week, when he unexpectedly died due to a drug overdose. […]

The post Why glorify drugs in hip-hop? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
When I first heard about Lil Peep’s death, I was very, very shook. Lil Peep?! Of all rappers?!

For those who don’t follow the hip-hop scene, Lil Peep was an emerging rapper who brought an emo twist to today’s spectrum of rap — until last week, when he unexpectedly died due to a drug overdose. Presumably, Lil Peep OD’d on Xanax (although his brother claims that the drugs were laced with some other undetermined substance and that his death was an accident). What’s more is that Lil Peep had uploaded footage to Instagram of himself doing the drugs that killed him just hours before his death.

I wouldn’t particularly consider myself a Lil Peep fan, but such a young rapper, with an upward-facing career and burgeoning fan base, whose life was suddenly cut short — I could not believe the news. This was not something I expected to happen to Lil Peep. It seemed like Lil Peep had so much going for him, and now I would never hear another Lil Peep song again.

Then, I thought through my reaction to the news. I hadn’t been surprised by the fact that Lil Peep died. I was surprised that Lil Peep died.

Lil Peep’s death was something I expected from a more famous rapper — someone already entrenched in rap culture — not someone so new to the industry. After all, don’t the problems with drugs usually come after the fame? My shock arose more from who died, rather than the fact that there was a drug-related death at all in the rap scene — indicative of the deep-rooted problems with the culture.

To anyone who’s had even a mild exposure to rap songs, you’ve probably found the music replete with drug references. In addition to the usual alcohol- or marijuana-related ones, there’s a plethora of allusions to other drugs — “purple drank,” “popping pills,” “milly rock,” etc. At times, it might seem like the mentality of rappers today is that the more drug references they insert, the more fame they will achieve — that somehow, alluding to drugs is a guaranteed pathway to fame. I’ve often questioned how representative this alleged lifestyle is of their reality, and how many of them actually do the drugs they claim to do in their songs.

As someone who loves hip-hop music but does not endorse such behavior, it’s become second nature to skip over the overdone drug references. But while it’s personally easy to brush off these allusions, Lil Peep’s death is a reminder that for many people, including the rappers themselves, these allusions are more than just words — they represent an expectation and a reality of rap culture.

There are many unfortunate consequences of the current relationship between drug and rap culture. The deepest-rooted issue isn’t when in their careers rappers begin doing drugs, or the fact that rappers choose to do them at all (this could be considered a personal choice), or even the fact that they reference drugs in their music (they have a right to do so). All music seeks to share the artist’s truth, and in the case of rap music, if this truth tends to include drugs, perhaps the two can never be disentangled. There might not be anything we can do about the unintentional normalization of drug use.

Instead, the deepest issue arises from when hip-hop culture glorifies drug indulgence for others, to the point where individuals start doing drugs and referencing it for the sake of “having done so” or improving “street cred.” It’s a problem when music culture encourages its constituents to partake in such behavior and continue doing so.

Perhaps Lil Peep isn’t the best example of an emerging rapper who began drugs in order to further his hip-hop fame (Lil Peep has supposedly been indulging in drugs since before he became famous) — but Lil Peep’s brother definitely seems to think the rapper felt some form of pressure to continue with his drug usage, despite feeling happier with where he was in life: “It’s what he made his name on. It’s what his image was in a sense.”

Many rappers have seen Lil Peep’s death as a wake-up call against glorified drug usage and expressed their condolences and regrets via Twitter. One of my personal favorite tweets was by artist Lil B, who posted something out of the norm: “I remember Lil peep telling me he is against the sexual abuse of women and people in the music industry… I will continue to push his vision thank you – Lil B.”

What a great legacy to strive towards. While rappers do traditionally confront meaningful topics in their songs, I’d love to hear more from artists about the less frequently-discussed issues like “the sexual abuse of women and people in the music industry” — things we don’t necessarily think about as much — and move away from drug glorification.

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at sejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Why glorify drugs in hip-hop? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/23/why-glorify-drugs-in-hip-hop/feed/ 0 1133838
Crossing the line well enough https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/02/crossing-the-line-well-enough/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/02/crossing-the-line-well-enough/#respond Thu, 02 Nov 2017 08:00:21 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1132335 Crossing the Line is intended to bring together freshman dorm communities and engage students on a deeper level to learn more about aspects of their peers that may not necessarily come up in everyday conversation. During Crossing the Line, students aggregate on one side of the room, then “cross the line” to the agreement side if […]

The post Crossing the line well enough appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
Crossing the Line is intended to bring together freshman dorm communities and engage students on a deeper level to learn more about aspects of their peers that may not necessarily come up in everyday conversation. During Crossing the Line, students aggregate on one side of the room, then “cross the line” to the agreement side if they agree with the broad, identity-related statements made by the two facilitators. There is no option to abstain from answering the question or to take a middle ground.

Once the program has begun, facilitators lock the doors to the room. No one can enter or exit. The room is silent except for the facilitators’ voices and the quiet shuffling of feet to and from each side. By the third question or so, the room’s atmosphere very visibly shifts in gravity, taking a sudden turn from lighthearted to serious.

Crossing the Line fosters a deeper sense of community by opening students up to their peers’ vulnerabilities. Its salient feature is that by simply moving in a physical space, students can convey a lot of personal information without the pressure of explanation usually associated with such revelations.

But this lack of nuance poses its own problems. Since students do not have the opportunity to immediately explain why they have or haven’t agreed with a statement, they are often seen at face value (somewhat ironically, since Crossing the Line attempts to dispel the myth of surface-level appearances). Underneath a blanket statement, there are subtleties that factor into a student’s assessment of it — backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, identities. Whether subconsciously or consciously, it’s easy for onlookers to make snap assumptions — maybe even judgments — as to what someone’s decision to agree or not says about them. As one student put it, “You can hide behind the ambiguity of each general statement, but this ambiguity leaves room for labeling.” It is the other side’s responsibility to acknowledge that students have a lot more to say about each statement than what’s on the surface, but it’s easy to forget this fact in the fast-paced process.

To the few, visibly uncomfortable people who did not move with the crowd in agreement with the statement “I am a feminist” (or similarly isolating statements): Regardless of our differences in opinion, kudos to you for having the courage to stand alone. I saw you receive many questioning and inadvertently judgmental looks. I’m genuinely curious to hear your perspective, but I’m not sure how to ask you after the fact. As mentioned in the program intro: “What’s said here stays here, what’s learned here leaves here.” The goal of Crossing the Line isn’t to single people out, or to take note of which specific people answered which question in what way — it’s to raise awareness about the diversity of our community.

Similarly, students cannot be boiled down into clear-cut identities. People are much more complicated than that. For some questions, I was unsure how I felt myself — and I definitely wasn’t ready to let others make assumptions about me based on a position I was forced to take under time pressure. My snap decision to move or stay doesn’t accurately reflect my views. I wonder how many people crossed the line solely due to mob mentality — the easier choice?

And what does staying back even mean? Does it mean “I disagree with the statement” or a more neutral “I don’t fully agree?” Even though theoretically we know people are responding differently, it’s inherent that we’ll lean more towards one of these meanings of staying back when attempting to interpret someone else’s position.

The formatting of Crossing the Line felt fundamentally flawed. By placing us all on the “not in agreement” side, choosing to agree with something felt like an active step to take — something risky. A better way to deal with the pressures of “moving to the other side” would have been to have everyone start off in a neutral zone and then filter out to two respective sides. Such a seemingly small logistical aspect subconsciously plays a huge role in your mentality of the status quo, and in how you compare the options available before moving to the side with which you actually identify. This formatting would have better prevented the discomfort associated with hesitating to cross the line, waiting to see if anyone else was also actively also moving to the other side with you.

While there was a discussion circle afterwards, by not allowing for intermediary positions or a sufficient opportunity for students to explain their positions, Crossing the Line in some ways reinforced the myths about surface-level appearances that it attempted to dispel. At best, we can hope that it facilitates an ongoing discussion in dorm communities throughout the rest of the year.

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at sejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Crossing the line well enough appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/11/02/crossing-the-line-well-enough/feed/ 0 1132335
Is your freshman dorm too tight? https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/19/is-your-freshman-dorm-too-tight/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/19/is-your-freshman-dorm-too-tight/#respond Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:00:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1131354 For many Stanford students, the mere mention of NSO immediately elicits multiple flashbacks to MemAud. I remember sitting in the dim auditorium, waiting for the next event to commence, watching freshmen rise in staggered waves to belt out their dorm chants with varying levels of enthusiasm. As the most spirited dorms began to engage in […]

The post Is your freshman dorm too tight? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
For many Stanford students, the mere mention of NSO immediately elicits multiple flashbacks to MemAud. I remember sitting in the dim auditorium, waiting for the next event to commence, watching freshmen rise in staggered waves to belt out their dorm chants with varying levels of enthusiasm.

As the most spirited dorms began to engage in a chant showdown, I overheard several students commenting upon the tribal nature of the entire experience. “Yo, I feel like I’m witnessing a cult right now,” many jokingly remarked. I laughed, amused. The analogy was surprisingly accurate. I was in awe of the sheer amount of energy and group identity in the room – yet I found myself pleasantly surprised by the instant bonds forged around me, created simply by virtue of being part of a freshman dorm.

I have to admit, NSO is extremely well devised on Stanford’s part. As a member of an all-frosh dorm on east campus, with an amazing dorm community and RAs, NSO created an immediate, lasting sense of inclusivity – something I still strongly feel. My dorm has become my home, and I mean that in more than just the “I happen to sleep in this building” sense of the word.

But flash forward to the present. It’s now been four weeks since the class of 2021 set foot on campus; midterms and clubs are almost in full swing. Yet dorm life still plays such an integral role in my social life. No – dorm life completely dominates my social life. I wake up with my dorm, eat meals with my dorm, go to classes with members of my dorm, attend all social events with my dorm and go to bed with my dorm. Basically, I still do everything with my dorm, even though NSO is over. Sound like a bit much?

The idea that my physical location – that my randomly determined proximity to various individuals that comprise my dorm community – has played and will play such an influential role in the next year of my life at Stanford is almost laughable. How different would my Stanford experience be if I had been put in the house just a few feet across from mine? When will I get to meet freshmen who were randomly assigned to dorms on the opposite end of campus?

Don’t get me wrong. I love my dorm family. It’s nice knowing that there are always people nearby there for you. It’s been really refreshing to be able to develop deep, meaningful bonds with people – I always pictured having to “speed date” potential friends in the beginning of college, and the dorm community’s immediate acceptance has allowed us to delve straight past the superficial aspects of friend-making in new environments.

But relatively speaking, my dorm consists of a finite number of individuals in comparison to the rest of the student body. There are so many people left to meet. I should try to extend myself past my immediate vicinity.

Supposedly, through interest-based clubs and other social events, I will be able to meet more members of the diverse Stanford community and develop meaningful relationships with them. Yet the laws of inertia seem to dictate otherwise. It’s just more convenient and easier to develop a relationship with someone who lives down my hall than with someone who lives on the other side of Stanford campus. Statistically speaking, it’s more likely that these repeat interactions, rather than brief, hazy interactions with new people at frat parties, will blossom into meaningful relationships.

There’s really no right solution to my dilemma: How does one create a supportive, active dorm community for freshmen while also encouraging them to branch out and meet others? Is it even possible to say that a dorm qualifies as “too tight”? Theoretically, the answer should be “No, never! One can never create too much of a support system.” It sounds inherently wrong to say that a dorm community is “too close.”

But then I think about how my dorm acts at social events: Sometimes, when we roll through a party, we announce ourselves with our dorm’s chant; we do our dorm’s hand signs every time we see each other; and our conversations center around dorm-related inside jokes. The sense of belonging is solidified day after day. Why would anyone want to branch out of this?

The dangerous aspect of this behavior isn’t that we enjoy each other’s company too much. It’s that this behavior isn’t conducive to meeting non-dorm members. A welcoming safety net created by the dorm community is laudable, but when the safety net becomes too strong, and we have no real need or desire to meet new people – that’s where the danger lies.

I anticipate that as the year progresses, people will start branching out more. Dorm communities will still be close without remaining completely dependent upon one another for socialization. But for now, I can’t help wondering: Is Stanford dorm identity just a little too strong?

 

 

Contact Sejal Jhawer at sejalj ‘at’ stanford.edu.

The post Is your freshman dorm too tight? appeared first on The Stanford Daily.

]]>
https://stanforddaily.com/2017/10/19/is-your-freshman-dorm-too-tight/feed/ 0 1131354