Author Archives: Nisma

The Not-So-Hidden Negative Aspects of Greek Life

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Last Wednesday I attended the café talk by Professor Daniel Schwartz on how to succeed in college. I was most impressed by his criticism of the Greek system, which I believe produces more negative than positive impact on college campuses. Greek life creates an environment of exclusivity that encourages discrimination towards those who do not fit society’s mold of elite, which is why the majority of people involved are white and upper-class. Faternities and sororities have been widely criticized for racially insensitive themed parties in which mostly white students participate in various forms of blackface and brownface. Because of the atmosphere of exclusivity, when new members are admitted they are encouraged to participate in acts of hazing because they want to be accepted by the majority. On college campuses across the nation, including Cornell, we have seen deaths of young students due to hazing in fraternities specifically. Fraternities are also where many cases of sexual assault occur. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted while in college. It was also found that over 90% of sexual assault victims on college campuses don’t report the assault. At one university, of the men who self-reported rape or attempted rape, 63.3% also admitted to committing repeat rapes. In my opinion, the hypermasculinity present in fraternities coupled with a need to fit in and be accepted, create a very dangerous environment for women who enter those spaces. By allowing this to occur, and by not giving victims the needed support, administrators across the country have failed in keeping women safe on college campuses. Despite all the terrible aspects of Greek life, administrators are unwilling to deal with its consequences. This may be because of the potential backlash from alumni or because of the attention from the media that comes with every instance of discrimination, hazing, or sexual assault in the Greek system. One could make the case that fraternities and sororities do philanthropy work and they provide a social group for college students. However, there are many other organizations that do philanthropy work without those negative effects and the need for a safe campus is more important, in my opinion, than maintaining a social network that is rife with discrimination, hazing and sexual assault.

The Steps of Activism

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Last Saturday, I attended the Rose Scholars discussion on activism. I am currently taking a class on social movements so it was interesting to hear people’s responses on the subject. The two points that came up during this discussion that I found particularly interesting were whether social movements are born to die and the role of the government in activism. It’s impossible to keep a social movement going after achieving its major goals because people won’t feel the same level of urgency despite the fact that there are most likely other issues remaining. The Civil Rights movement, for example, was unable to keep up the momentum after achieving key legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Although there were other issues that still needed to be addressed, they were unable to organize effectively around new goals. However, we can see how the movement for black rights has manifested itself throughout the history of America. Although it would be amazing if we could have immediately gone from the abolition of slavery to the treatment of black Americans as full citizens, it takes time for society to change. Today, we see the modern manifestation of this movement through the Black Lives Matter movement. Although movements die, we see the same issues come up decades later because we still live in a very unequal society. The other point was that I think that widespread change has to happen within the political system. During the discussion, there were arguments made against this because the political system is not always effective or fair. However, if a movement succeeds in passing legislation, it grants legitimacy to their cause. If the government then violates this law, one could pursue the issue through the courts. Even though the courts are also not always fair, there would be an extreme backlash and the government would lose legitimacy if it did not follow the laws set forth in its own Constitution.

Student Athletes at Cornell

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Last Wednesday, I attended the café talk by Silviu Tanasoiu who coaches the men’s tennis team here at Cornell. He talked about his experiences both as a player and as a coach and I could see how passionate he was about the sport and about the players on the team. Coach Tanasoiu explained the lengthy recruitment process in which potential athletes are scouted from all across the world, making a very diverse tennis team. In his search to find the very best players, it is also important to find the best people because that shapes what kind of teammate and player the athlete will be. He talked about how he once spent nearly a whole year recruiting a prospective student but in the end decided that this student would not be a good fit for the team because of his attitude towards the sport and those around him. Despite the fact that he was a good player, his attitude would make him a bad fit for the team. I was impressed by how the athletes dealt with balancing their heavy academic workload with their tennis schedule. They have to be extremely dedicated to the sport and to their field of interest to maintain that rigorous schedule. What I took away from this talk was that success comes with hard work and a good attitude. In the future, I will apply what he said about time management to my own life as that’s something I struggle with.

A unifying factor

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Last Wednesday, I attended the talk by Esmeralda on the experience of undocumented immigrants in America. She started by talking about the Dream Act, which allowed undocumented students to pursue an education. The reasoning for the act being that it was not the fault of the children who were brought to America at a young age by their parents and that they did not come by their own will. The act has been criticized for demonizing the parents of those students as well as those who could not get a GED or finish high school but instead entered the labor force. One has to consider the conditions that exist in many Latin American countries that would force someone to immigrate and the role that the U.S. has in creating those conditions. One would also have to consider how much of the labor force is made up of undocumented immigrants who are treated poorly and taken advantage of.

Esmeralda drew comparisons between the immigrant movement and the Civil Rights movement and argued that all minorities have experienced the status of undocumentation to some degree especially through the restriction of citizenship rights. Esmeralda talked about the black man who mailed himself in a box to the North in order to escape racism in the South and how that feeling of being trapped in a box is used frequently in the rhetoric of the undocumented students she spoke with. However, as the daughter of African immigrants, I feel that this is not something I identify with because that legacy is not a part of my history and the discrimination that I may experience could not compare to the hardship undocumented immigrants experience daily in this country.

Change from Within

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Last Wednesday, I attended the Rose-Becker café on technology and sustainability. Professor Blalock talked about the disconnect between the general feeling of wanting to solve issues of climate change and our willingness to act on it. When asked, most people in the room responded that they or their families did not own environmentally-friendly vehicles despite believing in environmental causes. However, it’s difficult for most families to afford buying such expensive vehicles and most would not think to spend that much money up front when they have perfectly working vehicles. Further, the proposed solution of using loans is not a viable option for every family either. I know that my family at least would not be in the position financially to do so.

Professor Blalock also talked about his work in Uganda to bring more environmentally-friendly and safer cooking stoves to rural families. The product had disappeared within 5 years and they were still using the same unsafe cooking stoves. Professor Blalock argued that it is because people are unwilling to change their bad habits that we are unable to create greater environmental change. However, I think that while environmental concerns are important there are more immediate concerns for individuals in rural areas and for the country as a whole. Awareness of environmental concerns will come with technological development but this development has to come from within the community rather than from outsiders from Western countries.

A Changed Perspective

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Last week I saw the movie Creed at Cornell Cinema, which told the story of Adonis Creed, son of the fictional legendary boxer Apollo Creed. Usually I don’t enjoy sports movies, but I really liked Creed and I was impressed by the visual artistry in the movie. The two images that stuck out to me the most was when he was running through the streets of Philadelphia with the neighborhood boys riding their motorcycles behind him. There was a real sense of community there that Adonis had never previously felt and it was a heartwarming scene. The other image was during his fight with “Pretty” Ricky where they repeatedly showed every hit, cut and bruise of the fight. Seeing the blood and spit spurt out of their mouths on a loop was difficult to stomach. While it was a gruesome scene, I was impressed by how they made it so the audience was part of that very intimate environment and how they made it so that the audience could gain no pleasure from the fight. The more the scene dragged on, the more I wanted the fight to be over. I think the visual impact was a huge part of the movie and I appreciated the artistry behind it. However, there were some aspects of the story that were not dealt with which made the ending a bit lacking. The story begins with a young Adonis fighting with another child in a juvenile detention center. Throughout the story, he is described as always itching for a fight and it seems that this is just a hereditary trait, a part of his father that lived within him. However, his anger issues come up outside of the ring as well. When in emotional distress after he learns that Rocky has cancer, Adonis gets into an unnecessary fight at his girlfriend’s show and attacks one of her opening artists. While this violent outburst is attributed to said emotional distress and that was the end of that arc in the story. I felt that there were still issues of hypermasculinity and anger that could have been further unpacked and I would have liked to see that depth in Adonis’s character. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to others but there were some missed opportunities in the characterization of Adonis.

The Inaccessibility of the Environmental Movement

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Last Wednesday I went to the Rose-Becker café lead by Aaron Sachs on Environmentalism and Humor. Sachs said that unlike other activists, environmentalists are unable to incorporate humor into their work, which they take too seriously. This would make it harder for people to find activists relatable and look upon the movement favorably. Sachs showed a series of clips that demonstrated how the general public views the environmentalist movement as serious and pretentious.

In my opinion, the lack of humor within the movement is not what discourages people. The environmentalist movement is not accessible to many people and activists tend to be middle-to-upper class white people. Despite the fact that communities of color experience the effects of climate change the most, this is not the focus of mainstream dialogue. The movement focuses mostly on the fate of the environment and the future effects we will have to live through but does not focus on the immediate issues, which largely affect people of color. One example would be the rise in asthma and heart disease in communities of color due to pollution from coal plants (which are often located in near proximity to communities of color). Beyond the lack of dialogue about the intersection of race and environmentalism, there is also the fact that for people to truly care about an issue, they need to see how it affects their day-to-day lives in the present not how it may affect them in the future. If environmentalists made the aspects of climate change that can be felt today the focus of their message then it would be a more widely accepted movement.

Melancholy: The Internal and the External

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Last Wednesday I attended the Becker-Rose café talk on the nature of melancholy. I thought it was interesting how melancholy and mourning were juxtaposed with mourning defined as a purely emotional experience and melancholy defined as a more intellectualized experience. Melancholy often appears in art and, in my opinion, it often comes off as a kind of romanticized sadness. The representative character of melancholy is usually the tortured, artistic male genius. Sara focused on a passage in Hamlet where there is a confrontation between Gertrude and Hamlet over his continued mourning over his father’s death. She asks why he “seems” sad, due to his mourning garb, and he responds by saying that he does not “seem” sad but he is sad. We do not always trust the outward appearance of Hamlet, but he tells us that his outward appearance is only the smallest manifestation of his inward feelings of grief. This is especially important because throughout the play, there is a lingering question about Hamlet’s honesty as he performs different roles that leave the other characters and the reader questioning his stability.

Sara also showed a scene from the movie, Vertigo, which I have never seen before. We saw the detective spying on a young woman and following her to an art gallery. At the art gallery there are close ups on the flowers she holds in her hands as well as the painting of the woman she is observing. While it seems that we have intruded on her period of mourning, the scene is too interested in appearing pretty and pristine as it focuses on the flower, the painting and the woman’s hairdo. In that moment there is an association of death with femininity and beauty. There is also the fact that the scene does not show the woman’s face. So in addition to being observed without her knowledge, the woman is not even allowed to show her own face or show any emotion indicating mourning. This does not feel like a true emotional moment of mourning but rather the romanticized sadness that I mentioned before. There is no real expression of emotion from this faceless stranger, which seems dehumanizing. Even in death and mourning there are expectations placed on women to be beautiful and they are not granted full autonomy. As we learn later, this woman was actually playing a role in this moment and this scene was part of an elaborate identity scheme. Before this reveal, the main female character experiences the same emotional problems that her supposed grandmother faced. Her grandmother’s tragic death thus becomes a generational or circular story passing down to the another generation of women. She states how she knows that she is going to die and this fatalistic outlook leaves the woman a passive character who simply allows things to happen to her while the man makes all of the decisions. The man in this story is experiencing vertigo due to a traumatic experience on the police force. The vertigo is the physical manifestation of his melancholy, which is cured at the expense of the female protagonist. It is interesting because he is physically unable to look down until his emotional wounds are healed. Even though he experiences melancholy through a physical disadvantage, the cause of his vertigo is emotional. The way in which the outward manifestation and the inward feelings are linked is similar to Hamlet. It is also interesting how the man in the story experiences melancholy through a physical disadvantage while the woman experiences it through art and beauty.

Sara’s overall idea was about how society typically views melancholy and sadness as negative and undesirable but melancholy is actually a natural experience. I think that all human emotion is valid and can have favorable and unfavorable results. To use her example, in various forms of art, people use emotion to express ideas. Some of the greatest works of art have been produced because of a state of melancholy. However, that isn’t to say that melancholy is only good for its production value. Ultimately, I believe it’s best to feel a wide range of emotion because that is how we make meaning out of our thoughts and surroundings.

The Unseen Effects of Foreign Aid

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The documentary Poverty Inc. examines the relationship between the U.S. and other Western nations and the countries experiencing poverty that receive their foreign aid. The documentary criticizes how Western countries have created systems of dependency in which countries such as Haiti are unable to rise out of poverty. For example, rice used to be a luxury item in Haiti. After the U.S. began supplying Haiti with free rice, farmers were forced to sell at cheaper prices until ultimately they had to move inwards towards the city. As more poor people moved into the city, slums were created along the fault line where many earthquakes have occurred. According to the documentary, Western corporations and governments kept African and Carribean countries poor and dependent so that they could exploit workers and resources. There were even instances of white NGO employees receiving the aid that was meant to be helping the people in said disadvantaged countries. One of the men in the documentary, Theodore Dalrymple, admitted to receiving such foreign aid money. The documentary defines poverty as exclusion from networks of exchange. In the African countries mentioned in the documentary, there are entrepreneurs and there are resources but the people lack the connections to sustain their companies. Ultimately what I took away from this documentary was that the core of the problem is a lack of communication. I learned how important it is for Western governments to actually consult with the countries and people they are trying to help rather than to just blindly provide money and resources. Together, they can figure out how to put that aid to good use so the countries can actually work to not only fulfill the immediate needs but create long-lasting effects.

Police Brutality Then and Now

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Last Sunday, I saw the movie Straight Outta Compton at the Cornell Cinema. The movie, which was co-produced by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, tells the origin story of the rappers of N.W.A., their rise to fame and their fall-out.

The movie goes beyond chronicling their many accomplishments as it details their tumultuous lives. For N.W.A. music was intertwined with their own life stories. When a reporter asks why their music “glorifies” gang violence, a young Ice Cube retorts, “our art is a reflection of our reality”. This is a central tenant of the group, who changed the rap scene with their candid expression of Compton city life. The film tackles deep issues such as the police brutality and the AIDS crisis. The movie came out in the midst of a national discussion about race and police brutality. Several times throughout the movie, the footage of LAPD beating Rodney King plays on TV screens which seems eerily similar to today’s media playing footage of the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and other black citizens at the hands of police. The officers charged in the Rodney King case were later acquitted similar to the cases of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice where the court failed to indict the officers involved despite the fact that all these instances were caught on camera. It’s disheartening that so little has changed in the past few decades and that police brutality is a common daily occurrence. The phrase “F—k Tha Police” from Ice Cube’s song, written in response to police harassment, was a rallying cry during the 1992 LA riots and we see it written on walls in the midst of the chaos. In a particularly poignant moment, two members of rival gangs stand united, joining their red and blue bandanas as they stand against the police. This reminded me of a recent moment after the death of Freddie Gray in which rival gang members in Baltimore also came together to protect their communities.

However, for all their talent and all they did to shed light on the realities of police brutality, the rappers of N.W.A. were not without their faults. The film is rife with misogyny and a common criticism of the film was the lack of acknowledgment of the acts of violence and abuse Dr. Dre committed against the women in his life. However, this wasn’t a story about angelic heroic leaders of a civil rights movement but about the real-life stories of flawed human beings with a powerful message to share with the world, a message that still rings true today.