Rational Action

Two happenings in Lit Hum class today. I will start with some lighter fare:

For whatever reason prof wanted to talk about female orgasms. The subject had some slight relation to a story out of Boccaccio but without a doubt it was unnecessary. So here is the story he told us:

Zeus and Hera were arguing over which was better, the male or female orgasm. They consulted Tiresias, and turned him into a woman so he could experience both. Well, he finds out that it’s better for the girls and that they can do it over and over again. So Tiresias went around telling people this fact, and out of anger Hera struck him blind. (Note: The actual story seems to differ a bit from what he told us)

He then attempted to relate this story back to the lesson, but to be honest it didn’t have much to do with it. I think he just wanted to tell us how much better he thought the female orgasm was.

That was the first happening. Here is the second:

Two kids walked into Lit Hum wearing all black, sat down, and explained that in protest of recent racism on Columbia’s campus that they would not be talking in class today. The first problem? The “racism” consists of:

• An anti-affirmative action bake sale. At the bake sale the participants offered lower prices to blacks and hispanics. I thought it was a funny way of proving a point — they were making an analogue to the university’s admissions policies. It wasn’t just a bunch of white kids doing it, either. Being against affirmative action and being racist are not once and the same. Let’s not forget, many of the supposed benefitters of affirmative action find it degrading. (I say this although I support affirmative action)
• A horrendously offensive comic in the fed. For those of you who don’t know, the fed is supposedly Columbia’s humor publication. Alas, it’s not very funny. I’m not sure anyone really reads it. Yes, the comic was racist. But yes, we expect this crap from the fed. It’s not like the comic was printed in a publication that had any legitimacy.

Racism still exists and I support any effort to point that out. But when you protest, you should be making a sacrifice. For some reason whenever protesting coincides with academics, it lets the protesters avoid their work for a bit. So as a result, by protesting racism in Lit Hum class, the two didn’t have to say a word. At least one of them hasn’t read the texts for ages — so he got off the hook for one class. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just made their announcement about the racism protest at the start of class, then gone on and let the teacher call on them.

Maybe the protest was a big sacrifice. Maybe they missed out on lots of fun stuff by taking part in it. But they told the teacher, effectively, “I shall remain silent for the rest of the class, so don’t call on me.” Is that really protesting, if protesting makes things easier for you? Sigh.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2004 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.