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Greek God Complex

Andrew Tonkovich | May 21, 2013 | Comments 0

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The appalling details of the latest easy outrage from the so-called Greeks matter less, finally, than do the circumstances around which they are considered. Or, alas, not considered. Because sororities and fraternities are anachronistic at best and politically reactionary at worst, the options available to them for misbehavior — racist, sexist, homophobic 21st century versions of panty raids and bathtub races — are the singular options available toward being considered at all. Their tiresome self-perpetuation of a hollow pantomime of themselves is a distraction, finally, from what they are about. And what, exactly, are they about?

A hundred years ago, the future journalist and Nation magazine editor Freda Kirchwey answered the question. A student at Barnard in 1912, she wrote: “The admission must finally come [to realize] that fraternities are reactionary and useless, affording little more than pleasure to those in them, nothing better than excitement to those outside, and by their mere presence preventing the college from its very birthright of democracy.”

So that trying to distinguish the accidental or unintended foolishness of organizations from their purposeful foolishness is challenging. Messing up seems beside the point. But what, finally, is their point?

It is the assertion of a totally manufactured and baseless exclusivity. It is simultaneously the promotion of values that not only ignore the rules and cultural assumptions of democratic striving for community, but which insist that Greeks be allowed to play by different rules.

What characterizes the behaviors of fraternities and sororities 100 years later is that they are still organized largely to distract, to take energy away from urgent social and political engagement, and to reinforce a race to the benign that is realized in the purposeful default promotion of a lame and mocking status quo. More ominously, what defines a system of goofy self-regard, pretend privilege and self-aggrandizement is its contrived elitism.

However hollow and clumsy, the Greek system of self-selection seeks to esteem their community and to undermine our community, and the collective mission of democratic public education. However comical in its aping of real economic and class elites, it does its sincere best to contradict the transformational mission and values of our experiment in higher public education for all.

Which is to say, by way of echoing Kirchwey, that sororities and fraternities are, by design, organized in opposition to participation in democracy.

But what about “service” or charitable work that Greeks perform, of which they so eagerly remind us? It is typically low-risk and always pointedly apolitical, a red herring meant to run interference on the actual malign lack of purpose. And of course, their service can be accomplished independent of their existence.

If you doubt me, consider this singularly ridiculous question. You hear almost nobody ask it because it’s so clearly out of bounds of discussion. I’m happy to ask it. Where do Greeks come down on the urgent social and political issues of the moment: the assault on public education, the longest illegal wars in U.S. history, the struggles of Dream Act students, marriage equality, economic and labor justice?

Crazy, right? The deliberate meaninglessness of Greeks excludes them from even hearing these questions, and from expectations the rest of us might have for engaging them. Again, we are reminded, over and over, of all that

Greeks are not. Easy conclusion? They are a whole lot of not, really, anything at all. And yet it is worse.

Nothingness and meaninglessness as a model of active social self-organization is indeed quite meaningful. How, for instance, to sustain it? After all, somebody else standing there, whole groups of people, watching others do actual work — for example, protesting racism to registering voters — becomes obvious. Solution? Play dress-up, throw parties, prop up big letters, brag about “tradition” and “excellence,” all toward mimicking the behaviors of the business, cultural and political elite which you aim to someday join.

Here’s how Lambda Theta Delta, the transgressor of the predictable moment, responded to the reception of its dumb video: “We want to ensure [sic] everyone that this video does not represent the views of the collective house.”

Beyond the weirdly mischosen verb (they mean “assure,” though the poetry of ensure implies more) this official fraternity statement — repentant, almost hyperbolic in its shame — seems clumsy, and brings attention to my question. Any honest discourse about blackface or the routine expression of misogyny, racism, homophobia and other anti-democratic ideologies needs to ask, finally, not what “the views of the collective house” of fraternities and sororities are not, but what in fact they are. The answer seems the same today as when offered by Kirchwey.

Andrew Tonkovich is a lecturer in the English department, He can be reached at atonkovi@uci.edu.

This Way to the Egress!

My all-time favorite bumper sticker apropos of teaching is, of course, the classic "Oh, no, not another learning experience!"  But it is indeed the experience which is supposed to make me (and you, and all of us) better teachers and, perhaps make the students better, well, whatever it is they are aiming for.  I never know where "better" begins and where foolish co-optation by a doomed system ends, but I seem to have concluded a difficult and, god help me, instructive quarter having learned a few more lessons.  And, as per the mission of this blog, I have accumulated, like cat fur on my favorite sweater, more irony.  It keeps me warm. Meow.

The theme of my most recent ten-week fall research writing course was "Education Politics," based on the class's reading of Diane Ravitch's terrific, urgent, if kind of overwhelming (for students, for everybody) indictment of No Child Left Behind and its mutant offspring: The Death and Life of the Great American School System.  Ravitch, by the way, is obsessed.  Perhaps she feels she's got a lot to make up for, having once played a role in the development of the evil testing-based experiment picked up from the Texans, who like to test children a whole lot when they are not executing more prisoners than any other state in the union. I know, too easy, but there it is.  I subscribed to DR's email notifications, and consistently get a half-dozen a day, and some in the middle of the night.  But I digress. She, it seems, does not!

The especially ironic, perhaps even cruelly ironic part is that because there is just no way, despite my efforts, that at least a quarter (or even half) of my students can actually write a genuinely "passing"  final essay, I myself adopted a test-based pedagogical tool toward helping things along.  An exit exam, albeit the world's easiest.  I mean, it's open book, and includes references to lecture notes, readings, like that.  There's a short proofreading and editing section.  Did I mention that it's easy?  No, I don't feel good about this.  I feel just great about it!  It answers, with GPS-precise pedagogical ambition, laser-guided optimism and sharp political analysis, that question above about where to begin, where to end, and how to make sure that, indeed, process is understood as much as product.

Granted, I have struggled to talk myself - slowly, reluctantly - into this pedagogical feint, but persuading the instructor (me) is, after all, a skill I aim to teach my students so it strikes me as yet another perfectly perfect (and ironic) measure of just how nifty and malleable is the whole premise and practice of teaching.

My students want to "succeed."  They can, if they show me that they know what, at least, I tried to teach them.  And I can integrate this variety of, yes, self-critique (not a nasty ole test) into their final essay grade. Indeed, the World's Easiest Exit Exam provides me the assurance I need that the students, if they were given a real chance to do well in this demanding class (adequate preparation, civic literacy, reading and comprehension skills, more time) they would.  Make that, they will.  Because, when they get to the required upper-division writing class, they will at least remember the answers to my dumb quiz.  So, yes, this is a developmental, cumulative, building blocks approach.  Which makes me perhaps a blockhead.

Finally, the best part of the exit exam is that it assures students that they have indeed learned something about writing, not to mention civic literacy and being a student.  At least, they have a document which says so.  And in teaching a required composition class which nobody really wants to take, it seems to me that you should get something - and give something - that you can take with you, documenting your learning (and teaching) experience.  I'd prefer to pretend that my largely remedial work would produce A papers and politically acculturated students. I'd prefer that No Child wasn't law.  I'd prefer that we fully funded education. I'd prefer not to give grades at all.  Yikes, I'm starting to sound like Bartleby the Teacher.  Except that I am mostly saying yes, not no.

The Revolution is Just a T-shirt Away by Red Emma

It doesn't take much to please Red Emma.  Walking to the excellent talk today by labor rights & education journalist Liza Featherstone (Students Against Sweatshops), I saw coming my way a young woman student wearing a green "Stop Blackwater" t-shirt and got so very excited.  Of course, Blackwater is the mercenary army outfit run by a crook named Erik Prince. It thrived under Bush.  You will recall Prince and his paid killers (some were murdered on a bridge in Iraq, remember? - when they were not murdering civilians in Baghdad) from the excellent investigative reporting done by my hero, another terrific activist-journalist, Jeremy Scahill.

In fact, Scahill wrote a book (I read it) called Blackwater:  The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books.  As it happens, Featherstone, who is lovely and charming and funny, writes for The Nation magazine, so you can see I was also having a Happy Nation Day.  Or thought I was.

I stopped the young student to congratulate her on her t-shirt, a bright green deal exactly the same as the ones pictured above, at a San Diego-area protest against expansion of the professional Blackwater killer corps/corp. to northern SD county, as I recall, beyond its main "training" facility in North Carolina.  In fact, that's Scahill, above, doing his righteous piece in front of cameras and other protesters.

"Your t-shirt," I exclaimed.  "You were involved in the anti-Blackwater protests?"  Damn, I was happy. I thought we'd talk, and I would make a new friend, a comrade.  It could happen!  But, alas, she responded with "I don't know.  I'm just wearing this," and scurried away from me, clearly spooked by the friendly weirdo who is Red.  Possibly the saddest two sentence I had heard in a while, hers.

Call me a kook, but if somebody had shown some interest in the slogan on your shirt and you didn't seem to know what it meant, wouldn't you at least ask them about it?  If she had, I could have told her that Prince's outfit had changed its name - classic corporate PR move - and LOST the campaign to install itself in San Diego. Hoorah!  That it had been investigated for criminal action in Iraq and New Orleans, avoided prosecution, changed its name to "Xe," then changed its name again, to the smart-sounding "Academi." I wonder if they include this photo in their recruitment brochures, of a dead Academic:

And I wonder if somebody would wear that on their shirt, and why. Why not?  Why anything?

Of course, I am a wise guy who is puzzled by students wearing corporate logos on their chests, and always make a point of inquiring if they are perhaps stockholders or on the company's board of directors, or somehow benefit from their association by way of being a human billboard for commerce.  Sigh.  I wish more students would ask me about my own terrific t-shirts, including my current favorite, this one with the "Free Bradley Manning" slogan and image of the Army whistle blower and hero who is rotting in jail.  But that's just me.

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Hold the Presses - Red Emma Goes Positive!

Red enjoys (well, not exactly) making the rounds at UC Irvine, as it were, on Ring Road (round, get it?) during O-week, when everybody from the most excellent CalPIRG chapter to the Armenian Students to the vegans to twelve different flavors of Korean Christian evangelical church solicit your interest and membership.  

I lost count after twelve evangelical youth outfits. There were more.  Jesus loves all of them, it seems. He's like that.  I'm not.  I stopped to chat with the hipster kids from KUCI Radio and to sign up, whether I was supposed to or not, on the New University email list.  (I wrote for the paper as a grad student, and read it faithfully.  Not as in faith, as in Jesus, no.) As a result, I now get weekly communications from the Opinion page editor.  Despite some excellent pieces this week, next week's suggested topics were,, disappointingly, back to what passes for Normal. I kid you not:  General Patraeus, Space Debris, Thanksgiving, PMS and the Voting Rights Act.  This, with all the possible further editorials and commentaries you'd imagine on, say, the UC and Prop 30, student activism and student voter turnout, future fee hikes, protests by the UAW and Radical Students, like that.  

Beyond the obvious and childish J-school mimicry of some long-dead Parade magazine-style of nutty grab-baggery (Chelsea and Bill Clinton's vegan yoga weight loss recipes!) the whole concept of undergrads who appear to duplicate the sad, dead paradigm of this kind of commercial journalism is funny because, of course, nobody reads the old-school paper and, alas, nobody reads the school paper either (except, ironically, Yours Redly, who still believes - sigh).  Why?  Why not?  Why funny?  Partly because if, say, you wanted an analysis of the consequences or meaning or implications of Patraeus's resignation, you wouldn't go to the school newspaper, would you?  No.

But, instead of complaining, Red Emma trudged, reluctantly, up the high road, and wrote a sunny and affirming (and short) thought piece, and emailed it this morning.  Let's see if they run it, shall we?  Meanwhile,  pretend you are opening next Tuesday's edition of the New University Opinion section, with my byline and a clever headline.  Here goes nothing: 

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

For six weeks I stood on Ring Road near the flag poles, handing out literature against the odious Proposition 32 and supporting Prop 30.  I endured grimaces and taunts, was ignored by students wearing buds in their ears, received polite smiles from non-English speakers and, yes, was thanked by many who wanted to read what I described as the position of UC Irvine teachers, which is to say Librarians and Lecturers represented by my union, the University Council-American Federation of Teachers.

One fellow instructor asked me what I was doing out there.  As if it wasn’t obvious.

Here, then, like my volunteer outreach work - unsolicited – a post-election analysis.  First, it was (mostly) nice to meet you all.  Even the young sorority women wearing their weird “Amerika” (sic) t-shirts, and the young men who screamed at me, smugly, that they’d voted the opposite.

Second, we won.  Big-time.  (Hear that, angry dudes?)  The voters of California saved, temporarily, public education and crushed the cynical and super-millionaire funded anti-democratic effort to destroy a key privilege of democratic trade unionism.

But here’s the real takeaway, at least for this activist teacher.  I stood out there, and mostly enjoyed it, for only a total of ten hours.  Only ten hours, total.  I still taught my classes, graded papers, drove my kid to school, and otherwise lived a full, rich life.  It was, to be honest, the very least I could do.  Just ten hours to help win a campaign or two and re-elect a president.  And it was less, much less, than the excellent collective work done by the Associated Students, whose volunteers registered something like two thousand UC Irvine students!

So, maybe we did a lot, by way of doing very little.  The absolute minimum required for participation in the flawed, sometimes annoying democratic electoral process involved registering voters, handing out literature, talking to our community.  Granted, we had to compete with other “outreach efforts,” some frankly anti-democratic:  religious proselytizers, merciless boba and cupcake hucksters, coupon peddlers, come-on artists.  You haven’t lived, friends, until you’ve stood for two hours on a Wednesday mid-day and watched the campus go by.  And, no, you have not been an engaged citizen until you have jumped in and asked it to stop, please, to listen, read, and talk about the most important if easy way to change the world.

Me?  I wish we had more of that, a lot more.  I wish we had elections every month, if only to remind me (you, us) of how good and bad and, finally, good things are – or could be - and how little it takes to be a part of them.  

The author is president of UC-AFT Local 2226 and teaches Composition.

Introducing Squintilian - on Tropes & Schemes

Editor's note:  It is with delight and all kinds of pedagogical excitement that we introduce contributor Squintilian.  For those rusty on their rhetoric, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c.35-c.100) - Quintilian - authored the seminal Institutio Oratoria when he was not, as our own cheerful local teacher and rhetorician, grading student papers.

     How many writing teachers have set their students loose on the world to find examples of creatively used language?  But why ask student readers to hunt for powerful sentences or apt word choice in the works of professional writers, when their own texts lie before them, untapped resources in the quest for variety and unusual language effects?

               I propose a modest project of mining student work for those tropes and schemes that composition teachers so love. We start this morning with the powerful figure "antistrophe" with two examples from a local 10th grade honors English class.  The literate reader will no doubt guess which bedrock text of 20th century American literature informed these students' writing muse.

               Our first writer succinctly combines antistrophe with the ever-popular figure of personification: "They were asked the same question which asked if they were a witch."

               And perhaps more elegant because of its simplicity and symmetry: "In addition to many people being hung, many people were also hung." 

               Enough for now. In the words of another of my students, "The people blamed everyone and soon came to an end."

Welcome to Amerika, Little Sister! By Red Emma

I like to recommend to my undergrads, provocatively yet gently, two experiences which all Americans should have:  time in jail and time spent outside, petitioning or pamphleteering their fellow inmates, err, citizens.  This modest civic “to do list” and all-purpose manifesto of course elicits gasps and nervous giggles, but the more clever kids get it.  For the others, I ask, “Do you imagine that your perspective on our democracy would be the same, or different after a couple of nights in the hoosegow?  And by the way, how many of you have actually ever stood, as I have done lately, trying to register to vote, persuade, communicate or even make eye contact with the students, faculty, staff walking, riding, jogging by out in between the Langson Library and the flag pole at UC Irvine?”

I admit it’s a long, complicated interrogative so maybe that’s why nobody says anything.  The answer is none, of course, despite the twelve years of public (sometimes private) education, thousands of hours of television, countless other civic events, functions, pastimes, hobbies (sports, religion, online virtual events) which have subordinated a view of participation in our Republic to a kind of embarrassing and archaic variety of odd performance art or a homeless guy begging for change.  So that, yes, it is difficult to know where to start in telling the following anecdote about history, resonance, political awareness, whatever (as they say).  But consider me begun. 

Indeed, last week I myself was out there distributing helpful “Yes on 30/No on 32” literature to whoever would take it when, in and among the between-classes break crowd there marched a trio of young women adorned in matching tee shirts, each comely coed emblazoned in red, white and blue stylized eagles or some other forgettable and or boring patriotic icon.  It doesn’t matter.  Clearly it didn’t to them.  Because captioning the flag or the bird image was the name of our country, I mean continent, with the letter “E” substituted with the Greek sigma and the letter C replaced with, I kid you not, the letter kappa, to read AMERIKA.

Now, it is easy to go on and on about what students don’t know - which is, to be fair, one of the goals of this blog.  (Not that I believe in being fair.)  But the more depressing good fun here is that nobody pointed out or challenged or laughed outright.  Nobody referenced the Franz Kafka novel or the Ku Klux Klan’s usage of that spelling in its early and always nefarious membership outreach efforts or, if you prefer, pledge week.  In the never-completed Kafka book, said to contain some of his funniest writing, the Statue of Liberty holds a sword, a clear political attack on US imperialism, if you go in for that kind of thing.  Clarity, I mean.  In the days of grassroots and revolutionary anti-war organizing, the reliably hyperbolic Yippies and other Lefties, when not running a pig for president, provocatively spelled the nation’s last name as if they, we were living in the Third Reich.  Unsubtle, but there you go.  Finally, I have myself seen anti-racist publications representing the shared critiques of both white Trotskyite and Black Nationalist constituents use that spelling.

But, because the so-called Greeks, solipsistic and ahistorical and politically reactionary – wow, a three-fer! - don’t know any of this, or care to, it was up to me to notice out there under the olive trees on a Wednesday afternoon in Orange County.  I couldn’t summon the energy or meanness to ask the young women what they were thinkin', but the moment recalled the work of a fraternity a couple of years back which expropriated the People Crossing the Freeway sign near the Mexico border for their own bizarre and clueless appeal to chauvinism and insularity.  I commented on a poor dumb kid’s shirt in class and asked, gently, if he imagined that it might be possible that other students, staff or even, say a teacher, might choose to take offense at his organization’s darkly clumsy if not perhaps intentional diminishment of other human beings’ political and economic and personal hardships.

No, he couldn’t imagine.  Of course, he didn’t understand what he had on his chest, but likely appreciated that he was now in some kind of awkward situation.  After fifteen seconds of gruesome silence, a sweet, smart little Chicana in the front row said that yes, indeed, she herself took offense.  I asked her if she cared to explain.  It turned out she did.  Care, and explain, too.  Frat boy never wore the shirt again, though of course he didn’t immediately resign the fraternity either, which is what I would have recommended had he asked Red Emma.