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Topic: You pick the policy

You’re a student living in the world of college.  This is your real world, and this is your practice run at life for four years.  In college, you can feel you can make a real impact, write for the paper, student gov’t., leading various other ogranizations.  You get to play the role of an adult, before graduation in many ways makes you feel like a kid again.  So…what if you took your role as a student seriously, and played the role as if you were an adult.  What about your school do you want to speak out about, something that is urgent to you and your friends, but is not about to change?  What would you like to see, that many others would want to see, but hasn’t been discussed?  It’s your college, your country, are you happy, or are the people running the place not satisfying what you want as a student/citizen of the college world?

Topic: Upcoming article to be run this Wed. in Wash U’s student newspaper, Student Life

An educational crises at Wash U?

            What happens when you realize your passions, and the education you want, lie outside of the classroom, in the experiences of the real world?  What happens when you’re stuck in a class, and there is nothing engaging about the professor, the class, or the other students?  What happens when you’ve been given an assignment, and you can’t justify the need to spend time to do it?  Two of the most-controversial figures in politics today, Geroge W. Bush, and his largest critic, Michael Moore, were both able to achieve their status in society without succeeding in the classroom environment.  Bush received several poor marks in college, and Michael Moore never even went.  While people of influence have struggled with traditional schooling, as a Wash U student, there’s a lot of pressure to succeed in the classroom.

            Not everyone who attends Wash U is an academic.  In fact, many students don’t come to college for the “college education” at all.  That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as most would agree the best education is the one that takes place outside of the classroom.  But, when so much money is spent towards earning a degree, and when the major obligation of a student is still to their academics, something of a conflict arises.  Something conflicts when students who come to Wash U with dreams of being doctors, suddenly decide to study business because of it’s reputation as an easy-way-out.  Something conflicts when students are interested in pursuing activism, but their activities are compromised by the stress of a heavy course load and the pressure to get good grades. Something conflicts when students graduate, and realize that what they learned inside the classroom has hardly prepared them for the real world at all.

            Students may not recognize this now, but after college, the struggles to make the transition into the real world are real, and they are severe.  Many graduates suffer depression, question their identities, or sit on their hands because they’re not quite sure what to do.  Many students have not developed the life skills to stand on their own two feet, and many struggle to find meaningful work.  Abby Wilner, a graduate of Wash U., wrote about these and other problems graduates face in her best-selling book titled, “The Quarterlife Crisis.”  While these problems may seem distant to students, faculty, and administrators inside the college bubble, a Wash U education determines whether or not a graduate leaps into the real world like an Olympic sprinter, or whether they sit slumped in an office chair, wondering what the point of college was all about.

If they look beneath its rankings, its endowment, and the reputation and contributions to  society, Wash U administrators will discover many frustrated, confused, apathetic, and cynical students.  If they interviewed their graduates, they’d find many of the same things.  Wash U. students, faculty, and administrators need to act now to help these students, and to ensure all students are getting the type of education that will aid them after graduation.  The first step to ensuring this, is to get volunteers from all the parties involved to sit down, and discuss some of the problems with the college culture.  Some things to be discussed are how to energize classroom environments, how to build a closer community of teachers and students, the possibility of doing away with grades in favor of a pass/fail format or written evaluations, making study abroad easily accessible for all by allowing students to pay the lower tuition costs of host institutions, encouraging more non-academic activities such as extra-curriculars and internships to be counted for credit, allowing students considerably more flexibility in terms of majors and distributions, and discussing the possible increased role of academic advisors to ensure students aren’t slipping through the cracks.  In general, it will require a great deal of honest self-reflection, and new innovative ideas to improve the overall quality of a Wash U education. 

While the next month will bring excitement for the arrival of Bush versus Kerry, the real discussion that needs to take place, and the discussion that is likely to have the most impact on the preparation of students for the real world, is the discussion on how to improve the educational experience for Wash U’s students.

Dan Lilienthal is the recent author of “College Daze: The Need for Innovative Educational Reform in America’s Colleges and Universities.” He graduated Wash U. in 2003, and will be visiting Wash U this fall.

Dan_Lilienthal@yahoo.com

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Topic: There’s an ongoing conversation from Sun. aug 29th about voting, check it out

Topic: Tasting the fresh air

Today is the first time in months I haven’t thought about what to write in my book.  OK, that’s a lie, I’ve already thought of a few changes and additions I’d like to make.  But for now, I’m waiting till Wednesday, when I’ll have a copy in my hand.  After a quick preview, if it passes my standards, College Daze will 100% be completed. 

So…today, I’ve been daydreaming a lot, thinking back to college with a lot of nostalgia, and ahead to next week when I step foot on my old campus.  I’ve taken a first step by contacting the campus book store, which will be able to hold up to 10 copies of my book, although they will also be holding any profits I make.  However, I will take what I can get.

I’m devising a strategy for marketing my book.  I’ve actually decided to market the opportunity to preview my book, allowing people to read a few pages, and decide for themselves whether or not they want to buy it.  I hope to visit the quad, certain study areas, and dining halls, and place some copies around with a note encouraging people to have a peak.  I’ll be in the area, to make sure my books don’t walk away, and to be visible to people as, “the author.”  I also plan on putting signs up around campus w/ a picture of the cover, to expose people to it and make them hopefully curious when they see the books lying around.  I’m also hoping to get an article published in their student newspaper.

I’m hoping to let the book market itself.  I think that fits my personality, and it serves as an icebreaker versus randoly attacking students, “buy my book, buy my book.”  Get the idea out there first, then let the book follow.

I’ve now been in touch with both the President of Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound, and New York City Outward Bound.  That’s my top candidate for work this winter, and those are my top leads for creating a revolution in the way college and universities operate in America.  In the weeks upcoming I hope to visit some Outward Bound schools to provide you with a better idea of how this organization is transforming how we educate.

The roar was so loud.   I walked out of the subway at 14th st and 7th ave.  This wasn’t a rally, it was an endless parade of bush haters.  i was more there for the sites, than anything, but i got a bit of a buzz being there, i’ll admit.  sure, the practical effects of the march might be absolutely nothing, but, for those there, it did provide home, it provided a sense of community.  you could literally feel how our country is divided.  if your ideas and political views differ, you’re not welcome.  that was the message.  and, being a bush-hater myself, it was nice to be on their side.  we’re rooting for our guy to win, although we know the electoral system of voting has rigged the election to ensure that our president is not decided by the majority, and that every vote does not count (Being a New Yorker, I don’t plan on voting, since the state is going to Kerry regardless.  last time i voted for nader just to give him support, but, like most americans, i can’t even be bothered).

Also…i’m printing my book tom., and if i like what i see when it arrives probably on Thur., then i’m done!

Also, spoke w/ this girl morgan i met while traveling in s. africa, she lives in vancouver, a place i’m hoping to visit on my road trip, and she told me about a possibly bike trip this spring from canada to Brazil! That, my friends, would be the ultimate experience of my life thus far.

-dan

My book is, on one level, an attempt to explain what happened to me.  I realize this as I met an old friend who goes to NYU law school.  I realized that that was the path I was on, the path of being a well-respected professional.  I think what happened was I wasn’t surrounded by the type of people I expected.  Those who were driven to be lawyers, those who constantly engaged in not simple discussions about life and society, as  I love to do, but discussions grounded by learning, by reading many many books, from lectures.  Rather, I became who I was through observation.  And I realize there’s nothing wrong with either side.  I sometimes look down on myself because I’m not very grounded in the real world that I encounter most days, but then I remember that I am full of my own sort of intellegence of the world that has come from traveling, although it doesn’t always translate so well to those who are up to date in the happenings of american affairs.

Anyways…on a lighter note, something which i haven’t been on in a while, my friend and i joked that i need a purpose to my upcoming road trip.  one purpose was the search for the greatest burrito.  i already have austin, tx. , denver, and san diego pegged as good places.  i can’t do best pizza, since i’m from ny and besides chicago, everything else is 3rd best.  i was thinking to make my book promotion into a “happy hour book promotion tour” looking for the best happy hours.  either way, i’m hoping to go into the next 2 months as if i’m writing another book.  i’m not, but the attitude that i had when i was in south africa and every experience was book worthy, made that experience, shall we say, the beez kneez. 

I see hundreds of people on a NY city street, and I think to myself, “ants,” and I think to myself, what if something squashed those ants?  It shouldn’t matter.  Ants die all the day.  People are more interesting than ants though.  In South Africa, I carried a dead ant, and it wasn’t sad, really.  I would be sad if I knew an ant who died.  Otherwise, there’s just so many ants running around.  I have often made the mistake of trying to understand what ants are for.  I have made the mistake of claiming to know what ants are for.  Trying to do that is trying to determine what is real.  We are all fantasy.  We exist as real people, but the lives we live are fictional.  In our fiction, we declare meaning to be good, but that’s just our way of making sense of our fiction.  I don’t think we were meant to have such complex thoughts.  Surely ants don’t.  They just wander about.  Ants are forgotten.  We’ll all be forgotten too, and it’s not sad for real, it’s sad in our fiction.  We walk this fine line between the real and the fiction.  The real that we have created for ourselves is a good form of fiction, an entertaining form, a real where we strive for meaning, for purpose, for happiness, for these things which are not real.  Then, we escape from the fictional real back into the fiction that is our fiction, as i am doing now.  realizing that ugly thoughts are not so ugly when they are not real.  depressing thoughts are as gloomy as a dead ant. 

“[Life] went back, maniacally, to further earlier events in this gnashing huge movie of earth only a piece of which here’s offered by me, long tho is is, how wild can the world be until finally you realize “O well it’s just repeitious anyway”

“it’s like all the mosquitos that had ever lived, the density of the story of the world all of it would be enough to drown the Pacific as many times as you oculd remove a grain of sand from its sandy bed.”

Kerouac, showing us fiction and fantasy within his own reality.  Saying fuck you to punctuation, oh, how that makes ME WaNT to SaY WHeRe have you gon

Why cant we be like Jack anymore? Accepting only our chosen fiction to be our reality.

I’m on my way Jack.  But i’m on my way, i don’t know where i’m going, but i’m on my way.  my inhibitions are dropping, my self-depricating, self-judging, self-esteem killing need to be him who is not me is passing.  i am getting closer to what will be the freedom america won’t tell you.  wandering, how sweet, eating up words in books, and talks with people, and seeing things that once seen will make my mind mis-understood again as it is now, by so many.  advice, i received advice from ilan, ilan from israel who is free, he told me to never listen to anyone who hasn’t experienced the life altering experiences i’ve encountered, i must acknowledge that this fiction that i am allowed to write will not be accepted in the fictional realities of others close to me, but soon i will find those who have written their own stories to mimic how i want mine to be read.

Jack, i can understand you now. i am ready to enter your era, to escape this culture, “when there is nothing to be afraid of, you can leap from the earth,” me, i made that up, yes, i write quotes that can shake the earth, that can be only understood in the moment at which my fingers punch the keys what comes first, my thought or me thinking, are there really 2 me’s, that sub-conscious processing like a computer without my control, freakishly controlling who i am,

push one word after another and see what happens why’d you fix that type-o and you’ll see that the one thing i’m trying to say is really inside me, it’s so bizarre, to type without thinking, what allows us to do this, why can we begin to think of a sentence without knowing the completion of that though

yes, i’m free to the absurd, the non sensical

I’m starting fresh.  I’m newly born.  I’m starting to read again, to escape into different realities.  Just bought “Lonesome Traveler” by Jack Kerouac.  He’ll give me advice and keep me company.  The hardest parts of life are when you’re in between things, like floating between the next bar on a trapeze act.  I hate floating.  I’m homesick for traveling.  I’m mentally prepared to shed a bit of my own culture, to accept poverty, to accept floating about.  I’m no longer thinking past the next 2 months.  i’ll push on w/ the book, but after that, i may just go on holiday. 

it’s weird, writing a book is a full-time unpaid job. it’s not recognized as work, but my mind has been churning for nearly a year now.  soon, it will be over.  soon, i will be on a mental holiday, free to breathe the air of the day without needing to concentrate on anything.  people are free to be anything they want, and to be free to be nobody at the same time. and i’m loooking forward to sitting on a beach in cali, that’s when i’ll know i’ve made it.

Back from temporary loss of mind.  I wouldn’t have the motivation to write if it weren’t for those occassional feelings to do something.  I’m in NYC now, making final edits, visiting my sisters and friends, checking out some protest activities, will hopefully have some pics to post.

i don’t know where that outburst was heading, but i’m just gonna keep adding to my book.  i’m seeing the world in a very perverse way right now, and it has a lot to do w/ the upcoming election. it’s hard to see anything making sense anymore for me. i think i should stop reading the papers and not even watch the election, see if i can go w/out even knowing who wins the election.  why pretend to understand politics when the only places we get our news are questioned for reliability. you know what, school fucked me up, it messed me up real bad to the point that i don’t know what’s up and down.  p.s., this is just random venting, no need to be worried, the real dan will be back tom. w/ some cheesy words of wisdom

I will be patient.  I will be positive.  But, right now I’m angry.  And…the professor who inspired me to write and take action, once said that the first step to bringing about change is to get angry.

Everything is fucked up.  Excuse me, but everything is.  I’m really getting tired of just thinking.  I’m getting tired of wanting to take action.  But what the hell are we doing.  We are too small.  And I know someone has a clever response for why what we are doing by talking about the problems is important.  but right now, i’d say bullshit to that.

Why am I so upset?  Because nothing matters anymore.  Because every book in the god-damn book store is the same thing.  Books trashing Bush, books trashing the trashers.  Yes, there is a book that puts the spin on Michael Moore and exposes him. 

Our country is polarized.  And it’s a joke.  I picked up a book called “Brainwashed” about college education.  I was temporarily excited, until I realized the whole book was about how liberal America’s colleges are, and, in an effort to show the unbalance, the book just bashed liberals, praised conservatives, and his end note was to have conservatives pool their money together to create a balanced university.  Obviously, the bashing goes both way, but it’s always bashing.  I thought the book was a joke, calling for a balanced university.  Nothing is balanced.

And i’ll tell you, i tried to get inside that authors head, i tried to understand the republican arguments, and i found him 100% justified to take cracks at liberals.  It has to go both ways, after all.  But, reading this book made it oh so clear how we have all these ideas ingrained into our minds about what is right and wrong, that we can’t even treat each other as people.

all i know is this election means nothing.  i hope bush wins.  i really do.  a country needs to hit bottom before they can look up.  we haven’t hit bottom.  let pessimism reign.  let another 9/11 happen.  let the rnc get blown up.  how would we react then?  would we cheer or mounr? 

We have the answers to all this.  We have the people who want to question our government.  Their voices are so quiet.  We have intellectuals who can present new perspectives.  Their voices are unheard.  We have history to tell us what’s going on.  We don’t know.  I don’t need reasons for why everything w/ politics and society is so fucked up.  Reasons won’t help right now.  Where is the action?  I’m tired of living in this culture, i love the highs, the lows are shit. 

i want to live on an island, let the world bitch, the them cry.  i want to run away from it all and enjoy a pina colada on the beach.  there is pleanty of beauty and wonder to be seen in the world, pleanty of adventure to be had.  we don’t need to be heroes.  let’s just fuckin’ party.  i’m a prisoner of my own culture sometimes, and i’m ready to get out.

I can’t wait to promote this book.  I’m having a laugh.  Two months for me to play.  Two months for me to travel.  I won’t be a prisoner anymore.  Not the way my friend is who i saw today.  he’s a prisoner of money, but i can’t express that to him.  his a prisoner to his job, and that he knows.  god…this world is so fuckin’ isolated, i’m tired of being at home. tom. i go to the city, i’m gonna go fuckin’ nuts, i can’t wait to see what i can do. i need to meet people, i need to get out, i’ve created a hermit, only home for 2 weeks, it’s too much, i can’t believe i grew up like this.

Topic: A movie that had to be made

THE IMPACT OF “FAHRENHEIT 9/11″

THE BEGINNING OF HISTORY
Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation?

by John Berger / The Guardian
Tuesday August 24, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11 is astounding. Not so much as a film – although it is cunning and moving – but as an event. Most commentators try to dismiss the event and disparage the film. We will see why later.

The artists on the Cannes film festival jury apparently voted unanimously to award Michael Moore’s film the Palme d’Or. Since then it has touched many millions across the world. In the US, its box-office takings for the first six weeks amounted to more than $100m, which is, astoundingly, about half of what Harry Potter made during a comparable period. Only the so-called opinion-makers in the media appear to have been put out by it.

The film, considered as a political act, may be a historical landmark. Yet to have a sense of this, a certain perspective for the future is required. Living only close-up to the latest news, as most opinion-makers do, reduces one’s perspectives. The film is trying to make a small contribution towards the changing of world history. It is a work inspired by hope.

What makes it an event is the fact that it is an effective and independent intervention into immediate world politics. Today it is rare for an artist to succeed in making such an intervention, and in interrupting the prepared, prevaricating statements of politicians. Its immediate aim is to make it less likely that President Bush will be re-elected next November.

To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.

This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to think for themselves and make connections. And it identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter; Michael Moore the former.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events. It’s a tricky question because two very different types of power are involved. Many theories of aesthetics and ethics revolve round this question. For those living under political tyrannies, art has frequently been a form of hidden resistance, and tyrants habitually look for ways to control art. All this, however, is in general terms and over a large terrain. Fahrenheit 9/11 is something different. It has succeeded in intervening in a political programme on the programme’s own ground.

For this to happen a convergence of factors were needed. The Cannes award and the misjudged attempt to prevent the film being distributed played a significant part in creating the event.

To point this out in no way implies that the film as such doesn’t deserve the attention it is receiving. It’s simply to remind ourselves that within the realm of the mass media, a breakthrough (a smashing down of the daily wall of lies and half-truths) is bound to be rare. And it is this rarity which has made the film exemplary. It is setting an example to millions – as if they’d been waiting for it.

The film proposes that the White House and Pentagon were taken over in the first year of the millennium by a gang of thugs so that US power should henceforth serve the global interests of the corporations: a stark scenario which is closer to the truth than most nuanced editorials. Yet more important than the scenario is the way the movie speaks out. It demonstrates that – despite all the manipulative power of communications experts, lying presidential speeches and vapid press conferences – a single independent voice, pointing out certain home truths which countless Americans are already discovering for themselves, can break through the conspiracy of silence, the atmosphere of fear and the solitude of feeling politically impotent.

It’s a movie that speaks of obstinate faraway desires in a period of disillusion. A movie that tells jokes while the band plays the apocalypse. A movie in which millions of Americans recognise themselves and the precise ways in which they are being cheated. A movie about surprises, mostly bad but some good, being discussed together. Fahrenheit 9/11 reminds the spectator that when courage is shared one can fight against the odds.

In more than a thousand cinemas across the country, Michael Moore becomes with this film a people’s tribune. And what do we see? Bush is visibly a political cretin, as ignorant of the world as he is indifferent to it; while the tribune, informed by popular experience, acquires political credibility, not as a politician himself, but as the voice of the anger of a multitude and its will to resist.

There is something else which is astounding. The aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 is to stop Bush fixing the next election as he fixed the last. Its focus is on the totally unjustified war in Iraq. Yet its conclusion is larger than either of these issues. It declares that a political economy which creates colossally increasing wealth surrounded by disastrously increasing poverty, needs – in order to survive – a continual war with some invented foreign enemy to maintain its own internal order and security. It requires ceaseless war.

Thus, 15 years after the fall of communism, a decade after the declared end of history, one of the main theses of Marx’s interpretation of history again becomes a debating point and a possible explanation of the catastrophes being lived.

It is always the poor who make the most sacrifices, Fahrenheit 9/11 announces quietly during its last minutes. For how much longer?

There is no future for any civilisation anywhere in the world today which ignores this question. And this is why the film was made and became what it became. It’s a film that deeply wants America to survive.

Topic: A book that had to be written

I spoke to my friend Drew today.  He just graduated from Wash U., with a major in music.  He had more than his share of words to say about the school.  He transferred from GW to Wash U because of what everyone had told him. “It’s a good school.” Turns out, it wasn’t a good school for him.  The music program there required him to do so many things that he wasn’t interested in doing, and in the end, they ended up not accepting his masters because the music he wrote didn’t fit into the type of music they want him to write.  He was being penalized for his expression, his creativity, his decision to not write music that fits in a little box.

The educational culture there is not one he was fond of.  It was not one I was fond of.  It’s a school, not a politician, and it’s shocking to hear so much negative criticism.  Everywhere I turn, I’m hearing similar comments.

I also met up with my wrestling coach today from high school.  He agreed with me, that students are being forced by high schools to go directly to college.  Students are taking less of the useful classes like woodshop, auto repair, and even business classes that could receive college credit, and instead are being forced into advanced classes.  Everyone is being pushed into advanced classes, he says, because it makes the school look good, which in turn raises property value.  The focus of the school isn’t on developing kids, it’s getting them to pass.  The one highlight for him is project adventure, a program he is a part of that includes team building activities and ropes course work.  “It gets people together that normally wouldn’t be.”

People know how things should be.  The problem is, those in charge, those with power and influence over schools, don’t view their work as a job.  My coach described it best, the principal isn’t an educator, she’s a PR person.  Her job is to make the school look good to those on the outside, at the expense of making it good on the inside.  From the outside, Wash U. is a wonderful school.  Talk to anyone who hasn’t been a student there and they’ll tell you how wonderful Wash U. is.  I’m here to tell you, it’s as ugly on the inside as it is pretty on the outside.  I’m sure many of you know what i mean.

-dan