Comments on: A Partial Archive: Swarthmore 2012-2013

By: Nord

Nord — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:58:27 +0000

Great series of posts Tim, makes me not regret skipping the reunion!

Abstract protests and non-actionable demands were the way that students passed the spring when I was there. The IC door has been pissed, pooped, and vomited on when I was there, by a mixture of political actors on “both sides” as well as drunk students who didn’t know the door from the dorm.

Real life is messy. The sexual assualt debate should be messy, because in the real world it is. The few cases I have seen since swarthmore in the real world are messy. One (messy) example – two students consensually having sex, one student asks the other student not to ejaculate in the student. Student does – is that student a) an ass or b) a rapist? What is the best structure to judge that situation, because to the shock and embarrassment of both students, it wasn’t the police…

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:08:26 +0000

Can’t seem to get my full reply to you, sly, due to some weird wordpress automatic censorship (perhaps it didn’t like my use of the phrase “madrasa for fundamentalist liberalism”) but my reason for thinking Swat may be at a critical point is that if it gets a reputation for extremist thinking, only extremists will apply, and it will result in Swarthmore becoming even more homogeneous in thought, which will feedback in a self-reinforcing loop. Right now, I don’t see Swarthmore finding balance, but I hope I’m wrong. And yes, right now I find it hard to take Swarthmore seriously as an educational institution (seems more about indoctrination) but I should’ve added that I feel that way about most places these days.

By: Jonathan Birge

Jonathan Birge — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:53:35 +0000

Karl: I’m not anti-liberal. I’m disappointed in what liberalism has become. Read what you wrote, and consider the fact that you actually insinuated that I condone and perhaps even participate in sexual harassment, and perhaps you’ll understand why. Your ludicrous response is pretty much the kind of response people would get at Swarthmore who dared to go against the current. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you dare to suggest we don’t need a gender studies department, you must hate women. Anyway, I appreciate the help in proving my point. One thing I think we can both agree on is that I didn’t do a very good job of it given my vitriol. But I’m not equivocating our responses. I was talking about an institution. You tried to paint another person with the worst kind of brush simply because I disagreed with you. That’s liberal?

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:05:30 +0000

Let’s take it down a notch, everybody, ok? I think there are plenty of other places for people to really go at each other with hammer and tongs.

By: Karl H

Karl H — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:15:00 +0000

I’m a bit ashamed to think that I share an alms mater with someone like Jonathan, who seems to believe that the straight white man who is criticized for saying and doing ignorant and disrespectful things is truly oppressed by the evil PC thought police.

Your attitude seems right at home in an industry increasingly notorious for sexual harassment, sexual assault and stalking. And you probably hate all those “humorless feminists” who are ruining your “innocent fun.”

Maybe I’ve simply mistaken you for a bitter, backlash-oriented anti-liberal and you’re really a thoughtful, intelligent, broad-minded human being. But if that’s the case you may want to watch how you present yourself.

By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 11 May 2013 20:59:09 +0000

I honestly feel that several of these go to far or fail to actually address the real problems at Swarthmore. In particular, item #2 stood out to me as one likely to have a rather perverse effect. Are ethnic and gender studies valuable? Absolutely. Would their presence as a “core” curriculum at Swat prevent or mitigate any of the incidents that sparked these debates? I would say that’s debatable at best. But adding to the distribution requirements is in itself, likely to have some negative outcomes. Swarthmore is a very demanding school; so demanding, in fact, that many students only manage to complete their course requirements within four years by the skin of their teeth. I’m not especially ashamed to put myself in that category, as I have a number of classmates -all brilliant, talented individuals in their own right- who did not manage to finish in four. For students in this situation, the difference between finishing their degrees over additional semesters, and dropping out of Swarthmore entirely is often a matter of economic background. Adding to the distribution requirements, then, could well have the effect of forcing more students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds out of Swat without completing their degrees.

By: sls

sls — Sat, 11 May 2013 19:39:36 +0000

I think this goes way too far. Swarthmore was ok, is ok, and will remain ok for the foreseeable future. The problems Swarthmore students are grappling with right now are real (even yours, Mr. Birge), but they are incredibly difficult to solve, certainly in the 4 years that most students spend on campus. There is a fundamental and insurmountable tension, which I think you have discussed previously, Tim, but not so much in the current discussion, between the intransigence of the problems, the inertia of large institutions, and the transience of the student body. For better or worse, in a year or two the current activists will graduate and a new cohort will come in with somewhat different concerns and strategies, and some of what’s happening right now will play out all over again. I want to see the college improve itself over time, but I don’t think this basic dynamic is a bad thing. Ideally, though, the students’ experience with activism at Swarthmore leaves them eager to take another shot at changing their world for the better once they get out in the real world.

Hopefully as well (because I don’t disagree with you although I think your conclusion that this makes Swarthmore a “joke” or that it’s suddenly “imploding” after 150 years of serving its students quite well a little far-fetched), the experience at Swarthmore would make people more aware of and eager to engage with marginal(ized) points of view within its own community. Clearly from the event you so aptly describe as “bullshit” this still includes minority and GLBT students at Swarthmore as much as conservative view points. It goes both ways.

By: Jonathan Birge

Jonathan Birge — Sat, 11 May 2013 03:31:10 +0000

Let me tell you something: this was totally predictable, both the problems and the response. And nothing is going to improve. Swarthmore is a joke. It’s pseudo-liberal, the least intellectually honest place I’ve ever been. It’s devolved into one self-aggrandizing caricature of political correctness. There is no true dialogue on campus, just the blunt force of leftist group think that drives the kind of resentment you’re seeing underground, where it comes up in bullshit like people pissing on doors because there is no way to actually have an honest discussion on whether or not the school really needs some bullshit like an “ethnic studies” department, or even what the hell such a course of study would prepare one to do in the world. Such discussions, while they should be fair game in a *truly* liberal environment, are verboten in the little ivory tower on the Crum. Swarthmore is finally imploding, and I’m only surprised it took this long.