In Class/OutClassed

InClass/OutClassed arrives this week @ the Supreme Court:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/sunday-review/the-liberals-against-affirmative-action.html
"elite public and private colleges remain dominated by affluent students. Some colleges probably have more students from the top 2 percent of the income distribution than the bottom 50 percent....Racial discrimination obviously continues to exist. But the disadvantages of class, by most measures, are larger today. A class-based system would be more expensive, forcing colleges to devote some money now spent on buildings and other items to financial aid instead, but it would also arguably be more meritocratic."

...I am hearing echoes, this Sunday morning, of our conversations together 3 semesters ago..

Last Friday (December 9th) I posted an opinion piece on the napkin notes and MTVu discussion that’s been happening in Erdman Dining Hall for the past few weeks. When I wrote it, I knew it would be public – that was part of the assignment for our class. However, I didn’t realize how quickly it would spread to be a topic of discussion. Even as we speak the MTVu situation is growing more and more complicated.

On Wednesday night (December 14th), I spent three hours talking to some friends about gender, class, and different appreciations for body types based on race and culture. I can’t possibly capture everything that was said, but one aspect that I felt was very important to our discussions of objectification and the television was who is criticizing the TV’s presence, and why. 

First off, I would like to commend every person for her insightful, creative, and moving representation of the issues surrounding class and education. The presentations caused me to both reflect on this course and further my thoughts. One thing I thought was neat about the presentations was that the groups were integrated from both classes. The variety of approaches to this assignment reminded me of just how successful and progressive collaborative diversity can be. The diversity of the presentations really amazed me – they showed the many ways we can approach the issue of class, the wide variety of issues surrounding class (it’s not quite as simple as one might think!), the diversity of thought about class, and, most importantly, how every single one of these topics influences and furthers the “class” discussion (no pun intended.) It was also interesting to see how some people were particularly fascinated and influenced by specific authors and their ideas. I feel like understanding what has been written about class and education and either furthering it or arguing against it is one of the most crucial aspects in continuing the discussion within the academic world. I focused paper number eleven on the way in which academic writing restricts access to thoughts and ideas, so I was especially excited to see academia engaged in so many creative ways: further proof that writing is not the only way to share and change thoughts and ideas.

            I was a little frustrated at first when I found out that we were going to meet last Sunday night simply because I didn’t want another thing I had to do during finals week. However, as my group started planning our performance and I heard what some other groups were doing, I stated to get a bit more excited. After seeing everyone on Sunday, I’m glad that we got to meet together one last time. It gave me more closure with this class and a sense of a support network because I know that class issues will come up for me throughout my time here. And while not a lot of my other friends around campus understand their own classism or care about general class issues, it’s really good to know that y’all do. I feel like I could probably turn to any one from this class if I need to talk to someone about a class issue I’m having.

While last night's performances were really touching and funny, we all know that they went far beyond that. They showed our sense of agency to go into the world with the knowledge we've gained and actually make a change--whether that change is simply modifying how we will personally operate in the world or taking our knowledge to a broader audience through teaching, playing games, noticing bias in youtube videos, or rapping. The only thing I hope is that our efforts don't stop just because this class has. I hope we continue to keep what we've learned in our minds far beyond this class and our years at Bryn Mawr. In my group's performance, we didn't get a chance to share what Robin Kelly said, and that is that we can't change the media until we change society; and we cannot change society until we change ourselves. It is only in this sort of cyclical pattern of “making new people” that we can “make new television.”

Wow. Was i amazed? More than. I loved the various presentation formats of all the other groups.  Chandrea has already summarized our group objective. I based my slam/speech whatever it was, on the phrases that stuck with me throughout the class - words i will still remember a year from now.

Scarcity

Time-poor versus money-poor

Rich shame versus poor shame

Room size versus pocket size

class - bridge - divide

The questions at the end were meant to provoke thought, especially the 'Can we really bridge the class divide?'. I asked the question in the hope that our conversation does not end up as 3 months of academic noise and freshman memories, but as something more concrete - that changes the face of class at Bryn Mawr.

This was an extra class in its own right and a unique learning experience for me. The piece on space made me remember the discussion we had on ownership. I remember how i moved from answering that i could claim full ownership of my dorm room to doubting myself, when someone pointed out the issues involved in claiming a space you share?

I noticed that in the creative assignment, some students came out and identified with their class. It was therefore interesting to me when Chandrea said after the performance that she might as well flaunt hers. It was a 'go girl' moment for me.  And for 5 minutes I enjoyed the thrill of changing class with the wheel game. I could go on and on, but there's other stuff to do.

Mfon

For our final performance, we decided to do some slam poetry! We all wrote about different aspects of our E-Sem experiences and from various perspectives. Mfon also did a crossword puzzle about the packing problem. Some other topics included learning about banking education and our own perceptions of our socioeconomic statuses and realizing our responsibilities as Bryn Mawr students to bring up touchy topics like class to campus and make them relevant to our peers. Our poems were personal and allowed us to share what we learned from this E-Sem and how class mattered to us back then and how it will matter to us in the future. I remember discussing the project with my group and all of us being unsure about which area about the broad topic of class we would be writing our poems about. It's a complicated subject!

Last night’s performances were amazing and seeing the different ways that our classmates portrayed what their experiences was so moving.

For our final performance, we went with an activity that was similar to ones that we did in class. We wanted everyone to write down one thing that they still felt uncomfortable talking about even after having this ESem. We decided to keep the students anonymous, since their concern made them uncomfortable. We read the responses and wrote them on the board, so everyone could see what their classmates were still comfortable with. Originally, we wanted to break up into smaller groups and discuss what we saw on the board and some common ideas. Many of the ideas were personal issues that we still faced. Our goal for our performance to convey that even after going through In Class/Outclassed, understanding and learning about class, we all had something we were anxious to discuss. This led us to another idea that the conversation does not stop. We will continue to feel uncomfortable with many issues, but bringing light to these issues and discussing them further, can make a change.

We did not get to read all of the responses because we ran out of time, but in a way that sort of showed us that the conversation is ongoing. We didn’t finish, but maybe it’s because we weren’t meant to finish.  To those of you whose responses were not read, it was an issue with time is anything. But that fact that you wrote your concern down is a step in moving forward and addressing it.