the Sam Jackson College Experience

Although the Yale College Council is not very much known for agitation or excitement, it has led to the development of some pretty good policies over the years, and in between my failed bids for elected student office I like to keep tabs on what its committees are working on. There was just released a fine, comprehensive report by the YCC detailing what they did in Fall 2008, what they want to do in 2009, etc.

Being YCC president is a very tough job of managing low expectations and harnessing the collective power of many type-A personalities to try to churn through Yale’s institutional bureaucracy and accomplish anything. That being said, the report isn’t all fluff — if you’re interested in seeing the breadth of issues people are thinking about, take a look at the attached report(s) – one complete, one summary. Also below, the introductory e-mail from YCC president Rich Tao.

FULL report [PDF] ; CONDENSED report [PDF]

Read the rest of this entry »

Yalies who thought that gender issues were a relic of the past should have had a rude awakening last year, after the mess surrounding some highly public misogynistic frat behavior known as the ‘we love yale sluts’ incident [YDN]. However, after the anger at the Zeta Psi pledges and hatred towards the Women’s Center had subsided, things seem to have gone back to normal – issues of sexism and the question of gender in general subsided once again into the background, consigned to the shadows again.

At the same time, the class of 2012 now seemingly holds a record for the greatest gender gap in Yale admissions history, or something close to it– 2,281 more women than men applied to Yale for the class of 2012, but men were 68% more likely to be offered a spot. The adjusted admissions rate: 9.8% for men, 7.5% for women.

It’s in this climate that a great new blog popped up, called Graphic Feminism. The authors talk about feminism as it applies to higher education and Yale, but also are putting up some really well done posters around campus on a weekly basis highlighting certain issues that seem to go unmentioned, unquestioned, and undiscussed. There was a really powerful one called ‘Your Comments Here‘ which reprints in full form many of the comments from that YDN article — and it is shocking, horrible, and deeply informative all at the same time.

Definitely worth checking out — just some pictures you can look at quickly, won’t take much of your time! I’m having a meeting this weekend with some other Yale bloggers to talk about the future of blogging at Yale. More updates to come soon.

It appears that I may have had another unfriendly hacker who decided he was interested in checking out my files and leaving some unpleasant surprises, so if anyone has been experiencing any problems, please let me know. I have had a few people who had reported fake antivirus pages coming up on my site, which are absolutely NOT meant to be there. Nothing but commentary from me should be coming up.

So, if you see anything out of the ordinary, or experience any problems, please report them to me – eithe comment or send an e-mail. I would really appreciate it as I am trying to clean up the site but am facing the problem of not being able to reproduce any of the problems other people are experiencing.

Sorry for the trouble, everyone.

In a nod to my readership’s interest in general but especially to David Kane, I am going to do another overview of my classes from last semester. Obviously this is a little bit late since that semester is now -over-, but at least I can write about them with completely clear hindsight and a full knowledge of their academic topography. I have more-or-less finished selecting my classes for this spring semester, but will wait until I have actually had more classes to talk about them further.

You can look through Yale classes on your own if you want at http://www.yale.edu/oci, and some (not many) Yale classes are available online at http://oyc.yale.edu/. Unlike Harvard and MIT, Yale is a little bit more comprehensive in its online-course offerings, but the unfortunate trade-off of the Yale approach is that it is rather narrower: there are not very many courses available, not the normal plethora you find on iTunes. They’re also delayed by a year or so, which means that if you are in a given class you can’t just skip it and see the lecture online.

ANTH 473 / ARCG 473 / EVST 473 / NELC 188: Civilizations and Collapse, Prof Harvey Weiss

This course, taught by Harvey Weiss, took interdisciplinary sources and directed them to the study of the collapse of civilizations. This was less a question of slow, tragic, romantic declines and more along the lines of “everyone starved to death in a centuries long drought.” Some very fascinating lessons to be learned in climate science and environmental studies. Examples of reading: Mike Davis’ Victorian Holocausts, Neil Diamond’s Collapse, but mostly endless scientific papers on issues such as drought science, crop yields, ancient Mesopotamian agricultural practices, soil aridificatation and salinization in pre-Colombian South America, etc.

This was an example of a seminar which was very interesting in its academic content and readings, but which sometimes fell short in actual discussion. The seminar was rather loosely directed and we got off-track at times; I don’t mean to make this into a full-blown copy of my evaluation submitted after the class, but I did feel that more could have been gained from the same time if our group had been a little more motivated or focused in our efforts. Still, Professor Weiss had a lot of interesting knowledge to share on theses subjects and I enjoyed exploring the Maya Collapse in greater detail. Perhaps I should attach my final paper? I’m not so proud of it, but it’s indicative of the kind of work that we were doing; e-mail if interested.

EP&E 304: Social Studies of Science and Technology: Prof Lorenzo Simpson

This class was a philosophy of science course which ended up being a one-on-one tutorial between myself and the professor. Interest was initially light due to a mix-up in the course listing and a failure to cross-list the course in other departments, and I was the only person who ended up taking the course after shopping period. A little [more] Heidegger never hurt anyone. I think I would have had more fun in the class if there had been a few more people who had stayed with me, but it was still nice to have a good back-and-forth with the professor, and it certainly did give me a good chance to get to develop that relationship perhaps moreso than usual.

This was an interesting course to me because it was a good way to learn more about the history of technology and technological analysis and the ways philosophy of science has changed over time; it left me with a pretty useful toolkit for discussing these and other issues, and it was good to be exposed to some good problems of philosophy of science. Challenging whether any science can be “pure” or not, what “good science” is, whether technology can have political content, what the impact of social modes are on scientific development, Kuhnian scientific paradigms, etc.

CHNS 110: Introductory Chinese [Mandarin]: Prof [Team of Professors]

Yes, I have succumbed to the trendiness and am taking Chinese. Yale is very serious about its introductory Mandarin, and we learn more than other programs do in a given year. We have daily quizzes on our characters, dialogues, and grammar, along with regular examinations, oral presentations, and work with mandatory tutors once a week. However, this high level of work and structure does make for a good learning experience overall, and although it requires at times a bit of grit, it’s really not too bad: class is just an hour a day M-F, and characters are manageable as long as I take care not to fall behind (something which is not always easy to do).

Why am I taking Chinese? Many Yalies want to take Chinese to leverage Yale’s very close relationship with China to go and make money from the greatest environmental accounting scam in history booming Chinese economy. I am learning Chinese because it is interesting, and I have already learned much about Chinese culture just from its basic grammar structures. Moreover, the China-US bilateral relationship is far and away the most important one in the world for environmental and arguably so for economic reasons. My mission is to make the world a better place for everyone, and if 20% of its inhabitants speak Chinese, I might as well learn. This is a grossly simplified explanation, but does touch on a lot of it. I hope to study abroad sometime soon, and Yale offers super stellar support for study in East Asia through its Light Fellowships program: it is the sort of program which reminds you of the ways in which going to a large research university with billions of dollars can be advantageous.

On classes: Approximately 100 people were taking intro Chinese this fall, and we all met together in a big lecture hall each day… just kidding. We were all split into sections of no more than 10 students, and had a series of different teachers rotate so that we would better get to hear different accents, etc. The teachers were almost uniformly fabulous (sometimes only excellent) and I could not offer a single complaint about that at all. Zhou Laoshi really runs a good intro Chinese program, all things considered.

ECON 117 / EVST 117: Introduction to Microeconomics [Environmental Focus], Prof Sheila Olmstead

This was just a basic intro micro-econ course which I took as a requirement for the Ethics, Politics, Economics major (to which I was sadly not accepted) and also for my own personal edification. Unfortunately, the 9am lectures were often lacking, and while I made it through the course unscathed and was told it was a much happier experience than the -normal- microeconomics (non-enviro focus) there wasn’t really so much to write home about the process. I think that economics can be really interesting in its applied forms, and while it was useful to learn about the basics, I can’t say it was too much fun. It wasn’t difficult, but it wasn’t fun, either. Not too much to say here.