We’ve got a mole inside Brown this year. Here’s “Clouseau’s” report on how freshman year started… (not in quote style for readability):
Before classes began, all students were required to read an 86 page report on Brown’s relationship with slavery (TLDR: Slavery was bad and institutions founded 100+ years before the Civil War have connections to it) and attend a seminar discussing it. We have a responsibility to “center discussions of identity” in all disciplines.
During the seminar, the facilitator (a humanities professor) and my fellow students spent 80 minutes hammering Brown and the Antebellum North for their profiteering relationship with slavery, and the group was adamant that they would not have similarly stood by had they been on campus in 1850. The group concluded that the Complicit North eventually fighting a war to end slavery was “largely performative” with respect to combatting the practice.
One place the group did passionately feel Brown was repeating its past mistakes was by refusing to divest from Israel despite the “genocide” (facilitator’s phrasing) in Gaza. Everyone agreed that we had to “free Palestine” — and hundreds of students waved Palestinian flags at the opening convocation this afternoon to emphasize the point. Ironically, 40% of Brown students say they are [2SLGBTQQIA+; our mole hatefully neglected some of these letters]; I guess what happens to members of that community under Hamas does not qualify as genocide.
Anyway, classes start tomorrow. My [STEM class with more than 100 students] has already mandated we use “they/them” pronouns for all students.
[Aerial photo by Tony Cammarata. June 2020 from a Robinson R44 helicopter. Campus shut down for coronapanic.]
- 4:02 PM Convocation begins
- 4:03 PM National Anthem
- 4:04 PM Acknowledgment that we are on stolen Narragansett land
Questions that were not answered:
- Why are we singing the anthem of a country that is a product of theft?
- Who had the land before the Narragansett? Was it light, heaven and earth, animals, and then thousands of years of Narragansett rule before the settler-colonialist Rhode Islanders came along?
- What is being done to return the stolen land? Why is the school actively buying up more instead of giving it back?
- If the majority of students identify as progressive, why were they chatting through the land acknowledgement, to the point that it was difficult to hear the speaker?
Separately, a friend’s daughter has been keeping up with friends from high school. Her friend who recently matriculated at Northeastern University’s London campus (5 percent acceptance rate) has been going to clubs… every night. Since there are no neutrally administered tests with unbiased grading (i.e., the professors grade their own students), there is no need to study. Her friend who has been at Fordham for three weeks has already had sex with three different men, which reminds me of a conversation I had with an MIT undergraduette circa 1990. She mentioned that her freshman year roommate had sex with 25 different men. I pointed out that “MIT is in session for only 26 weeks per year.” She responded, “She had a cold one week.”
Odd. Roger Williams is famous for believing that the land should be purchased from the indians and he actually purchased the land that is college hill from the Narragansetts . So Brown is not on “stolen land”… not that it matters during indoctonation.
(tried to post but it may have failed)
Actually Roger Williams did buy the land that Brown is on from the Narragansetts. He was quite famous for that. Not that it matters when you are running an indoctrination session.
I suspect that all this absurdity is conditioning humans for an extraterrestrial invasion. Faced with an even broader spectrum of biological diversity, we Earthlings must become less sensitive to the unfamiliar. Brainwashing is perhaps less messy than dumping 8 billion corpses..,It feels as though an invisible hand is quietly at work, preparing the whole world for what’s to come.
Oh heavens, where do I start? The abolitionist movement was huge and very serious. There was a giant war and thousands died gruesome deaths.
Why are we singing the anthem of a country that is a product of theft? Because the Indians have not yet stolen the land back.
Who had the land before the Narragansett? Nobody.
Was it light, heaven and earth, animals, and then thousands of years of Narragansett rule before the settler-colonialist Rhode Islanders came along? Yes!
What is being done to return the stolen land? Nothing.
Why is the school actively buying up more instead of giving it back? More land means more money.
If the majority of students identify as progressive, why were they chatting through the land acknowledgement, to the point that it was difficult to hear the speaker? The students don’t really care about the Indians. (in this case Indians refer to the white feather type not the red dot type)