Let's get this straight: a hunger strike is a way of saying that X cause matters more to you than your life, right? If that's the case, then would it be reasonable to conclude that Columbia's strikers, who claim to be ready to die* for the sake of nine new academic appointments in some ethnic studies center and more minority writers on their humanities syllabii, are in fact crazy?
*Ok, obviously, they're not actually going to die, b/c this is a first world problem, and their first world parents or their first world university will eventually make them eat. Still, the meaning of the gesture remains.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
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Didn't Gawker or something report that one of the fasting students was in fact anorexic? Sometimes--especially when, as in this case, they converge-- first-world problems can be fatal.
MSI wasn't born in the US, right? She has too much contempt for "first world problems" and too much enthusiasm for education to have been born in the US, or maybe she has first generation parents.
Phoebe: I did see that, and I even clicked through to the IvyGate story. Ah, the irony.
Lance: No, she was not born in the US, but she does now inhabit a sphere where she, too, suffers from first world problems.
So failing to dilute the curriculum means the students starve? Sounds like a win-win.
I don't think the meaning of the gesture is that the cause matters more than your life. It's supposed to guilt and embarass people into action. I don't think the Columbia strikers actually think they would prefer not to live at all, rather than live in a world with unbalanced syllabi.
I was born in the US, as were my parents, and I too have the occasional contempt for "first-world problems" and a love for education. My lineage is on loan to MSI, as needed.
Alex: Then what's the difference between a protest and a hunger strike? Why don't these people just hold up signs and chant for a week instead of not eating?
Withywindle: Thanks.
It ust produces more guilt and more embarrassment. It shows that it is important enough to you to endure pain, rather than just hold up a sign. I'm not endorsing it, I'm just saying that it doesn't presuppose that the issue is more important thatn your life.
So shouldn't protesters be cutting themselves then, or otherwise mutilating themselves and each other? Because that would be painful, and there would be blood, which is very photogenic for the press. It seems strange to pick something as invisible as not eating if all you wanted to do was cause embarrassment.
A hunger strike illustrates not just the strength of your passions, but their endurance; a maturity of mind as well as youthful enthusiasm. A real hunger-strike, risking death--as opposed to a mere few days without food--must elicit respect from the sensitive soul.
in re: the above comment, the point then returns to the question about whether they are really "risking death" at all. if it's completely symbolic, then, well, there are many other ways to "risk death [and] elicit respect from the sensitive soul." and if it's not, well, there are bigger issues to deal with-- physical death over a change in a core curriculum, sounds hard for even the most adamant believer in core changes, to prefer.
i guess it's one way to draw attention, but i'm not sure if it's the most compelling way to do so in order to institute change.
I hope that they are taking their vitamins. Surely someone is seeing to that...
Withywindle and Jennie: But the idea of every strike is that the striker is going to endure it as long as it takes to elicit the desired results, so at least the strikers would seem to be saying that they're willing to risk death. Of course, we know that doctors, parents, and the university will (and already have) intervene and prevent them, and they know it as well, but the stage directions for them are to stick it out until forcibly opposed. The message, as I think Jennie is saying, is supposed to be, "I would die, or cause serious damage to my health, in the name of Core change!" Which, I think, qualifies these people for the kind of lack of judgment that is called insanity.
Hardlyb: Yeah, two of them have already been forced to stop starving. Other have evidently replaced them, however.
Gandhi ... Bobby Sands ... British suffragists in prison in 1913 ... yes, I think some respect applies to the willingness to commit suicide by hunger for a cause, even where one thinks little of their cause or their judgment.
It's ridiculous for teenagers who are passing through a complex institution they barely begin to understand to be telling people how to run that institution. What's more ridiculous is for the people that are running that institution to even be pretending to listen.
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