firehose

Let me say this much in defense of the embattled fraternities of Dartmouth College: As a pledge during the winter of 2000, I was never forced to wade in a “kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen,” as one student claimed he did in a dismayingly viral 2012 Rolling Stone article titled “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy.”

Oh, there were veritable oceans of bad beer. And, for some reason, everlasting brotherhood involved the ingestion of several Taco Bell gut-bombs in a freakishly short span of time, with predictable results. I am also pretty sure that I consumed a living goldfish. Reason, again, unclear. There was, near the end of the boozy affair, a pig that we pledges were forced to roast on a spit for the duration of a whole night. It was many years before I could eat barbecue again.

But at least there was no thrashing in the bodily effluvia of others. Or, if there was, I had enjoyed too much of Milwaukee’s Best to remember.

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The fraternities of Dartmouth are proof that there is very much such a thing as bad publicity. To wit, holding a “ghetto party” (1998) or a Bloods and Crips party (2013). What parent can justify spending $50,000 a year for that? In 1999, the Gamma Delta Chi fraternity actually staged a “panty raid” at two sororities. This seemed hilarious to my still-teenage mind, the very stuff that made college the proverbial four best years of one’s life. It seems a lot closer to brute sexual aggression today.

Dartmouth’s current president, Philip J. Hanlon, was himself once a member of Alpha Delta, the fraternity on which Animal House is based. Hanlon—or “Juan Carlos,” to his onetime brothers—arrived on campus to assume the presidency in the midst of the fallout from the Rolling Stone article, along with other unflattering revelations about the legendary depravities of Webster Avenue’s frat row. After watching applications plummet, he spoke out last spring against a “culture where dangerous drinking has become the rule,” a refreshingly strong rebuke to the fraternities that have long controlled social life on campus.

Dartmouth is hardly an outlier in this respect, its notoriety replicated at virtually every college in the nation with a Greek system. Peggy R. Sanday, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist who has extensively studied rape at fraternities, has written that these so-called brotherhoods often have a “superior status” because they are older and more numerous than sororities, which rarely hold parties. Fraternities relish their power, Sanday argues, fostering a culture “that makes sexual exploitation a condition of manhood.”

The evidence is on her side. Fraternity brothers are three times more likely than their nonaffiliated peers to commit rape, a 2007 study found. Greek houses are often the primary purveyors of alcohol on campus, which is involved in 89 percent of collegiate sexual assaults. Women are not guests at fraternity events but, as one Georgia Tech fraternity deems them, “rapebait.” An intelligent, accomplished young woman becomes a “girl” whose own will can easily be disregarded or subverted. Or, to borrow from the chant of a Yale fraternity, “No means yes, yes means anal.” And it is just as clear that fraternities exercise their “dark power” (to borrow a phrase from Caitlin Flanagan’s masterful plunge into the Greek abyss) over administrators who are supposed to monitor them. Of the 95 colleges being investigated by the federal government for the mishandling of sexual assault complaints, all but about a half-dozen boast an active Greek system.

Among those facing investigation is nearly half of the Ivy League: Dartmouth, Harvard and Brown. Yale isn’t on the list but was recently the subject of a similar probe. So was Princeton. Columbia, where a female student has taken to carrying a mattress around campus until her alleged rapist is expelled, is under investigation along with Barnard, its sister school. If these are the colleges that produce our leaders, it’s no wonder that so many Manhattan investment banks and Silicon Valley tech firms replicate the sexual politics of a fraternity basement on a Friday night. Same players, same rules. Impunity is a powerful drug, especially when laced with a dusting of silence.

To his credit, Hanlon appears unwilling to let the present state of affairs continue. Late last week, he released a plan, called “Moving Dartmouth Forward,” whose centerpiece is a ban on hard alcohol at the college, a bold measure predicated on his well-grounded belief that the consumption of liquor is inordinately responsible for the social ills plaguing Dartmouth. Hanlon is also moving to eliminate semester-long pledge terms, a sign that he intends to weaken the Greek houses. And he is instituting residential clusters, hoping students will choose to stay on campus instead of flocking to Webster Avenue.

Combined, these tough new rules may be enough to vitiate the Greek system and send the national media looking elsewhere for tawdry frathouse exposés. There will be a little less drinking; the next panty raid or ghetto party will be met with the summary expulsion of the responsible house. Alumni will praise Hanlon as the savior of Dartmouth and its U.S. News & World Report rankings. They will call him a moderate with a vision.

Moderation, though, is precisely the problem. The moment clearly calls for a national leader to articulate why fraternities, a vestige of the 19th century, have no business on a 21st century campus. Why boys can no longer just be boys. Someone who diagnoses campus sexual assault as an epidemic, not something perpetrated only by the occasional outlier. A president who can eloquently equate the treatment of female students today to that of Jewish and black students 50 years ago—a matter of moral principle, not administrative policy. Someone who is unafraid of phone calls from angry alumni.

While some colleges have already closed down their Greek houses, Dartmouth’s fraternities are among the best known in the country, often landing the school on lists of the nation’s frattiest colleges. Hanlon could trade in this notoriety, instead of merely disguising it, using the bully pulpit of an Ivy League presidency to boost similar frat-busting efforts across the nation.

Often, the Ancient Eight are accused of being self-interested institutions where one-percenters are minted and polished. Once in a while, though, these schools recognize that their prominence carries with it a greater responsibility. In the 1960s, for example, Yale’s patrician president Kingman Brewster Jr., declared that he would not “preside over a finishing school on Long Island Sound,” according to his biographer Geoffrey Kabaservice. Despite the chagrin of some hidebound Elis, he admitted women and welcomed greater numbers of Jews and minorities, thus announcing that a first-rate student could come from Harlem or Brooklyn, not just Hotchkiss or Dalton. Hanlon, who has the support of most alumni, could similarly become an agent of change, instead of merely playing a custodian of tradition.

My own sojourn on Webster Avenue lasted two years. I drifted from the house and, eventually, helped administrators de-recognize it over a crude internal publication that demeaned women. Some called me a traitor. And maybe they were right. But I distinctly remember the horror of one of the victims, a woman who had just learned that the men whom she considered friends had used her as a lascivious punch line. One of the offending newsletters, for example, had promised to reveal a brother’s “patented date rape techniques.”

This was a joke, I guess. I hope. But there is no place for it Dartmouth. There is no place for it at Florida State. There is no place for it anywhere. 

“I adore the way fan fiction writers engage with and critique source texts, by manipulating them and breaking their rules. Some of it is straight-up homage, but a lot of [fan fiction] is really aggressive towards the source text. One tends to think of it as written by total fanboys and fangirls as a kind of worshipful act, but a lot of times you’ll read these stories and it’ll be like ‘What if Star Trek had an openly gay character on the bridge?’ And of course the point is that they don’t, and they wouldn’t, because they don’t have the balls, or they are beholden to their advertisers, or whatever. There’s a powerful critique, almost punk-like anger, being expressed there—which I find fascinating and interesting and cool.”

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Lev Grossman (via leliaana)

*Sometimes.

(via drst)

There was once a time when we might have read of “hero cabdrivers” or “hero bus drivers” placing themselves in harm’s way to rescue their fellow citizens. For its part, Uber might have suggested that it would use its network of drivers and its scheduling software to recruit volunteer drivers for a rescue mission.
Instead, we are told that Uber’s pricing surge was its expression of concern. Uber’s way to address a human crisis is apparently by letting the market govern human behavior, as if there were (in libertarian economist Tyler Cowen’s phrase) “markets in everything” – including the lives of a city’s beleaguered citizens (and its Uber drivers).
Where would this kind of market-driven practice leave poor or middle-income citizens in a time of crisis? If they can’t afford the “surged” price, apparently it would leave them squarely in the line of fire. And come to think of it, why would Uber drivers value their lives so cheaply, unless they’re underpaid?

I run a science site, From Quarks to Quasars. Like most science sites, we post articles about the latest developments in science news and research. Recently, we put out an ad on Indeed.com looking for part-time, freelance science writers. We received some 100 responses (and counting). A lot of the people who applied had a ton of experience in a variety of fields; however, no real experience in science writing.

We also got quite a few applications from people who have rather impressive science writing credentials. As such, we had to reject a lot of people with pretty outstanding resumes. Although many had a lot of experience, and were very articulate and impressive candidates on the whole, they didn’t have relevant experience.

And of course, there was one older, white, academic man who felt the need to tell us that we are, “imperious little girls,” and that “we are not superior to [him].”

Perhaps another key to this equation, one that I have failed to mention hereto, is that From Quarks to Quasars is managed by two women. Perhaps that is irrelevant, but I don’t think so. The “little girls” reference makes that pretty clear.

But either way, the exchange that I had with this individual reeked of that patriarchal arrogance that one sometimes finds in gentlemen who are in positions of power. You know the ones that I mean — the men who have been groomed by our society to feel that they are “special,” that they are an authority on every subject, that their point of view is the only right one, that (in short) they are the masters and kings of all that they survey. Such people often assume a tone that is patronizingly paternalistic, which you will see in the way that this individual scolds us.

But to get to the story….

The person in question is an academic. He is an American poet who has a list of publications that is about a mile long. Several poetry books, chapbooks, reviews of poetry books, essays on poetry that were published in peer review journals, and on and on. Consequently, if you look up his resume online, as is true of many academics, it is absurdly long (listing about 100 publications). Clearly, he is successful in his line of work. However, his “line of work” is clearly not science writing. The introduction to his cover letter reads thus: “I am a well-published and award-winning poet; a free-lance journalist; a writer of non-fiction and a stylist in the lineage as Joan Didion and John McPhee; and a children’s book author.”

So. Not science.

Why we rejected him…

Simply put, he’s not a science writer. That’s the only consideration that factored into our decision. Looking at his impressive list of publications, there isn’t anything even remotely on science. At least, nothing that I have seen. Admittedly, I didn’t look up every single publication. But either way, if not being a science writer isn’t a good enough reason for you, here are a few other reasons that we could have rejected him.

• He didn’t send a resume (which our job ad listed as “required material” for any potential candidate). We had to look it up online ourselves; he didn’t even include a link to it.
• He didn’t send a 500 word writing sample on a relevant news story (again, our job ad listed this as “required material” for any potential candidate). When you are looking for science writers, and you want to effectively assess them, having a writing sample is an absolute must.
• He sent a generic cover letter that was not geared towards our organization or our job ad. We received hundreds of submissions. If we are going to take the time to read the documents that you send us, you should take the time to tailor the documents to us.

How he responded and where we went from there…

Apparently, one time, this person wrote an article about… (EDIT: Had to remove artist’s name as it made the author of the email identifiable)…an artist who did paintings of dinosaurs. Writing an article about someone who did dinosaur paintings makes him a science writer. The fact that we didn’t notice this one article (out of his absurdly long list of publications), means that we didn’t bother to read his cover letter, have no discernment, and think that we “know it all.”

I shouldn’t have responded to his (highly unprofessional) email. However, I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi. My focus is on English Literature. Meaning that I know a lot of poets. A whole lot. I could have forwarded this email to all of them. I could have posted it on professional forums. I could send it to journals where he has been published. I didn’t, because I am not that cruel (or insane), and it would really serve no purpose.

But I did respond to the email, stating that his reply was unprofessional and reminding him that it is a bad idea to go on the record using such rhetoric. Anyone who knows anything about the viral natural of the internet knows that it is a bad idea to go on the record about anything. I also explained that we did read his cover letter but, no, writing about a painter (even if the painter paints dinosaurs) is not science writing.

I didn’t mention that we move in the same circle. I didn’t say that I had no intent to actually pass the email on. I didn’t expound or clarify because, quite frankly, it wasn’t worth my time. Really, I just wanted him to rethink his rhetoric. I was genuinely trying to give him some feedback on his approach. People are always so mean to strangers on the internet, but (as many of my other posts state) we don’t have to be mean to strangers on the internet. Writing to us the way he did is entirely unacceptable.

Anyways, clearly, he didn’t spend any time reflecting on his rhetoric or how he was presenting himself. Why would he? He is a highly educated academic. We are just “little girls.” Clearly, he is in the right and we have no idea what we are doing.

Why I am posting this…

I am posting this for several reasons. I want people to know that, when you write to a stranger on the internet, you aren’t just writing to a stranger on the internet. This is something that I try very hard to teach my own students. If the person chooses to share your words, you are (for all intents and purposes) writing to whoever they show your words to. Thus, you are (potentially) writing to the whole world. Consequently, you have to carefully think about what you say when you post something online. Indeed, you should reflect on your rhetoric whenever you write anything anywhere. You’re never speaking into a vacuum.

I am posting this because I want people to know that there is a real person sitting on the other side of the screen. You wouldn’t walk up to someone on the street and call them an “imperious little girl.” Don’t do it online. The internet can be a fantastic community. It doesn’t have to be a place where we all go to be mean to one another. It shouldn’t be a horrid free-for-all. Using the words that he did is a horrible way to present oneself to potential employers…or anyone. Even on the internet, only jerks are mean.

I am posting this because I want people to see how women are treated online. The number of times that I have received gender based insults from people on the internet is horrifying. Receiving even one is horrifying. But it’s not just the gender based insults, because the sexism would be there even without the insults. It’s in the tone that he adopts — the arrogant, authoritative, “king of all he surveys” attitude. And I don’t think that we can separate this individual’s response from his gender. While, in my own experiences with my peers, I feel accepted and respected, I still feel that this is an issue that needs some addressing and should be acknowledged.

But I will leave everyone to make their own decisions, as the exchange is posted below (with his name removed).

Twitter has inked a deal that will put tweets inside of Google search results, according to a report. Citing sources, Bloomberg says the two companies just worked out a business deal that gives the search giant full access to Twitter's firehose of tweets. That's as opposed to Google needing to crawl Twitter, something that should make tweets more immediately accessible outside of Twitter, benefitting both companies.

Twitter declined to comment, and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Developing…

On Wednesday, a report from The Verge alleged that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had made frank, internal comments to his company's staffers about the social network's mishandling of abuse and harassment. The report contained apparent copies of posts taken from Twitter's private company forum, and the conversation in question revolved around complaints about Twitter made by author Lindy West, who'd recently been featured on radio series This American Life to talk about finding and confronting her worst Twitter troll.

Costolo's Monday response, as posted in the report, did not mince words: "We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years." He went on to claim that the company was losing "core user after core user" because of trolls, then stated—and reiterated—his taking "full responsibility" for the problem.

"Everybody in the world knows that we have not effectively dealt with this problem even remotely to the degree we should have by now," Costolo wrote in a second post. His assertion that "we're going to fix it" didn't contain specific strategies or suggestions but rather an assurance that teams assigned to the task of abuse moderation would be given resources and "clear lines of responsibility and accountability." In the meantime, users who currently receive a deluge of unwanted, anonymous Twitter replies tied specifically to the GamerGate hashtag have turned to the Good Game Auto-Blocker, which aggregates known, aggressive users and phrases for anyone seeking to reduce noise they may receive on the social network.

Warcraft III‘s mod scene is grossly underrated, I’ve muttered into many a pint glass. Yes, yes, we know it was where MOBAs and tower defense games really took off, but so many more inventive and interesting and weird games bounced around, types of game I haven’t seen since. I always thought this was helped a lot by WC3 having a huge range of units and odd art assets folks could repurpose, making mods about more than soldiers. Delightfully, loads of those WC3 bits are now coming to StarCraft II’s editor, Blizzard have announced. The main Hero units are getting modern makeovers too.

Warcraft bits are now in the test client and will soon come to the main game, Blizzard explained in a blog post yesterday.

“This brings over three thousand new materials for the amazing Arcade development community to work with, including new hero models for the 4 primary races, all of the original Warcraft III models including neutral creatures and their sounds as well as doodads, structures, spell effects, ambient sounds, music and custom user interfaces for each race.”

While models and textures might suffer from being a decade old, they’re still handy, and the sounds, music, and particles will age a lot better. The four hero units of each race get new models up to modern standards. Well, sort of. They’re a lot prettier, but also pretty Liefeldian. The Keeper of the Grove and Demon Hunter are rippling with muscles I never knew existed, while the Priestess of the Moon gets a tiny head and huge bazongas. Here, check the before/after comparisons for the Scourge and Sentinel heroes.

I imagine we’ll soon see (even more) projects remaking ye olde Warcraft III and DotA in SC2, but hopefully lots will simply delight in this wider pool of assets with different styles. How very exciting. And because SC2’s custom game Arcade is accessible through the free Starter Edition, all and sundry will get to play these new things. Lovely lovely.

I suspect this is what Blizzard meant when they hinted at a side-project updating Warcraft.

Kickstarter, Looking Glass Studios, paul neurath, Ultima Ascendant, Ultima Underworld.