Monthly Archives: April 2016

The Continuing Missteps of Bernie Sanders

Letter to the editor,

To the Editor:

In the article “Early Missteps Seen as a Drag on Bernie Sander’s Campaign” (April 3) Patrick Healy and Yamiche Alcindor discuss how Senator Sanders’s lack of campaigning in 2015 has hindered his success in early Democratic primaries. However, his missteps have not been limited only to the early part of his campaign. Sanders has won seventeen states thus far, the majority of which hold caucuses and not primary elections. Caucuses tend to favor candidates with extremely enthusiastic supporters, something Sanders has in droves. His campaign has thus been able to exploit the caucus system to their benefit. However, with only two Democratic caucuses remaining, the question remains whether or not this strategy of relying on the devoted base will work in states which use primary elections to assign electoral delegates.

Caucuses, one of the systems used during presidential primaries to select candidates, ought to be abandoned. Caucuses are the original system of American voting, a holdover from the days when land-owning white men, many of whom did not have professions, were the only Americans with the right to vote. Today the caucus system continues to discourage participation from working-class voters. Caucuses take hours, and a participant needs to be present the whole time. A low-wage worker, someone who works multiple jobs, or a parent without access to childcare can easily spend a few minutes casting a ballot at a local polling station. However many of them cannot afford to clear their schedules and devote a whole day to caucusing.

Although Senator Sanders often speaks of his desire to improve conditions for blue-collar workers, he has focused on campaigning to Millennials worried about college costs and retirees worried about their pensions and Social Security. Sanders’s rallies provide soundbites for the Internet generation, but he’s neglected the kind of small-time, face-to-face campaigning that tends to be popular with working-to-middle-class voters. These people often cannot participate in caucuses, but they vote. Unless Sanders’s campaign strategy changes, many of those votes won’t go to him.

Parents, Pay for College

Letter to the editor

Re “Should You Pay for Your Child’s College Education?” (NBC News, April 3, 2016):

You make the point that it’s okay for parents to decide not to pay for their kids’ college when they don’t have the means. This is certainly true, but such parents are not addressed in the article. Your suggestion that parents make their financial support conditional on their children’s grades and have them take a gap year to work—at most likely a minimum-wage job—is not financially useful for parents who truly don’t have the means to pay. Parents who really can’t pay could decide not to send their child to college at all, but nowhere does the article suggest that this is an option. The parents the article actually addresses are those who don’t want to pay but still expect their children to find a way to go to college.

In case these parents feel a twinge of guilt about forcing their kids to take on massive debt to pay for college, the article soothes their concerns: “Not all high school seniors are academically or emotionally ready for college.” A year in the working world “gives them a sense of accountability,” says the article, so making your children work to pay for college is actually good for them. To judge from its title, the article is about the parents’ finances. However, a child’s emotional readiness has little to do with finances, except that it excuses parents’ unwillingness to pay.

Some parents have good reasons not to pay for college. Those addressed in the article do not. Parents who have the means to pay for college and expect their children to go to college should pay for their children’s college education.

Growing Fences

Letter to the editor

In response to “Donald Trump is a monster, yes. But that’s what many Americans actually want” by Tim Stanley, Telegraph UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/donald-trump/12047232/Donald-Trump-is-a-monster-yes.-But-thats-what-many-Americans-actually-want.html

 

To the Editor,

Although Stanley accurately points out Trump’s absurd attributes that have led to his popularity, Trump is not a uniquely American problem. Americans are heavily criticized for Trump’s shocking success in the presidential race. He mocks minorities, promises to build a wall blocking immigration from Central and Latin America, and threatens to ban Muslims from entering into the United States. While Trump has considerable public support, especially for his strict immigration platform, we cannot blame American ideological shortcomings alone for Trump’s popularity. In fact, his kind of radical anti-immigration philosophy is shared among many other world leaders. For example, Marine le Pen received 18% of the vote in the French presidential election in 2012 and is speculated to run for office again in 2017. Le Pen was charged with a hate crime for a speech in 2015 in which she compared Muslims to Nazis. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán built a 175km fence along his country’s border with Serbia and Croatia and established new asylum laws in order to purge Hungary of refugees. Although there are still progressive and humane leaders in Europe, the growing popularity of these immoral immigration policies warrants concern, as they close borders and promote hostility in an already tumultuous political climate. The rising fear of terrorism incites individuals to agree with these conservative ideologies, increasing the chances of the populist, conservative, anti-immigration political factions being elected into office. Donald Trump “isn’t quite as out of the mainstream as he first appears,” as Stanley points out, but in fact he is part of a global phenomenon of xenophobia that will tear the world apart if it is not recognized and stopped.

Sincerely,

Rachel

 

 

 

Just Because it is a Right…

Letter to the editor

To the Editor:

Re “The Republican Gun Free Zone” (The New York Times, Opinion, March 31, 2016):

Gun control is assuredly a contentious issue in the United States. Gail Collins points out the hypocrisy of the GOP leadership—whose members advocate for the abolition of gun-free zones but haven’t fought the Secret Service’s decision to ban guns at the Republican National Convention. The Bill of Rights may give Americans the right to keep and bear arms, but that does not mean civilians need to exercise that right at all times. Alarmingly, many disagree with that sentiment. This is evidenced by the change.org petition to allow firearms at the RNC that received thousands of signatures from many who were unaware of its satirical nature.

Meanwhile the GOP forges ahead with flawed policies that expose the hypocrisy of its position: in Texas, people licensed to carry a firearm may bring loaded and concealed weapons onto the premises of all state colleges and universities. Essentially, GOP leaders push for lax gun regulations where they are not personally at risk, such as on college campuses, but when the Secret Service tells them they can’t bring firearms to their own convention they don’t fight back. Why isn’t this an intolerable infringement upon a fundamental right? What happened to the legendary GOP firepower on this issue they claim to care about so passionately? While the GOP leadership sorts out its hypocritical relationship with firearms, the public ought to realize that just as there is no need for firearms at a political convention, there is no room for guns on college campuses.

-Samantha Marrus, Independent

New York, NY | Wellesley, MA

Bless Me, Professor, for I Have Studied Abroad

Letter to the editor

Re “Study Abroad’s Seven Deadly Sins” (The New York Times, Opinion, April 10, 2016):

Peter Coclanis’s article points out what he calls the “Seven Deadly Sins” of study abroad.  These “sins,” he says, allow “immature” students to treat foreign countries as their playground.  He ignores the fact that many of these “sins” are committed in the U.S.  He also premises his argument on the notion that most, if not many, students are easily led into temptation (and ruin).

Mr. Coclanis argues that readily available “suds” make American students abroad more inclined to spend their time drinking than studying.  But students abroad who show up to their 9 a.m. classes hungover are probably doing the same thing back home.  Mr. Coclanis disregards the many study abroad students who are less apt to partake in party cultures, or are simply more capable of balancing their social and academic lives.

He derides “slide courses”—classes taught in English that are not up to par with American university standards—as a study abroad phenomenon, again ignoring that they exist in the U.S. as well.  Of course, just as not all students abroad indulge in “suds,” not all classes abroad can be pegged as “slide courses.”  At the same time, if the classroom experience is the be-all and end-all of study abroad, then students might as well “stay at State U,” where Mr. Coclanis implies classes are superior.  Education abroad, on the other hand, might take place in more unconventional settings, such as at a cooking workshop, or in a discussion with one’s host family.

From his perch in academia, Mr. Coclanis has pinpointed a handful of actions he finds objectionable and attributed them to the study abroad experiences of immature students.  What he demonstrates, however, is the seventh deadly sin of armchair criticism:  stereotyping.

statue game
Photo by Megan Locatis

Cultural Education Imperative in Responses to Terrorist Attacks

Letter to the editor

Re: “Another Bombing, This Time in Pakistan” (editorial, March 28): Your editorial reminded me of my first childhood encounter with terrorism: September 11th. The memory of this terrorist attack shaped my understanding of terrorism as something that happened to major Western metropolises, like New York City. When attacks occurred in Paris and Brussels earlier this year, I–like doubtless many other Americans–felt I was reliving the experience of seeing a distant yet familiar city come to harm. However, when Beirut and Lahore were attacked this year, we, as Americans, were guilty of minimizing the pain felt by the Lebanese and Pakistanis.

One has to wonder: if Americans can relate to the French and the Belgians, what makes Pakistanis so different? The Times’s editorial quotes a spokesman for the Taliban who states that the attacks were meant, surprisingly, to target Christians enjoying an Easter outing. Since the majority of Americans identify as Christian, it would make sense for Americans to identify with Christian Pakistanis rather than Muslim Pakistanis, toward whom many Americans might feel hostile. Yet it seems that American indifference writes off all Middle Easterners as “Muslim terrorists,” raising the question: why do Americans so deeply fail to accept that Western and non-Western cultures share certain basic values? Though our geographic isolation and radical individualism may be to blame, this American urge to villainize the Middle East suggests that many Americans fail to imagine a Middle East outside the framework of terrorism and inside the greater context of humanity. Our reactions to recent attacks in distant places speak poorly for the state of cultural education in this country.

A Superpower’s Language Inadequacies Exposed

Op-Ed

The United States, heralded as a melting pot of cultures, is a largely monolingual nation. The US Department of Education (DOE) says that only 18% of US citizens can speak a language other than English at a conversational level. When compared to over 50% of Europeans who are proficient in at least two languages, according to surveys done by the European Commission, the US figure is embarrassing. An investigation into what the US is doing wrong is long overdue. To understand this unfortunate difference we need to look at our school system. Logically, it is there that most Americans should get the opportunity to learn a foreign language.

Foreign language instruction in our schools suffered a considerable decline in the first decade of the 21st century. According to the DOE’s own statistics, the percentage of middle schools offering foreign language classes dropped from 75% in 1997 to 58% in 2008. The chief agent of this decline was the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, which set ambitious goals for educational success. NCLB defined success in terms of students’ achievement on newly-created standardized tests. These standardized tests had high stakes, making school funding and teacher evaluation contingent on the students’ performance. Because these tests focused heavily on math and science, schools shifted their curricula in response, cutting offerings in the arts, athletics and, of course, foreign language.

Worse, NCLB did not affect all schools equally. Rural schools were more likely to experience harsh cuts and declines in the quality of education offered. Even before NCLB, schools in rural areas were barely half as likely to offer foreign language as their urban counterparts. Little wonder, then, that the US lags far behind Europe where over 50% of the population can speak at least two languages conversationally and mandatory foreign language instruction begins in primary school. This, however, is a far cry from a demand for compulsory foreign language education in the United States; it is easier than that. The option to take a foreign language in school must first be offered nation-wide.

The benefits of learning a second language far outweigh the negatives. From a cognitive standpoint, learning a foreign language at a young age enhances development and correlates to academic success. According to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), students who begin studying a second language in middle school or earlier are much more likely to become proficient than those who start in high school or later. Years of research by the ACTFL have demonstrated that learning more than one language makes students smarter overall by teaching them to think critically and creatively and to imagine worlds beyond their personal cultures, values and traditions. Language education helps students think across cultural bounds by teaching them to communicate and build relationships.

On a practical note, being multilingual in our increasingly globalized world is an asset. ACTFL studies have shown that multilingual people in the workforce are promoted at higher rates and considered assets to their companies. While the public school system does not exist solely to prepare students for the workforce, it is a part of its function—and one that it fails at with regard to language instruction.

Individuals who feel strongly about learning a foreign language do have options outside of school. There are numerous online and audio tools that allow for self-instruction, but this type of program is not ideal for every student nor is it as successful as a classroom experience that involves speaking, listening and reading comprehension exercises. Further, putting the onus on students to learn outside of school assumes that all students have both the means and time to do so, which is not a safe assumption. The public educational system needs to offer foreign language so students do not have to seek it out themselves. As it stands right now, the United States cannot legitimately claim to be an integral part of the global community if it educates students who are unable to imagine cultures beyond their own. Rather than declining, foreign language instruction should be on the rise in schools across the United States. Instruction needs to start now and with students as young as possible.

Ida: The Jewish Nun

Film review

From the beginning of Ida, religion is central to the film’s development: the first scenes are mostly close-ups on various religious symbols in the convent, like crosses, a statue of Jesus, or the nuns’ habits. The audience understands within the first five minutes of the film that religion has been the main factor in shaping the life of Anna, the protagonist. She is a novice nun who was abandoned at the convent as an infant, and is about to take her vows. The viewer discovers quickly that Anna is in fact a Jewish girl named Ida and, alongside her, we learn that almost her entire family was killed during the Second World War. Her only living relative is her aunt Wanda, from whom she learns her family’s tragic history. Wanda appears to be a direct rejection of the vows of piety, chastity and poverty Ida is preparing to take: she is a heavy drinker, a chain smoker, and has frequent sexual encounters with strangers. This tension proves central to Ida’s development: there are two paths that she can take: she can go back to the convent and take her vows or she can stay with her aunt and live a life filled with earthly pleasures and disappointments. She learns throughout the film what life outside the convent may entail: love (which she learns through her romantic and sexual interaction with Lis, a man that she and Wanda meet on the road), loss (through her family history and the death of her aunt), tragedy, and maybe even redemption.

The tension between her two options is made clear throughout the film, as the main focus is placed on Wanda and Ida. The rest of the characters have very few lines and don’t make frequent or lengthy appearances; Wanda and Ida spend the majority of the film in proximity to each other. In these scenes, the two protagonists are portrayed as diametrically opposed. Ida is completely innocent and does not know about life outside of the convent; she has been protected her whole life from reality. Her innocence may slowly fade throughout the film, but she does not lose her faith. Wanda, on the other hand, has seen so much tragedy and violence that she has lost all faith, though it is clear that she used to be a “true believer” in the communist cause. In fact, the reason she was not killed during the war like the rest of her family is because she was part of the anti-Nazi resistance. In order to cope with her guilt and loss of faith, she numbs herself constantly with alcohol and sex to help distance herself from her terrible past and grim reality. Though Wanda may gain some degree of hope—and even faith—from her time with Ida, her suicide toward the end of the movie makes it clear that she could not survive her grief.

This contrast between the two protagonists is emphasized during a scene in which Ida states that she wants to go find where her family is buried. At this point Wanda asks Ida, “what if you go there and discover there is no God?” She knows that this experience will be disturbing and may shake Ida’s belief system—her religion and her faith, which are the basis of her entire identity. Then, Wanda smiles and says, in an almost patronizing tone, “I know, God is everywhere”. Here, the viewer understands that believing in God, and keeping her faith, will be a way for Ida to be able to cope with learning about her family’s past.

However, the director, Paweł Pawlikowski, did not make this film to convey any particular religious message or even to represent religion in a favorable way. It is made clear that religion is often used as an excuse for silence or as a way to cover up heinous crimes: we learn that the priest who lived in the same town (Piaska) as Ida’s parents during the war claims to not know anything about them. We also see learn that the Skibas—the family who hid then killed Ida and Wanda’s family during the war—are deeply Christian. When Ida is in their home discovering the truth about her family, she stands in a doorway, where there is a large cross the wall above her head, and when Ida first arrives at the house, she is asked to bless the family’s crying baby. These two instances make clear the social privileges that Ida has because she is a nun. Moreover, she was not killed as an infant because she was able to pass for a gentile. As such, religion is represented in a very complicated and nuanced way, which allows the viewer to see some of the elements that are not given much attention or detail in the movie, like politics.

Religion is used as a conduit for the viewer to be able to understand the multiple political elements that complicate the plot and movie background, since the political context is not made entirely clear: the war is only referred to briefly in the movie, and even then there are only allusions to things that happened to Ida’s family during that time. The audience understands the historical context through references to religion and/or religious identity—chosen or inherited, which allows the filmmakers to not clarify in depth the movie’s historical or political context.

The audience also understands how deeply Roman Catholicism is intertwined with Polish national identity, as it is more frequently talked about than communism. In fact, there are only two obvious references to politics and the state: one, when Wanda is at work as a judge and two, at her funeral—where a government official reads an emotionless eulogy about “Comrade Wanda’s” great contributions to “making a new Poland.” These scenes both serve to help us understand the fundamental tragedy of Wanda’s life: she tells Ida that she had no idea what she had been fighting for during the war. It is clear that while Wanda once had faith in this system, she has lost it entirely. It is also crucial to explore why the film chooses to highlight religion, given the fact that it is based in Poland during the country’s communist era. Though Polish communism was inherently anti-religion, many of the film’s characters are deeply Catholic. This demonstrates that religion serves as a tool to create and maintain individual identity in a politically totalitarian country, just as faith provides Ida with a reprieve from the harrowing reality that she faces upon learning the truth about her family.

Ironically, it doesn’t appear as though the filmmakers are making any overall comment on religion or the role of religion in Ida’s life. It is simply provides a perspective to better understand her history and her life. This is indicative of the film itself, which uses cinematic simplicity to convey deeply complex themes and realities.

What I Think About When I Think About the City

Op-Ed
IMG_1478
Above ground in Prague

People in Europe are on average much more attractive than in the US. Well-groomed, fashionable, not overweight. Just comparing my T ride to the airport in Boston to walking around Munich today was eye-opening. Just saying, there are a lot of attractive German women……

An ex-boyfriend wrote this gem in a letter to me from Germany shortly after I dumped him. I usually tried read his letters with the passive eye of a long-suffering but loyal friend, but when a man who once wore orange sneakers with a tuxedo attempted to compare me unfavorably with my German counterparts, he managed to finally catch my attention. Even more irritating than the personal dig was his assumption that the difference in appearance between women on the T in Boston, and those promenading around downtown Munich was a consequence of nationality.

I could imagine what he was seeing in Munich, likely very similar to what I have seen in Paris and Moscow. Women my age in Paris seem to favor strappy sandals and strapless dresses, and in Moscow enormous fur coats and high-heeled boots are all the rage.  The glitz and glamour of these European metropolises is evident in the way women carry themselves as they walk along the Champs-Elysees, or across Red Square. Boston is no different. The maze of streets fanning out from Downtown Crossing and anchored by the Prudential Center to the west and the Charles River to the North is populated by a female elite just as chic as their European sisters.

But in any city, I enter another world as I push through the turnstile into a metro station. Here you see all the women: those who live their city lives behind the scenes, who staff the expensive boutiques, and scoop gelato or мороженое. They carry bags of groceries or chunky toddlers. Their customers don’t shun public transport either, but here they appear somehow diminished, slouching into their seats with sighs of relief, and perhaps slipping feet out of high heels to furtively rub their toes. Here the similarities overpower the divide between these two groups of women. At the end of the day, we are all worn-out and vaguely, habitually frustrated.

To be taken seriously in shops, restaurants and offices, those who can do so don a disguise and hide behind lipstick and hairspray. It’s more than good grooming and exercise; the culture of the city demands both fashion and glamour from the young female elite almost regardless of occupation. The ‘beauty premium’ is a name given by economists to the improved labor market outcomes of people considered attractive. It doesn’t only affect women, but expectations of women have evolved far beyond the baseline standard of appearance for men in identical positions. Women grasp at the beauty premium to gain a little bit more of an advantage in a world where women still do not compete with men on a level playing field.

It’s exhausting, frustrating and expensive. Women who have the money shell out about $15,000 in their lifetime on makeup alone, and this pales in comparison to expenditures on clothing, purses and shoes. Trips to the salon for complex haircuts and coloring gobble up both hours and dollars. It’s a luxury to be able to take time out of your schedule to utilize a gym membership, and healthy, good-quality food is pricy and time-consuming to prepare. The ‘pink tax’ inflates these expenses even further: women who choose to buy into the beauty premium get charged on average 13% more for products marketed to them than for identical items marketed to men. All over the world a subset of the women are left behind, lacking the resources for a cosmopolitan woman’s costume. In Boston, where half the population lives on less than $35,000 a year, it’s a big subset.

But anywhere in the world, the women on the subway are different creatures from the women strolling between the high rise buildings. When we go underground, those of us who have the resources to buy the appearance of a successful women let the image fade. Suddenly we are all the same again. As my ex-boyfriend observed, we are no longer well-groomed after the wind has disheveled our hair. We are no longer fashionable as we shed blazers and scarves in the heat of the bodies packed together in the train. We may not look or feel particularly fit after those doughnuts eaten to make up for missing lunch. Dismayed at the change, we look at the men who examine us as the metro carries us homeward. We close our eyes, and try to remember that we can do anything they can do, as long as we can figure out how to do it in high heels.

Ida Remembers

Film review

In a film with little dialogue and fewer than a dozen characters, director Pawel Pawlikowski does a remarkable job portraying Poland’s complex and fragmented memory of World War II, the Holocaust and the post-war government. Ida follows a young girl as she unravels the threads of the many perspectives that existed in Poland in the early 1960s and decides which ones to weave into her own identity.

The film begins with Anna, a novice at a Catholic convent in the countryside, about to take her vows and become a nun. The Mother Superior orders her to visit her last remaining relative, an aunt, before she makes her final decision. Wanda Gruz opens the door of an untidy apartment filled with cigarette smoke and empty liquor bottles. Once a scantily clad man has removed himself to the bathroom, she informs her niece that her name is not Anna but Ida, and that her family is Jewish.

These first few scenes explore the post-war identity of the Polish Catholic church and the remainder of the Jewish population, and reflect on the magnitude of the damage each suffered during the war. Particularly in the areas of Poland annexed by Germany, the Catholic clergy was persecuted  and many convents were closed. Ida shows a convent in disrepair, yet still standing, as the nuns go about their lives much as they did before the war. While the convent may be damaged, Wanda Gruz’s entire way of life is destroyed. Agata Trzebuchowska’s portray of ‘Red’ Wanda, former Soviet prosecutor and dedicated communist, reveals a lonely, disillusioned, and conflicted character.  When Ida appears on her doorstep, her memories of the Jewish community’s fate come rushing back and she begins to relive the pain of her past.

As Ida and Wanda investigate the fate of Ida’s parents, Pawlikowski confronts the troubled relationship between Polish Jews and their Christian neighbors during the Nazi occupation. It is left up to the viewer to decide why the man who was hiding Ida’s parents and Wanda’s son suddenly turned on them and killed them. The man, Feliks, now living in the home of Ida’s parents, displays signs of deep-seated guilt over his part in the death of the previous owners. However, when Feliks makes a deal with Ida to show her her parents’ final resting place, he makes a clear reference to one incentive that caused Poles to turn on their Jewish neighbors: lust for their wealth. In exchange for letting Ida say a final farewell to her parents, he extracts a promise from her never to make a claim on her parents’ property. In spite of his apparent shame and regret, he still falls victim to the same prejudice and greed that likely caused him to become a murderer years before.

Both Feliks’ confession in the graveyard and Wanda’s abrupt suicide bring to the surface the painful process of remembering the terror of wartime. Feliks and Wanda have both blocked out the past and moved on with their lives, only to have their memories brought back to haunt them years later by Ida. Ida also struggles to regain a sense of herself after discovering the split in her identity caused by the war. When she returns to the convent with the intention of taking her vows, she is unable to put aside what she has discovered, and no longer feels ready to become a nun. It is only after a few wild days of high heels, liquor, and intimacy that she feels she has made peace with the part of herself that giggles in the silence of a convent mealtime. All these realizations parallel the conflicts and pain present in Poland even today, as the past continues to resurface and challenge the beliefs of the descendants of an entire generation: Jews, Catholics, and former Communists alike.

Ida gives such complexity to its few characters that it is able to tell many stories and fully express that people can be both good and evil in a myriad of combinations. The film forces the viewer to judge the motivations of the characters through pure observation. We must rely on facial expressions, movements, and whispers instead of dialogue. Those who lived through the war staked their lives on fragmented information, and similarly Ida does not present the viewer with clarity about whom to trust, whom to hate, and whom to love.

Ida is an extraordinary film because of the realistic and understandable way it tells such a complex story. Condensing Polish memory of World War II into 82 minutes and making it accessible to audiences outside Poland is no small task. Every element of the film and every second of the screenplay further the impact of the story. The black and white color scheme, the stationary camera, and the two hairpins holding the wisps of Ida’s hair out of sight under her habit are all imbued with the same question. A question that Poland is still asking as we move into the 21st century: What happened here, and what does it mean for me?