Whose Responsibility is a Collegiate Overthrow?

In Virginia Woolf’s manifesto for gender-based equality, Three Guineas, she challenges contemporary universities—age-old institutions of higher learning, competition, and economic viability—because of their exclusion of all women, deconstructing their very foundations and scribing new blueprints of a more just, more powerful educational sub-society, one that would train all of its students in the arts of both intellectual curiosity and ethical behavior. However, in proposing her ideations of an “experimental college,” she fails to enumerate communal ramifications for straying from her individual didactic stipulations, thus eliminating the possibility for any future positive collegiate universalism (Woolf 43).

Allocating War’s Advantages to a Future of Cross-Cultural Activism

In Paul Saint-Amour’s introduction to Tense Future, he depicts a disheartening view of what many imagine to be peacetime prosperity by imposing on it the terrible ramifications of war: a communal, never-ending fear of death and destruction, thus asserting that the mere existence of past war-related trauma inevitably refutes any future public declaration that peace—an impossible “refuge from anxiety and history”—will ever arrive (Saint-Amour 10). Indeed, relying on Lewis Mumford, he insists that anticipating future violence is comparable to dying “a thousand deaths” (qtd. in Saint-Amour 7). Furthermore, Saint-Amour expands upon his conclusions of peacetime’s ultimate bane: “The warning is the war; the drill and the raid are one” (Saint-Amour 13).

Reconsidering our Allegiance to Modern Social Technology

In Professor Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk, “Connected, but alone?” she grapples with the central paradox of the modern influx of social networking technology across nearly every living generation: what has originally assisted us in connecting with other people may ironically lead to the demise of our socialization altogether. Unfortunately, specifically in the Millennial generation, her contention about our seemingly unending use of cellphones and social media may be correct, and the repercussions of our reliance on technology as a substitute for genuine human connection may be catastrophic. Indeed, as its impacts transcend far beyond merely the avenues through which we send and receive basic information, our contemporarily proliferative use of social media may lead to such cruel ramifications as both decayed conversational skills and marred interpersonal relationships.

A Reflection on Now

In such a time of rapid changes, endings, and beginnings, I continue, for as long as I can, to repeat old customs (visiting teachers, still attending classes, extending my final goodbyes to my contrabassoon—and soon my bassoon, as well), and I slowly begin to grapple with the once-reverie of a new life style, a new community, and a newly strained network of friends from home, planning my future years partially to be a continuation of my last, only hoping that my goals and aspirations for college are those that I want due to their intrinsic value, rather than their mere resemblance of my old self, of the habits with which I've become comfortable. I hope that a break from this transition—my journey to work on an organic farming cooperative in southern France—will prove to provide me learning, "experience," and some guidance for my (hopefully successful) continuation of this transition, but, in fact, I'm consciously aware that these are only my desires, and that time's forward progression will be the only factor in truly determining how I choose to be. So, for now, I wait, delighting in the smiles and photos and hugs and final goodbyes I exchange, confident, unprepared, yet seemingly ready for whatever I face in the months and years ahead.

To Utilize our Privileges for the Betterment of Humanity: A Discussion of Howard Zinn's "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress"

In Howard Zinn’s “Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress,” he explores three main ideas, using the early European conquest of America as a case study: the lack of an American “national interest”; the oppressors’ role in deciding events of historical merit; and that in times of sacrifice for innovation, historians must always firstly look to the oppressed peoples for proper justification. In discussing an “American national interest,” Zinn argues that although “governments, conquerors, diplomats, [and] leaders” throughout history have contended that the existence of a “national interest” is the excuse for their subjugation of others, “nations are not communities and never have been”; ergo, as nation-states rarely ever look after the interests of their entire populace, it is imperative for onlookers to trust both the stories of the conquerors and the conquered, in order to develop a truer sense of the past. Additionally, Zinn contends that history mustn’t be decided by oppressors, but instead through scrutinizing a variety of contemporaneous perspectives. Be the societies or sub-societies the native Americans, the New York Irish, the industrial-age women, the socialists, or the national Islamic community, rarely ever have a conquered society’s writings entirely vanished, and it is to any critically thinking person’s advantage to explore the punishments of the past in order to ruminate on new ideas for post-modern political ideologies. Lastly, Zinn declares that, in times of sub-communal sacrifice for innovation, the privileged minority executing new “national” policies must consult the damned communities within its midst, for he argues that we, as people, may never maintain “the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not as nearly clear or present as sickness or health, life or death.” While Zinn utilizes the early conquest of the Native American populations as a case study for each of his ideas, these lessons ultimately apply to most, if not all, of history and contemporary political affairs, stemming from the early subjugation of Native Americans to the present proliferate use of styrofoam, ultimately pulling us to form our own conclusions towards behaving justly and utilizing our privileges for the betterment of humanity.