WEEKLY WHINE

Violent agreement

The current issue of Ms magazine contains an article about undergraduate "life" at Caltech. I put the word life in quotation marks because the life described by the author, a graduate student, does not seem to be an accurate reflection of the lives that we undergraduates live. Here, I'll show you:

"...there are still urinals in some women's bathrooms." I wouldn't know.

"Caltech is fond of bragging that U.S. News and World Report ranked it the best university in the nation in 2000." That's certainly true.

"Caltech is overwhelmingly white and male." This I disagree with. "Overwhelmingly" implies at least 75% white and at least 75% male. Unfortunately, I've got statistics only for the class of 2003, though I suspect that the results aren't that different when taken amongst the entire undergrad population. In any case, these statistics say that the class of 2003 is 35% female and only 51% white. I don't know the statistics amongst graduate students or faculty either, but I have been told that these populations are indeed more white and more male than the undergrad population, by a substantial margin. Nonetheless, since much of the subsequent discussion relates to undergraduates, this statement is misleading.

"Shortly after arriving on campus, I started hearing about the bizarre undergraduate phenomenon called glomming, which involves a man or a group of men stalking a woman, usually a first-year student." Glomming is bizarre, I'll agree with that. And I'll certainly say that it's a phenomenon. But by no means is it restricted to the undergraduates, or indeed to Caltech. It is a serious social problem throughout the world. The term glomming is frequently defined as "unwanted attention". This may include stalking, but the term can be - and often is - applied to less extreme behaviour, usually trying to do things for someone who doesn't want things done.

"But glomming remains a big part of undergraduate culture, and too many people don't take it seriously." This may well be. But if it is, why is there nearly universal condemnation of the phenomenon amongst the undergrads? No clear-thinking person would even attempt to justify such behaviour. Regardless of whether you consider Caltech undergrads clear thinking, one does indeed observe that very few, if any, undergrads consider glomming an acceptable activity. A story - any story - about a glommer - any glommer - is met with universal revulsion in my experience.

"A male graduate student got very defensive when I referred to glomming as stalking. He told me glomming was 'normal and natural' behavior." Who is this creep?!

"And I know men at Caltech who have taken ideas like these to their logical conclusion and argued that rape is 'natural' behavior." In an enlightened society wherein all citizens have equal opportunities to live their lives as they see fit, rape is a serious crime, as it should be. If one finds people who disagree with this, should that be taken as evidence of a culture that condones rape? Certainly not. Is the author trying to imply that these people are representative of the Caltech population as a whole, or even of the undergrads?

"I'm surprised at how some undergraduate women play down glomming and make excuses for it." I haven't come across any undergraduate women who play down glomming and make excuses for it. Indeed, I'm surprised at how some graduate women play up glomming and make it some great phemonenon that pervades all aspects of undergraduate life at all hours of the day and under any circumstances. This form of logic resembles the old story about someone who reads an article about a person who died when a hair dryer fell into the bathtub. How do you prevent that? Stop taking baths.

This was followed by a couple of anecdotes about misogynistic events that have evidently taken place at Caltech. They appear to be before my time, so I will claim ignorance and withhold comment. Then, the article moves on to commentary about some of the undergrad hovses.

"Take Page House." Please!

"Last year, according to our student newspaper The California Tech, Page House had to remove its Web site from Caltech's server because the administration had received complaints about sexually explicit photos." Sexually explicit photos? That's the best you can do? A sexually explicit photo is just that: sexually explicit. That may be distasteful to some, but isn't any form of expression distasteful to someone? If all parties depicted in the photograph are willing to have it posted on the house website, what is the problem?

"Then there's Ruddock House, which publishes a satirical newsletter featuring crude sex jokes, and in the past also has included pornographic material." Is the author trying to say that crude sex jokes and pornographic material are somehow intolerable on a college campus? I'd say that a publisher of crude sex jokes is guilty of nothing more than poor taste; there are plenty of more effective ways of evoking laughter than cheap jokes involving words such as ass. The article here seems to be favoring some form of censorship, wherein a group of students is denied the right to generate reading material simply because someone somewhere finds it offensive.

"What strikes me most about the newsletter is how it is so clearly written by men, for men." Why? Are there no women capable of making crude sex jokes and including pornographic material? Is this strictly the realm of the male gender? I fear that the author has implicitly stereotyped women as being fragile and delicate, unable to bear the slightest hint of sexuality. The Victorian-era image of the woman is that of an asexual being, but it doesn't seem to ring true. As the author points out, denying something's existence will not make it go away. Sex exists. And it isn't just men who have it; about half of all people who have sex are female. One need not take a very careful look around before one sees women who have embraced all aspects of themselves, including their sexuality.

I must say here that I found this article offensive in that it did not even attempt to characterize the whole of Caltech's undergraduate population. Instead, it made gross exaggerations based upon a small number of incidents and testimonials. It is particularly surprising to see such journalism emanating from a research institution, where so much emphasis is placed upon peer review. Had this article been peer reviewed by Caltech undergrads, the referees would have rejected it for publication, demanding a more diverse set of sources.

One person brought this article to my attention several days ago, and two others have started a petition stating that the article "misrepresented life at California Institute of Technology for both undergraduate women and men". I found it particularly telling that all three of these people are female. As the article stated, "There's a lot of denial about what's happening to women on campus." However, these same women, to whom this is supposedly happening, feel otherwise. Furthermore, their feelings are strong enough that they are now seeking to prevent outsiders from misrepresenting their position. The implication is clear: Female students do not need protection from male students, from the administration, or from the outside.