TOW #24 - IRB - Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay’s enticing book Bad Feminist reveals truths in many aspects of our culture.  She covers books, movies, and public figures and examines the way all three of these things affects our culture.  Gay aims to emphasize the inequality minorities face in the public eye.  Not only that, she succeeds in evaluating the good and bad aspects of popular pieces of entertainments.  Through evaluating these pieces, Gay touches on how recognizing injustice can further better our society.

                In an attempt to follow with popular culture, Gay decides to watch Orange is the New Black (OITNB), an extremely popular TV show based on the experiences a woman faced during her time in prison.  At its release, OITNB captivated a large audience, known for its groundbreaking plot and diverse characters, OITNB was praised for its excellency.  Gay agrees, “the show is reasonably well written, there’s a ‘interesting’ premise, and the cast is diverse” (250).  Despite its showcase of several characters, Gay finds this aspect overly repetitive.  Every time someone mentions the show, its diversity never fails to be mentioned.  Laverne Cox and Tanya Wright, actresses on the show, “create beautifully acted scenes that are intimate, bittersweet, and honest” (251).  However, all many can say about the show is remarkably diverse” (251) is it.  Furthermore, with its diversity comes a possibility of mistakes.  For example, “so many opportunities for the show to be truly original and smart are missed by wide margins” (251).  The Haitian character on the show does not even seem Haitian.  Another con with the show is the fact that all of the character revolve around the main, Piper.  Instead, Gay emphasizes the importance of supporting character creating their own solar system, and revolving around their issues rather than another.  Despite the show’s popularity many viewers fall into the trap of recognizing its diversity rather than seeing some of its faults.

                In recognizing the diversity of a show, Gay agrees with its popularity when it was released.  However, now it is all anyone can talk about.  Gay questions the bar set by our culture when it comes to “different” TV shows.  Is a small piece of diversity considered ground breaking, or are our standards for what’s new too low?  Yes, Orange is the New Black is different, and exciting, but one shouldn’t let that overpass the faults in the show itself.  Perhaps seeing these issues can create more shows changing entertainment’s platform, and work towards exposing more racial issues at hand.

TOW #23 - The Seasons Aren't What They Used to Be

Last month the east coast was basking in 70-degree weather, and now snow covers the ground.  At first, early spring seemed glorious, a break from harsh winter chills.  However, this bipolar weather is a tell-tale sign of one of our planet’s biggest threats, global warming.  Scientists have been tracking the change of the seasons for decades now, and it is clear that the seasons have been coming earlier each year.  As David Haskell writes, it is imperative that we pay more attention to the world around us to save future generations from losing the seasonal changes we know now. 

                As a way to raise awareness of the seasonal changes, Haskell uses harrowing facts to reveal the severity of Earth’s situation.  It’s not obvious the planet is changing, spring comes earlier, snow still falls after spring is announced, yet with the help of scientists, the change is increasingly evident.  In fact, “the spring emergence of leaves, frogs, birds and flowers advanced in the Northern Hemisphere by 2.8 days per decade” (3), and for the author, who is around 50 years old, spring has moved forward about 2 weeks in his lifetime.  Spring moving forward has disrupted nature and all of the creatures that rely on seasonal change to survive.  Bears emerge from hibernation early, flowers and other plants grow 2 weeks ahead.  Climate change hasn’t taken the pedestal since the Environmental Movement’s rise in the 60s.  Now more than ever it is becoming more important to combat seasonal change, or at least raise awareness of it.  “Spring came about 20 days early in the Eastern and Midwestern United States” (6), and bird populations are struggling thanks to arriving early and finding out their insect food isn’t there.  All of these problems have “affected 82 percent of the biological processes that underpin all life” (11).  These issues highlighted emphasize the importance of realizing what is wrong with the planet, and how we need to pay more attention in order to fix these problems.

                Our role on this earth when it comes to the environment is to not just be aware of the changes we face.  Instead, we play an essential role in being the ones to change or reverse the issues at hand.  More research and the work of scientists have only revealed the problems at hand, and the next step is to create fixes to these problems.  All together, the idea of fixing our planet better the world for the future.  Though it won’t be our future that we’re working for, instead it is the future generations that have no control over what happens today.

TOW #22 - Want to Fix Schools? Go to the Principal's Office

Schools are composed of various positions and people that all play into the success of their students.  Whether it is teachers, board members, guidance counselors, or principals, they all play a role.  Yet these day teachers seem to be held more responsible for the success of students than other workers.  Although it is obvious teachers are essential to a school’s success, the role of a principal has been overlooked in comparison to a teacher’s.  That is why more schools are beginning to evaluate their principals in addition to other staff members.  By evaluating school principals, schools in states like Chicago have been seen to improve drastically.

In Chicago, a state where success in school has been historically low, new ways of improving schools have led to more success for students.  Chicago has done multiple things in order to improve schools, they have required parents and teachers to evaluate their principals with a survey and also allowed people with various backgrounds to take the position.  The surveys parents and teachers take help the school board “oversee each school and principal” (13).  By examining each principal, which is easier than examining every teacher, the board can hire, fire, or keep the principals of each school.  Through these surveys, a principal’s efficiency and impact on each school is seen.  A principal is one of the highest leaders in the school, they all hold the key to creating a school that teaches its students the curriculum, and also teaches them methods to success, rather than just passing.  Surveys are not the only ways Chicago ha improved their schools.  Principals with nontraditional backgrounds have also been hired.  For example, “Armando Rodriguez, who runs a gleaming new science high school” (22).  He used to be an engineer at Motorola.  Principals who may not have come from common background are not a downfall of schools.  Instead they are able to understand certain subjects better.  Since Rodriquez knows how places like factories work, he has a better understanding of what his students need in his science based school.  A combination of evaluating principals and hiring ones that have knowledge over other subjects have led to great success in Chicago schools.  Students have improved greatly in reading and math, and the graduation rate rose to 85 percent compared to last year’s 74 percent 2012.  When aiming to improve schools, it is important to evaluate the entirely of it, because all staff members intertwine to make students successful.  Overlooking principals has been a mistake too many schools make, and Chicago has been extremely successful in not making it.

TOW #21 - Visual Text - Guerrilla Girls

As a part of the new take home essay, I wanted to evaluate the role art plays in changing the views of society.  One of my examples, The Guerrilla Girls, used public ads to exploit aspects of art.  The Guerilla Girls first appeared in New York City in the 80s.  They kicked off their disobedient movement through protests.  They protested outside of the MoMA, yet had little success.  Now they use shocking statistics to provoke readers into seeing the unfair representation of women in art culture. 

                One of their many ads they’ve created compared 1985 to 2015.  The image features a list of art museums and counted the number of exhibitions women have had in them.  Both dates feature the Museums: Guggenheim, Metropolitan, Modern, and Whitney.  The Guggenheim, Metropolitan, and Whitney count zero exhibitions by women in 1985.  Modern counts one.  30 years later the Guerrilla Girls counted again, in 2015.  Each museum only increased exhibitions by one, Guggenheim, Metropolitan, and Whitney went to a grand total of one, and the Modern a mind blowing two.  The Guerrilla Girls refused to stay quiet about the inequality in the art world, including these blunt statistics allows their viewers to see how incredibly unjust women are treated in society.  Never being featured in museums, never getting recognition and praise for their work, the Guerrilla Girls refused to let this slide by.  Although they were able to expose various art museums, more importantly they are forcing their viewers to reflect.  Reflect on how nothing has changed since the 80s, women are still not being treated equally, despite it being 30 years later.  Disobedient actions like the ones the Guerrilla Girls used inspires public to engage in action.  Encouraging society to fight back against inequality is an important role disobedience plays.  If there were no groups like the Guerrilla Groups pushing society to see harsh truths, change would not happen.