Ice Climber: Future Journalists of America by WhatUpThen

Another weekend, another field trip.

Tomorrow the class is headed out to the aptly-named Dusty Lake. It reminds me of something of the Grand Canyon although I've never been to either place. The power of photography, man. We'll be camping for real this time; the 6-7 adult family tent will accompany me tomorrow. It's much too big, of course, but it's the only one I could scare up from among my friends. It's all good, though...I'll run a hotel for the class, you know?

I've written before about how the UW campus seems to be divided across racial lines. Or at least among the hard-hitters, those students who are active in student organizations and also community and Greek groups. The battle for ASUW office seems to always boil down to the white Greek organizations versus some combination of progressive white students and students of color. I can't even remember what it was like at Stanford. Certainly not as contentious as it is here, but then again, what power did the Stanford student government really have? I suspect that at Stanford there is an overriding sentiment that the school is run as it ought to be and that it is fair for everyone. The concept of Stanford pride and honor is pitched at all times and perhaps all of that pride and gratefulness clouds students' imaginations on how to make things better. Not so at UW, though. This student government has cash, power and influence; it is the flagship institution of the Northwest.

Anyway, let me get to the point. One of the students running for the Director of Diversity Efforts position is Miranda, a young woman I've interacted with often since starting my job. The campus newspaper ran an "endorsement" for Miranda that was neither challenging, nor supportive, nor informative. In fact, it was just racist trash:

"Miranda Bethay as a candidate is like vanilla: Her responses were very standard and she didnt make us want to go out and diversify. When did vanilla get to be such a bad thing? asked our opinion editor. When chocolate was invented, an editorial board member responded. Exactly. We wish we could offer a flavor to the position of diversity efforts, but seeing as Bethay was the only candidate to show up to our forum for an interview, the only choice we can offer is the standard vanilla variety."

Is this a play on Miranda's being half-black and half-white? Is her job to make other people want to diversify? And what kind of ignorant crack is this about vanilla and chocolate? I think it is totally inappropriate to even use euphemisms like that for this particular candidate. If the Daily editor missed that when reviewing this piece then he's a fucking idiot. If he didn't miss the offensive content, then one must wonder why it was allowed to run. Mind you, this isn't the humor paper or conservative rag on campus (not that the nature of the paper would have made it acceptable) but rather the widely-circulated, student-funded and presumably unbiased source for news. These are our future journalists, people. The people writing for the Daily, who chose to deliver a backhanded slap to Miranda instead of offering no endorsement, are the ones the public will rely on in the future to deliver facts about politicians so that we can make the best decisions. I wish I could get angrier at this and I wish more people recognized this when they read it...it's just the sort of unnecessary, "innocent" bullshit that happens every day.

That said, I finally got some photos from the Bachelor Auction. Ignore the dates on the photos; these are from about 3 weeks ago. Did I mention that I went for $20?! Two guys went for less, thankfully for me, but really I could kick anyone's ass who was at that thing. View, enjoy and have a good weekend!