It's got a complex

"What are the messages of your U and its stated purpose?
They obviously want as much money as they can get from me and I think they're in a conspiratory relationship with Sallie Mae, Mohela, Bank of America and CitiBank."

The student who gave me this quote was obviously kidding, with a residual anger behind her words. At the time I thought this was a nice bit of humor, the same kind which has threaded through some of my interviews. The most rewarding part of this piece of text is that three weeks after I conducted the interview, the story broke that administrators high up in the financial aid departments of USC, Columbia and the University of Texas held stocks in the lenders they had been referring to students. The story follows below:

http://www.examiner.com/a-656872~Officials_at_Columbia__USC__UT_owned_stock_in_preferred_lenders.html

Here is another, from the New York Times, about Sallie Mae donating money to high school students for loan education programs. Ted Kennedy has high hopes for it. Kind of like when Phillip Morris gave money for kids' anti-smoking campaigns. Of course, my student loans are through Sallie Mae (quite the matronly name) too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/education/11loanscnd.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin

In addition to this, I stumbled across an author whose been writing on the funding of universities themselves. Jennifer Washburn wrote a book called University Inc: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, which is an indictment of the lack of accountability of the way private money shapes the institutions. Pick up a copy of it if you can.

The Problem with Sexy

"Seeing all these kids well-off, it's almost sexy."

"[Sociology]'s not a sexy major, like film."

"It's slick."

Are the webpages sexy? The ones I've listed below are particularly attractive, they're dynamic, they move with well-groomed kids, often with shots of a bustling city and a nicely manicured campus. How do we determine whether they are a reality or just one of noam's necessary illusions that keep the wheels spinning? Sexy. The campus is desireable for what it can do. Or what it seems like it can do. If it's that different here, I'm not sure, but people don't come here for the degree, but for the social life. The interviews have fleshed that observation out pretty well.

The simulacra of schools. The coverage of the university on its website is kin to CNNs presentation of the first gulf war, as analyzed by Baudrillard. We accept the images, the words as representative of education, as we accepted the video game graphics of warfare for the blood and dust of desert combat. Click on BU's website. Or University of Vermont's. Ball State apparently has their own weblog, titled "Real Life at Ball State." The pages move with grace. It is a simulation of school, created to represent the university's reality, a simulation to touch and believe. It's a melding of popular technology, web 2.0, and the designated spirit of a new generation. Interdiscursivisity at its very best.

The amount of truth in any of these web pages is up for dispute. Most of the journals written for Ball State are specifically set up to flesh out what the school is, but they are written with a style too close to the promotional genre to believe entirely.

Lauren, for example, portraying a legitimate student:

"Now I am taking 5 real classes… no fun class for me:( I usually take one to keep my sanity, but it’s not going to happen next semester… well, unless you count the one I am “teaching” - that should be fun. Yikes, I’m a real senior next year! Where the heck did college go?"

That's a lot of information in a little block of text. Listed are the average number of classes a person takes (and apparently how many real ones are too many). This much stimulating education is to make me sad.

:(

She also mentions one of the opportunities available, like "teaching,"-- made ambiguous by the quotation marks. Though she assures us that it will not be dreary-- perhaps like some of the other class offerings-- and be a 'neat' alternative. Some expected reflections are characterized by the whimsical "time flies, I'm growing up." Exclamation point. She's a real senior as opposed to a pauper and will experience the joy of a minor mental breakdown as a result. The style of writing itself is approachable and most of her entries read with a wide-eyed enthusiasm about the school. This text is even tageed with the cold-war vernacular "heck" and "yikes!' for ultimate appeal and cuteness. archie is around the corner as well, hands in his pockets and kicking the ground, groaning an "aw shucks." It's obvious they picked these representatives for a reason, and I can only imagine the selection process. Because most of the entries are also highly promotional of the school, they evoke Fairclough's concern where the people reading fluff won't know if it's just friendly or also borderline manipulative.

I got a comment on this piece, asking me how else these things are supposed to be written. They're supposed to be informational, after all, and they are trying to offer a perspective on the school. The problem is that it's the perspective of the school. I was told that things have to be written this way. Which is true. It's just asking if this is acceptable, not if it's necessary. I obviously don't deny that schools provide an education on some level. Public schools need to support themselves some how or prove that they're worth the support they're getting. Private colleges need their donors. It's in the literature. Each facet of a school is a selling point and if it doesn't bring in money, it has no use. More on this later.

Before I post what's at stake for the student or their role as a participant of a hiearchy, I want to share something about today. I went into the facilities department at Chapman, where the workers are handymen and people who make sure this school doesn't burn to the ground from an electrical fire. They are as important to sustaining this school as any other part.

On a memo on their clip board was an advisement encouraging them to use the breakroom area for their lunch, and that it might be unseemly for them to congregate in groups of "more than 3" anywhere on campus that is not a university event. They are not to make themselves known on campus as anything but people driving carts and working, for anything else would break the delicate surface of the illusion. And the simulacra loses its appeal.

The problem with sexy is that it only last for so long and keeping up the presentation is more work than it is worth. Sexy exploits more than it attracts and the most important people suffer from this denial.

2 am

I'm apparently supposed to present in 10 days. April 19th. I thought this would be okay at first, but the workload this week is heavy. Nick wants some sort of draft due Thursday, and after working on this for 3 hours a day all of spring break, I have no desire to turn anything in. I finished semi-transcribing the interviews and am going through some screenshots from the website pages. It's two in the morning and I can't sleep because of the anxiety. It's almost done, but there's so much that has left me disappointed. Sometimes I love this project, many times I hate it and am still trying to figure out what the whole purpose of it is and if anybody is going to care. Is it going to really matter if people know they're segmented and sold to? People still buy Coke and Nike.

Prof (not Nick) has said this was one of the most complex projects she's seen, before it degenerated out of a lack of inspiration. Now it just seems like a standard treatise on the failures of capitalism. Thesis class is lethargic and drags. We're too concerned with our own projects to really pay attention to other people's, and I'm guily of this as well. Either that or it's a similar pattern of editing as last semester that I'm going through. It's been difficult to explain the feedback I've gotten; it's like when a parent looks at an painting their kid made that they don't quite understand and all they can say is "interesting" with a passing glance. It wouldn't be such a big deal if the comments made didn't make it seem so pointless or self-indulgent.

This week is hard. Next week is worse. Draft posted by Friday.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6080572

oh what the hell:
Do you think I can use this as part of a literature review?

"Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is."

I miss Noam Chomsky.