Internet anonymous: explaining the web's caustic environment

Doing it wrong: Adjusting after breaks should involve changing conversations

When you first come to college, the transition period is endlessly discussed. It’s normal to feel homesick or culturally shocked during the beginning of your freshman year. A similar sort of process is also acceptable for those who come back from study abroad. Yet, during Spring Break, it occurred to me that for those of us who go home often for break, no one talks about how difficult it can be to constantly readjust from Bowdoin to home and vice versa.
My Spring Break was considerably relaxed; I spent most of my time eating Chinese take out and watching “Scandal.” However, towards the end of my break I started to feel unusually stressed and irritable. I realized that what was stressing me out were the differences between my life at Bowdoin and my life at home. I had never understood why going home never sat well with me considering I loved spending time with my family and friends. But there is something to be said for the toll that continuously adjusting to different environments takes on many people at Bowdoin.
The adjustment that affects me personally at Bowdoin is the ease of life here. When I’m at school, all I have to do for meal times is swipe my OneCard at the dining hall and there is an array of food available to me.
I don’t have to walk to the supermarket, worry about how much money is in my bank account, or make sure that I make dinner before my parents get home. If I want to hang out with my friends late at night, I only have to walk a couple of minutes to their dorm room. I don’t need to take the subway and worry about being a young girl alone in New York City. I don’t need to worry about constantly entertaining myself—there is enough work, events and extracurricular life to do that. At Bowdoin, I am often able to forget that I am vulnerable, poor and unsure of myself.
But this attitude is sometimes hard to preserve. And for the times when I am not able to forget some of these things, it is not easy to talk about them. For some reason, I don’t feel as comfortable tackling economic privilege in a conversation with my friends as I do with other heavy topics like race and gender. I almost feel like I’m at the dinner table in Downton Abbey, and it would be out of the question to talk about wealth. It shouldn’t be that way. There should be a space for students to express their feelings on economic privilege.
Living in a place with so much wealth can be difficult when you know that at a certain point, you have to go back to a very different situation. The more comfortable people feel to talk about an issue that is important to them, the less it will strain them.
Bowdoin should try to tackle this by educating more students about the reality of economic privilege, to show students who deal with this issue that their troubles are important, and to make students attuned to these issues so that they can better understand their fellow students. Adjusting to a new home is a great deal easier when you don’t feel like you have to hide certain parts of yourself to get by.

Doing it wrong: Crises in cultural identity reflect past and present injustices

One of the three essay topics in Bowdoin’s supplement to the Common Application has to do with the applicant’s connection to a place. I have always felt connected to the city I grew up in, but being a person of color who is constantly asked “where I’m from” (whatever that means), I always felt as though I was supposed to be connected to somewhere else.
This summer, I took a trip with my parents to Puerto Rico, where my paternal ancestry supposedly lies. I was lucky enough to be able to spend time with my great-grandmother, stay in the house her late husband built, and look through photos of my older family members in their youthful prime. I met so many people who told me fantastical tales of my family that I felt like I was in a Gabriel García Márquez novel.
Yet I have felt uneasy with the idea that I am “from” this place. Looking at the different shades of my family members, I have wondered how far back I would have to go in our lineage to figure out if we were related to the colonists or the colonized, the enslaved or the slave owners? It probably wasn’t just one or the other.
As a child growing up in a racist society, I wanted to hinder my color. I wanted to seem as white as possible. I used to rationalize to myself that because I was a relatively “lighter” person of color, I was probably more related to Spaniards than African slaves or Taino Indians. And that made me feel better about my identity. I obviously now realize how backwards and screwed up this mentality was. But this state of mind still exists in many communities, and its remnants within me are troubling.
As I’ve matured, I have come to accept and embrace my identity as a person of color and mixed ethnicity to the point that I resent the colonial history of the places I am from. It disturbs me that the name of my great-grandfather’s hometown in is a Spanish name, that I have to speak the language of conquistadors, and that my mother follows a Christian religion which was violently imposed on her ancestors. These circumstances are not just facts of history, they are also incidents of trauma. And the trauma did not end after Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America gained their “independence.”
I don’t know the facts and figures of the Puerto Rican economy. I’ve heard that it’s relatively “high income.” But it is still a place with poor masses—men selling mangoes on every block, beggars outside of Walgreens, and people working odd jobs to make ends meet. People exoticize this tiny island; tourists fly in and stay at resorts and never really understand the reality of the place. It is important to realize that other countries are not your playground nor your charity case—they deserve the freedom to be autonomous entities.
Things in Puerto Rico are not cheap. Gas is expensive and fresh produce is especially pricey. Fast food is everywhere and people readily support those establishments.
The Westernization of the island is especially disturbing because of how easily it is accepted. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth and, the way I see it, it is practically as colonized as it was when the Spaniards were in control. The people of Puerto Rico are used as a vehicle for Western interests. I couldn’t feel the strong connection to this island that I always yearned for when I visited because I was born in a place that profits from and actively contributes to its poverty and idleness.
What is necessary in places like Puerto Rico is recognition of how the people have been wronged throughout history. So many countries cannot sustain themselves in this world economy because none of what they produce is for themselves. Puerto Ricans are made to feel grateful that they can freely enter the U.S., but don’t realize that they sacrifice so much freedom in their own country.
The processes of exploitation, racism and colonialism do not go away with time. We don’t live in a post-racial or post-colonial society. We still live in a society that is designed to make the historically underprivileged fail. Those issues will become undone with honesty and dialogue, with a realization that things must change with thoughtful action.

Doing it wrong

Internet anonymous: explaining the web's caustic environment

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

April 24, 2014

The advent of social media makes anonymous activity exceedingly easy. It is no secret that people will often say things under the veil of anonymity that they would never say under their own name. College “confessions” pages like Bowdoin Confess and Words from the Bubble are just the latest means of providing anonymous commentary on campus.

One might think that providing an anonymous outlet increases and improves dialogue on campus. Finally, a place where students can say whatever they want with no consequences or judgment! I’d argue this is not the case. Anonymity, when coupled with a lack of accountability, does not improve dialogue in any real way.

While it is true that confessions pages can uncover real, problematic issues on campus like race and sexual assault, anonymity dilutes these issues. Real arguments should be brought up by people who care enough about them to stand by them. Submitting an anonymous confession allows people to make public whatever is on their mind, and then forget that it was ever said. Sure, the experience might be cathartic, but it does more damage than good.

Anonymity takes away the biggest leverage we have when we speak up for ourselves—our humanity. Talking about an issue face to face does so much more than an anonymous complaint. It’s hard to care about an issue made public by an anonymous website when I can’t put a face on that person. How can there be dialogue with a faceless entity? When you remove your personhood from your opinion, you remove any possibility for understanding. There is no means for your opinion to be clarified, defended, altered, or put into any context. Sure, other commenters can come to your defense, but they are not on any realistic level a spokesperson for an anonymous confession.

When important dialogues at Bowdoin are not trivial, the same voices are always represented. This community cannot afford to lose important arguments and opinions to petty confessions pages. Bowdoin students should be comfortable creating a space for their opinions, politically correct or not. The only way to understand each other and our environment is through meaningful dialogue. That doesn’t happen when we hide behind our computer screens.

Furthermore, anonymity gives people the means to say things that should not be said in public—things that hurt and insult individual people. These types of statements do not create dialogue, and anonymous message boards should provide the filter that these submitters did not have. Well thought out and earnest opinions should be encouraged. Purposefully insensitive and demeaning language does not have a place in this community.

It is not the easiest thing in the world to state an opinion, especially a controversial one. Society makes many people feel as if their thoughts are invalid or inconsequential, and the potential for backlash is frightening. I am wary and self-conscious about what I write in this column, and the feedback has not always been pleasant. But the sacrificial nature of speaking up for what we believe in, and the willingness to face opposition, is what gives our words power.

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