Insult and Injury

This semester, the University of Louisville has made several decisions that dramatically decrease the quality of experience for their students. From small irritants to serious changes, these policies all serve to make students feel unwelcome on campus.

First, the smallest irritant. The university spent a huge sum of money building a new natatorium. The building is nice and the pool is wonderful, record numbers of students are signing up for water classes, and the swim team is frequently making the press. The issue? The towels. The school provides towels for swimmers, but if you are taking a class. (i.e. If you are a student, not an alumni or athlete, then you get a dishtowel.) If you are an alumni or guest swimmer, you get a large, fluffy spa towel. Just another small way students are reminded that the university will never put us first.

Second is the student body's understandable outrage over the new "student health" fee. It works like this. If you are a UofL student, and you don't have health insurance, the university required you to pay an additional $100 a semester for student health services. It doesn't matter if you never use the student health center, if you live off campus, if you already have a preferred healthcare provider, or if are so poor that you are eligible for county assistance through the health department. UofL wants your money. And (and this is where the insult comes in), if you actually use the service you are being required to pay for, you will be charged office fees anyway!

The student health fee is particularly egregious because it disproportionately affects poorer students- those more likely to have chosen a state college for financial reasons and more likely to be struggling to find resources to finish. Added to the fees for the new career center, the hike in printing costs, the disgusting amount students pay for textbooks, and the repeated double decimal rise in tuition rates, this "health" fee is a harsh reminder that despite the university's claims to be a student focused not-for-profit organization, it's actually a money-grubbing institution that views students as cash-cows.

And last comes that perennial issue, parking. Now, I don't mind parking at the stadium, and I appreciate UofL's partnership with TARC, but parking fees are going up and parking places are on the decline. The City of Louisville, perhaps taking its cue from the university, is also working to make students feel unwelcome, reducing public street parking in areas surrounding the campus. UofL has turned 2 more parking lots into mud zones- apparently, according the signs, in order to build yet another athletic building.

It is also noteworthy the number of students who have paid for the higher cost parking permits who are still parking at the stadium because the university grossly oversold its upperclassman and resident parking passes. That's right. Even students who pay to live on campus are parking out by the football stadium. Too bad the school's TARC busses stop running before 10 pm.

Basically, the university is doing everything in its power to siphon more money out of students, to make them feel unwelcome on campus, and to create an environment where graduation is difficult, students are powerless, and poorer students get left behind. Two years ago, I would have recommended the University of Louisville to anyone. Today, I'd tell them to apply elsewhere.

Thank you, UofL, for making me feel like I'm getting mugged everyday I'm on campus.

Thank You for Talking

Earlier this week my husband and I watched Thank You for Smoking, a witty, vicious little movie about spin. The movie follows the life of a fictional lobbyist for the tobacco industry named Nick Nailer (played by Aaron Eckhart). He narrates the story as well as living in the action.

I was intrigued by the movie because it is about a totally morally bankrupt character surrounded by other morally bankrupt characters. They are not inhumanized or villianized, particularly; they just go about their daily lives with little regard to the consequences of their actions and absolutely no sense of personal responsibility.

I enjoyed the movie because it wasn't a triumph of the better human qualities or a story about a Scrooge-like change of heart. Nailer simply goes on about his business of defending corporations with no introspection what-so-ever. In fact, none of the characters ever have a moment when they exam their lives and their motives.

The movie was funny, in that brutal, honest, and mean sort of way.

What makes it worth writing a post about however, is my curiosity as to how audiences perceived the film.

Did they share my horrified amusement at a character who really is utterly amoral? I suspect that the answer is "No."

See, Thank You for Smoking pretends to be a redemption story. It neatly follows the arc we all expect to see from a story about a man's enlightenment. He is alienated and reunited with his son. He confronts someone who is directly affected by his work, and he loses everything when someone more ruthless than he is sells him out.

And I suspect that many viewers took the story at face value, and failed to recognize that the redpemption in this film is a farce.

The movie neatly skewers the genre- the character makes a dramatic "courtroom" stance, and then, when faced with reporters and an offer to take back his own life, he turns it down.

But, unlike Scrooge and countless other such tales, we get to see the rest of the story, and the rest of the story is that the character doesn't change. In fact, except for the name on his office door, nothing changes.

And that is the point of the film.

Breaking Free from the Cycle

Lookie here, some commercial bastard has decided to create a magazine to undo 100 years of the women's movement and use its sexist premises to sell us things based on our "natural rythmns".

As if it's not bad enough to create a magazine claiming that women are ruled by their uterii, this fucker also reinforces the women should be spending their time, since each week of our cycles is broken down into the categories: Shopping, Food, Travel, and DIY (the DIY is the typical Cosmo "selfhelp" crap, btw). How exciting. Nowhere in there is the things I'd like to see like

Week 2: Exciting
This would be the best time to stage your carefully planned hostile takeover of yet another company.

Nope, it's Here's how to remodel your bathroom!!

I have a fucking brilliant idea, how about we get past the stage where we assume that women's uterii float around their body fucking up their ability to think logically and act normal? I know it's goddam radical, but really, it's time we moved on.

How about we stop subverting women's self esteem, security, and rightful place as half of the human race to the almighty dollar?

You know what? Men have crappy days. They have times of the month when they feel lethargic or pissy. Do you know what we call that? Nothing. We just accept that a guy is having a down day and move on. When women have the same thing, we call it abnormal. Know why? Because we have set men up as the goddam standard of "normal" for the entire history of the study of biological science.

Move on, people. There's nothing to see here except the tatters of Victorianism that still bind us to patriarchy wrapped neatly in the commercial need to undermine women in order to make them buy crap.

How about we just live everyday and stop pretending we need someone else to tell us what we need to be happy?