In “The Big Uneasy,” by Nathan Heller, many different opinions about student activism are acknowledged. Heller specifically talks to students and faculty from Oberlin College located in Ohio. Heller doesn’t mention much about his own opinions on the issues discussed, he just mentions a bunch of other conflicting ideas and then leaves it up to the reader to determine what they want from the interviews that he conducted. I think that the main issue of this article was where to draw the line when it comes to student activism. If you’re too hard on the students then they will fight back, however, if you’re too easy on students then they’re not being challenged enough.
“A president’s job is to push past contradictions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The institutions that give many people a language and a forum to denounce injustice are, inevitable, the nearest targets of their criticism.”
Heller
The whole point of college is to challenge its students. Heller mentions that there are some people who believe that if a college protects its students from unwelcome ideas, then that college isn’t doing its job in preparing its students for the real world. I’ve heard this term “real world” so many times in my college career and I have yet to fully grasp its concept. What is the real world and what makes it so different from college? What will happen if students don’t face enough challenges in college and are then thrown into the real world? I don’t know if I agree with this huge distinction between college life and the real world because it almost diminishes all the experiences that students have during college. What you face during school aren’t “real” challenges. However, Heller mentions some examples of students who facing some very real challenges.
One student, Megan Bautista shares that exposing herself to opinions that were different from her own just exhausted her. She tried to engage in activism outside of campus but due to the impact on her grades, this idea quickly fizzled. Students tried to compromise with the college asking for activism to be looked at like a job that should be paid, or by having a minimum grade that the college couldn’t go below while their students were involved in activism outside of campus. These ideas were rejected and students felt like they had to choose one over the other because doing both seemed impossible.
“Today they are told that they belong there, but they also must take on an extracurricular responsibility: doing the work of diversity.”
Heller
There are students who feel like they aren’t being reflected in their college community. Jasmine Adams leads a discussion about Oberlin’s indifference towards racial oppression. Adams, as well as other students, bring up the issue that they feel like they are being forced to conform to the standards of their college and these standards don’t reflect what they have experienced in the real world. They aren’t going to change who they are for four years of their life just to satisfy the college’s expectations.
The problems that students are facing on campus extend to the faculty as well. One teacher, Wendy Kozol, had to disband the class because the class seated themselves by race and weren’t communicating with each other. Another teacher, Roger Copeland, who has been teaching at Oberlin for over 40 years, noticed that his teaching style wasn’t being well received by his students recently. He spoke sharply to a student once who reported to the dean that Copeland was creating “a hostile and unsafe learning environment.”
Heller mentions a lot of different views about student activism that all seem validated. It’s hard to organize my own thoughts on this idea because I feel like in order to understand what’s happening, I have to respond to each individual that’s mentioned. There are a lot of issues that are talked about that seem circumstantial, but bring each issue to light and the school is having to deal with students clashing with teachers, teachers clashing with students, and students clashing with students. Which, I guess is all ok, if the point of college is to challenge its students right?
E367: Writing and Diversity 
I agree Bridget. I thoroughly enjoyed your piece about Heller. Heller speaks about students and their abilities/challenges in college and relating them to real world. I found this interesting because this ties into our discussion that we had in class on Monday. It ties in well the whole bragging rights idea and producing a label through literacy. This leads me to my point that often times I think that schools are lacking to provide the literacy to students of being able to deal with real work life problems, for example something like losing a job, working in big cities, and so on. These are things that are realistic and things that we are not so called “literate” with in college. So maybe school could be one big scam? It’s hard to decide.
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Bridget,
Like John (above), you seem to feel a little flummoxed by the wild range of opinions at Oberlin that Heller documents. I get that. But what I like most about your response is your questioning of the difference between “college” and the “real world”. Are all of we college types—both students and teachers—simply waiting around, practicing, getting ready for the “real” thing? My own view is that life after college does not get much “realer”—unless you view college as a four-year vacation paid for by Mommy and Daddy. What I like about the students in Heller’s piece is that none of them seem to view their undergraduate years that way—they want what they’re doing to count, in the present time. But at the same point, they all seem more able to “protest”—to object, to criticize—than to actually communicate. Which seems to suggest that Oberlin isn’t doing its job, which would involve teaching students how to engage with difference, rather than simply confront it.
Joe
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Hey Bridget, I find a lot of value in your critique of using the terminology “in the real world.” You bring up great points, such as if the experiences we have in college are so different than those of the “real world,” the benefit of receiving those experiences is somehow grayed or blurred. At the same time, I do feel as though college experiences shape who we are and how we view things (though with or without college experiences, it is possible to be a well-rounded individual). The experiences that are “real” challenges in the “real world” happen to people whether they’re in college or not. It’s the deciding what to do with the knowledge gained from these experiences that is most important.
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Bridget,
First of all, I really enjoyed reading your response. What you have to say is very well written and easy to follow. I especially loved when you talked about the “real world.” I hate when older adults try to tell me about this “real world” that I will apparently experience day. If I’m not currently living in this “real world,” then where have I been living all of these years? Mars?
Obviously, living as an adult on a college campus and living as an adult post graduation are two different lifestyles, however, as you mention, both lifestyles have a set of challenges. Dismissing the challenges of a college student is ineffective and unproductive. I am tired of adults (the “real adults” living in the “real world”) acting as though people are engaged in some kind of Suffering Olympics. Why can’t people acknowledge that problems other than their own exist?
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