asociologyclassblog

[asociologyclassblog]

Activity Posting 4: Option D: Make a Friend from a Different Background

I actually did this one on accident, but it’s the one I’m choosing to write about. I downloaded Tinder at the beginning of the school year because I was bored and it was difficult to socialize and meet new people during a pandemic. I eventually matched with a girl with the person this is about, and we’ve grown quite close rather quickly. Let’s call her X for the sake of anonymity. I grew up in a working-class family, my brothers and I were taught not to ask for too much, mostly because my parents couldn’t provide much more than necessities. We were taught that jobs weren’t meant to be glamorous or necessarily enjoyable, but that you need to work for what you get in life. I will graduate with around 40 thousand dollars’ worth of debt, although hopefully that shouldn’t be too much of a problem as a prospective engineer, and I don’t really have a fallback plan if I’m unable to make it as an engineer for some reason. I would probably go work construction; it’s much harder work for much less pay than an engineer but it’s what I did for a couple years before returning to school so I know I could do it.

X, however, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago. She told me once that when her grandparents died, her father receive roughly four million dollars in inheritance, and it didn’t change their life in the slightest. She estimates that her parents each make over 700 thousand dollars a year, and that she and her brother will each inherit several million when her parents pass away—a day she is dreading, because she would have no idea what to do with that much money nor does she really want to have that much. Her parents gave her a bank account with her name that she can access once she graduates that probably has about 300 grand in it—her brother used the money to buy a brand-new house and car after graduating. Her parents also secured her brother a good job at the national lab in Chicago where both her parents work; she has said she would likely also have that option if she simply asked, although it’s not what she wants to do. Her parents pay for her school, her house, her car, give her an allowance for food, and, if you ask about almost anything she owns, she’ll say it was a gift from family or friends and that she has bought almost none of it—with the stuff she has at Houghton being only a small portion of her stuff and the rest of it back in Chicago, almost all of which was also a gift.

It is at this point that I should mention that X is an absolutely wonderful person and I adore her dearly. She is neither entitled nor materialistic, and in fact finds having so much stuff a bit stressful; she’s said she doesn’t have a clue what she would do with that much money and that she doesn’t want to find out. Most of her stuff was a gift and almost all of it is stuff that she didn’t ask for: “both of my parents’ love language is gift-giving.” She estimates she has approximately 40 designer brand cashmere sweaters. Nobody in their right mind would ask for that. Her mother will give gifts of name-brand or designer clothes to her romantic partners, her brother’s roommate, and others just because it brings her mother joy. Nothing I say is an indictment against X; she simply was lucky enough to win big in the lottery of birth circumstance.

I can’t help but feel a bit envious when she talks about having these experiences, knowing that she has received all of these advantages based on nothing more than circumstance of her birth. I feel guilty for being envious. I know it isn’t her fault she has gotten to live such a privileged life, and it isn’t a character flaw for her having made use of it—it would be incredibly stupid of her to not utilize the advantages she’s been given—but it’s impossible not to notice the inherent unfairness of life when she tells a story about how she can call home because she had $12,000 in veterinarian bills and her mother paid it off with their credit card because they decided that they wanted the points, especially because that’s about half of what your mother makes in a year. I feel especially guilty because I know she has on a few occasions mentioned being physically abused when she was younger and has discussed at length all the systems she created and hassle she would go through to keep her parents oblivious about her personal life throughout middle and high school. Another circumstance of birth which was out of her control.

I cannot relate to most of her experiences growing up, especially with things that even tangentially involved or required money or resources. I am unsure how much she is able to relate to my experiences involving money as well though; I believe it goes both ways. A few nights ago we were talking about our vehicles and I mentioned one of the cars I had originally wanted was rather expensive, and we both had to clarify what that meant to us, because I was talking about a car that was still 8-10 thousand dollars used, and her scale was based more closely around the fact that her brother’s car is 40 thousand dollars.

[asociologyclassblog]

Activity Posting 2 - Self, Media, & Socialization

Among a myriad of other roles which I fill, I am a student. Students in the United States are socialized in a bizarre way, as our education system remains a relic of the industrial revolution and the assembly line.

One of the more nefarious ways in which students are socialized is the expectation that you view your bodily autonomy, and your general health, as a secondary responsibility compared to your school work. The two most glaring examples of this are bathroom passes, and excused absences. Your body has two main goals: to intake energy, and expel waste. Using the bathroom is the primary method of the second one. It's natural part of every human's existence and failure to do so for a long enough period of time can lead to hospitialization. And yet, from the beginning of our education, we are expected to raise our hand, before the teacher and all our peers, during the middle of instruction, and ask for permission to perform our bodily functions. And a staggering amount of teachers won't allow you the opportunity to do so; telling you that you should have gone during lunch or between classes. We also are expected to get permission to get a drink of water. Students with diabetes are often denied the opportunity to eat during class, an restriction which could bring unwarranted health problems upon the student. While one could try to argue that only the final example could have serious health consequences in the span of an hour, it is an irrelevant argument, as it neglects the absurdity of teaching children that their personal and bodily needs are less important than geometry.

Once reaching college, the restrictions on bathroom breaks, as well as on food and beverages are greatly relaxed (at least in my experience), although some professors with small class sizes may still enforce them. However, even universities enforce the requirements of excused absences. Late assignments or missing classes (in classes that take attendance) are only acceptable in rather extreme, and verifiable, situations. If you are sick, for example, you require a doctor's note in order for your absence to be deemed allowable. Several factors make this demand more nefarious than it appears on the surface, such as the difficulty of scheduling same-day doctor's appointments, the cost of a doctor of hospital visit in a country where most citizens will be faced with an out-of-pocket payment for all medical bills, the requirement of having available transportation to and from the appointment, and the fact that not all sicknesses warrant a medical examination--a simple cold or flu and impair a person's ability to perform their expected tasks and risk infecting others should they go about their daily life like normal, all while being pedestrian enough to not require medical intervention in most cases. In other cases, students will miss class or be late on an assignment because they were dealing with family issues, struggling with their mental health--both of which are typically not deemed "excusable" by absence policies.

A caveat of absence policies is that, even if the student is granted an excused absence, they are expected to make up any work they missed in a timely manner, while also simultaneously completing all their current work on time. The student is effectively punished for attending to their personal matters.

By facing expectations such as these, students are taught from a young age that their health and personal lives, save for extreme situations, are to be secondary to their assigned workload. They are taught to do their work first and take care of their selves after.

From a functionalist perspective, this benefits a capitalist economy. Employees have been socialized to believe that their workload is vitally important to their lives, and that taking time off is unacceptable. Employers get workers who are willing to work through sickness and personal duress and maintain productivity even when doing so is inconvenient or even harmful to the employee. From a conflict perspective, this socialization benefits capitalists, at expense of the worker.

[asociologyclassblog]

Activity Posting 1 -- Culture & Civic Engagement

I think that Michigan Tech has a lower than average voter participation rate because its location exacerbates the main reason that university students have a relatively low voter participation rate. It’s simply inaccessible. Students that go to a university even a couple hours away from home could, should they really desire, make the drive to vote, if they weren’t able to register absentee in time or if their university didn’t offer an on-campus polling location. That simply isn’t an option for the vast majority of students at Michigan Tech. There’s no way I’m going to drive 9 hours home just to vote and drive 9 hours back, especially considering how voting in this country always takes place in the middle of the work week; I have too much school work to do. I went to Oakland University in 2016, and voting was easy. It was 25 minutes from my home so I simply drove to my district’s voting location when I had a couple hours between classes.

It seemed that lots of students, even the ones who had already been registered to vote, didn’t necessarily realize that they specifically have to register to vote absentee, or register to vote in their school’s district as opposed to their home district. I was personally wasn’t aware of this until I saw a post about it here on tumblr of all places. Another thing that could be done to increase voter participation on campus is for Michigan Tech to set up voting booths on campus for the students--because if that’s a thing that normally happens during election years, I’ve never once heard it mentioned. This way students can vote between classes, and their ability to vote isn’t impaired by whether or not they remembered to register to vote absentee or if they have a car on campus to drive to a polling place even if they registered to vote in the Houghton/Hancock area.

Perhaps this is a preexisting bias but I tend to believe most problems in society are systemic, intentionally caused or ignored by those who are able to exploit those problems for their own gain. I refuse to believe the stereotype that young people are simply apathetic or don’t want to vote. My peers have been politically aware and active since high school, well before they could vote. Young Americans were the driving force behind Bernie Sander’s grassroots campaigns, as he came just within reach of clinching the 2016 Democratic Nomination, and had a strong chance of winning it this year in 2020 before deciding to drop out to focus on helping the country in the COVID pandemic, despite his run and his policies being strongly opposed by billionaires, republicans, and even his own party. People of color and the progressive youth have been out in force demonstrating against police brutality for nearly 6 months now, with several protests still going strong despite the media coverage of it having been steeply declined. If college students were simply apathetic non-voters, the United States wouldn’t have such a storied history of suppressing college voters. There was a lawsuit in 2019 filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a New Hampshire law that would make residency a required condition of voting in the state, meaning out-of-state students would have to obtain a New Hampshire driver’s license simply to vote at their school. In March of this year UCLA students faces waits of more than 2 hours to cast ballots at the one voting center on campus.

I’m certain that there are other factors--social phenomena are never able to be broken down to a single reason. But I sincerely believe that informing students early and often that they will need to request an absentee ballot, or the university sets up polling places on campus with available same-day registration are the most important steps which could be taken to increase voter participation among Michigan Tech students. Until it can be shown that the resources needed for the student body to vote are easily available and readily accessible, other steps to get students more engaged in the voting process are futile.