Redefining Radical in a time of (necessary) Change
So much has been going on, not just in the past month but in the past year of my life. I’ve been taking a different approach to the way I view spaces I’m a part of, systems I’m entrenched in, and conversations I have with people. In what I write below, I share a few events, conversations, and thoughts that all relate to one another (or at least I’ve found they all have connections) and I try to create a picture for what this means for myself and what I hope others take from it to. I’ll be sure to keep y’all updated with what I’m trying to get at while I write this.
This semester, I was a part of the UC Berkeley E.E.C.S. Faculty Retreat Meeting Student Leadership Committee. Yes, that’s a mouthful, and yes, I’m glad this hasn’t turned into another acronym (yet). While this might sound like a twisted title, the gist of this “committee” was to present summaries to the faculty of the E.E.C.S. department and talk about certain issues students are facing. Among the various problems that were brought up in the survey sent out to undergraduates, academic dishonesty, mental health, and course restructuring came up in several responses.
While it is a hard task to distill every individual’s complaints and try to accommodate for everyone’s preferences, I saw all of the problems that these students were facing (myself included, especially during my first two years at Cal) connected. While other people on the committee were ideating on creating better processes so that students could be penalized “fairly” if they were caught cheating, I was thinking about why students were even cheating in the first place. And even more than that, what was causing the students to have to make the decision that copying off of the internet or from a classmate was the only viable choice they had?
My answer: The c.s. courses aren’t designed to teach students. They’re designed to provide students with an overbearing number of assignments, projects, and labs (which, by the way, are most likely going to be due at overlapping periods), making it even harder to focus on learning and digesting the information presented. Am I saying that the professor’s should cut more than half of the material they want to teach? Not exactly, but it might be something to think about. (If you think that idea I just pitched is “insane” or “too big of an ask”, keep reading — this is “radical”, right?). What I am saying is that taking a different approach, particularly one based on compassion and empathy, we might be better able to redesign all systems. Now Imagine, if the professors of the department set up their courses so that the curriculum and structure was truly about learning, providing students with the space and support so learning the material was emphasized versus mindlessly trying to submit assignments by a deadline, I bet we wouldn’t have as many “academic dishonesty” cases as we do now.
What’s another thing that led me to this shift in approach?
In the last paragraph I just wrote above, I was thinking about how to restructure the systems in place (i.e. the way the course is taught) versus how to catch an even greater number of students cheating. Why? Because I stopped blaming the student. Another person who was part of the committee said I was thinking about an “upstream” change vs a “downstream” one. Instead of trying to create even more documentation (although us computer scientists / software engineers / insert another word for a techy) love documentation, I believe that the issues at hand are results of how the system is run. Instead of creating another document or “policy” to make sure we’re catching students that cheat, I think it’s more important to tackle why we’ve allowed these courses to keep forcing people into only having one choice.
✍🏽 1st shift in approach:
Shift the blame from the individual to the systems and hold those that are upholding the systems accountable.
In summary, I’m not blaming the professors (completely). What I am blaming is the way this department has been running (for years), keeping hundreds if not thousands of students from enjoying learning. More than that, I am calling in (I’ve been moving away from calling out) the faculty of the E.E.C.S. department to reflect on the values that have been displayed in the many ways they run their courses, and explain why they should prioritize compassion and learning. I believe if they shift to these values, more things will fit in place. The committee wouldn’t have to be meeting year after year to present the faculty with the same problems students are facing and to create even more documentation with no systermic change. Students would enjoy their courses more. Less damage would be done to the people taking these classes, they wouldn’t question their ability to understand the concepts talked about in class, or give up their mental health for a passing grade in a class.
So what’s connected here? The solution for every problem that was brought up in the survey is about changing the values the systems prioritize. Here’s a little sketch of how my brain sees it:
OKAY. So I just went on a whole ass rant. But you know what? I’m going to keep going, and if anything I’m going to make even more connections. Keep reading if you want to get to where I am right now in terms of thinking about the world.
Thought #1 and Conclusion #1: We are taught to think about solutions to problems individually and disconnectedly, and we are conditioned to believe that individuals are to blame instead of systems (especially in education, and based on my experiences, in “technical” college courses)
After being riled up, talking about how my friends and I were going to change the E.E.C.S. department on campus a few weeks ago, the C.O.L.A. strike happened. I was walking to office hours for my computer science course (how fitting), and as I was passing by Sproul Plaza where many protests have occurred, I realized the C.O.L.A. strike was happening. I decided to stop for what I thought would be a few minutes, thinking that my mere presence would suffice to show my support for the cause. This is what I thought was “radical”, as many other people passed by without stopping. Standing there for a few minutes turned into half an hour and I realized I couldn’t leave. I realized that the C.O.L.A. strike was what I was trying to do in the E.E.C.S. department, but for all of the UC. I realized that the people who were going up to speak were expressing the same sentiment I wanted to get across to all of the faculty of the E.E.C.S. department.
Schools ought to be about education. And education comes from support. TAs and GSIs (graduate student instructors) provide that support to the institution, so it only makes sense that the institution provide the necessary systemic support so that the people providing the support can do their jobs.
I wanted to highlight some sentences directly from the ucb C.O.L.A. strike website:
We demand that the University of California Administration grants all graduate students across the UC System a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) proportionate to their local housing market. We demand that the University stop behaving as a for-profit landlord — charging above market rate for university housing. If teaching is truly at the core of the UC’s mission, it is high time that they start paying graduate students — who do the vast majority of teaching within the UC system- a living wage.
All of this has to do with systemic change. If the values of the UC changed to be centered around teaching through a compassionate lens, it would make sense that the GSIs (who single-handedly keep the UC running with thousands of students) get paid enough to not be rent burdened.
Bringing myself back to the present moment, I saw the connections in front of my eyes while watching the last speaker talk on the steps of Sproul. And then fear ran through my body. “Okay everyone, we’re going to march soon!” said the speaker. Suddenly, I felt my body tense up and I wanted to walk away and head to office hours. I felt like I did “my part” in listening, and even though I believed in what they were saying and agreed with them, I was ready to walk away right then.
But then I heard the speaker say this and I couldn’t leave:
Right now that we march, we are putting ourselves at risk. It’s scary. I’m not going to lie to you that it’s not. But everyday, we wake up, as Black and Brown people, and we walk on the streets. Everyday, we walk on the streets with the varying identities that we hold. And that’s putting ourselves at risk. But we still do it. Because we’ll die if we don’t. So let’s march.
It’s crazy that even as I write this out, I find myself with tears clouding my vision, and a heavy lump in my chest, because these words carry so much weight. I ended up marching that day, and for the first time, I understood the connections that I had been making during my time at college and knew that the people around me understood too. The ‘connections’ I was making: Recognizing both the C.O.L.A. strike and what I wanted to do at the E.E.C.S. faculty retreat meeting was to change the institution’s values to be about education, and to provide students with the support they needed. We were both looking to change the systems, and we didn’t blame the individuals. Together, I realized we were demanding change.
✍🏽 2nd shift in approach:
Another person’s fight is also yours when they’re connected. In shifting the ‘finger of blame’ to the systems instead of the individual, it’s more likely than not that both people are trying to get at a larger problem, and together, they can demand change.
While the situation has caused the C.O.L.A. strike to change the way it’s been organizing, it is still happening, and those GSIs still need a cost of living adjustment, among the other needs they’ve demanded (rightfully so, based on the values that are in line with what academic institutions ought to be about).
Thought #2 and Conclusion #2: Fear is what keeps a lot of us from acting on what we believe is right. But once we move away from fear and realize that the act of mobilizing together is stronger than fear, we will move towards wisdom and change
And now, to the even larger connection (and for now, the last one as this can quickly become meta).
What led the E.E.C.S. department meeting to be postponed? The coronavirus. What led the C.O.L.A. strike to have different organizing options? The coronavirus. What led you to be stuck at home right now, and possibly left you angry at how people have been hoarding toilet paper and also scared of waking up with a sore throat? The coronavirus.
While I am in no means the “correct” person to educate you on how to feel about the coronavirus (or educational institutions for that matter, but hey, we’re here alright 🤷🏽♀️), I have been making connections between the coronavirus and how I view “problems” and “solutions” in systems.
To try and summarize what I’m trying to distill, I personally believe that the video of U.S. representative Katie Porter getting the CDC official to promise free COVID-19 Testing for Americans is helpful. While I personally think everyone should listen to the full video, 3:24-5:33 does a good job of using the language that helped me see a connection.
So here’s how I connected the impacts of the coronavirus to all of the thoughts above:
- We’ve been blaming other people for hoarding toilet paper from stores (which, by the way, is still so perplexing to me) instead of questioning why we’ve been conditioned to think that stock piling toilet paper and water is what we should do during a crisis. And even more than that, why we’re so tied to individualism, a key U.S. value.
- Fear leads us to act in a way where we put ourselves at the center of the problem, and only consider what we need instead of how we can collectively fight the same issue.
- That issue is part coronavirus (the virus itself) but even more than that, the systems that are running the country, and the people who are upholding those systems.
In the past few days, I’ve been ~ zooming ~ into several conversations happening across the world, and I’ve found even more connections. The systems that uphold private and public health care are not set up with the right values or with the right approach, and this pandemic is showcasing the flaws of these systems. We’re seeing that even people in D.C. aren’t immune to this virus or the impacts it’s caused, and while liability is always something the government tries to keep itself distanced from, people in Capitol Hill with dirty hands are being forced to wash them right now (both literally and figuratively).
While I don’t know what the coronavirus will look like months from now, and while the coronavirus has already impacted our lives in (disproportionally) many ways, I find this moment in time to be one in which we can choose to not let fear guide us, and transform our systems with new values that we want them to be based upon. I picture our present moment to be like the event where I stood with the many others on Sproul, and joined not only because I believed it was right for me but because I believed it was right for us. That is radical.
Thought #3 and Conclusion #3: When people say that “systemic change” is required, backlash seems to sound like “How does that look like?” , “Can you provide a TANGIBLE example?”, or, “That’s too big of an ask and not reasonable”. Systemic change is about changing the values structures are built upon and letting our actions/steps be guided by those values. We need to change our values.
Some food for thought to end:
Sending strength and gratitude to all (especially) during these times and always— M.H.
P.S. I just wanted to acknowledge all of the people who have been on this journey with me, all of the friends that have spent time/energy thinking through all of these thoughts with me and thinking about “tangible” ways to put these thoughts into actions, and a special note of gratitude to Clara De Martel, for growing together and supporting one another (and for reviewing this) 💗
