This morning First-Year Representative Arthur Levine '13 sent the following email to student-talk, announcing his resignation from his position. You may remember September's botched election and Arthur's victory in the re-do election. [Author's hyperlinks have been omitted; blogger's emphasis supplied]:
http://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/thumb/1/11/Panopticon.jpg/250px-Panopticon.jpg
Dear First year students and Pitzer community. I would like to announce my resignation from the Pitzer student senate. I would also like you to read this as I have laid out some reasons, opinions, reflections, and other words. I have also included a link to a wonderful documentary called Beyond Elections. I also recommend Why We Fight to anyone interested in government or your own survival. Please watch these and maybe you will understand why I have left my position. I just could not devote any of myself to something that I do not believe in.First I would like to thank you all who voted to elect me. For those of you who I spoke to while I was campaigning you may remember that I was running with the idea that representative democracy was ridiculous: that people should represent themselves and be welcomed by their government to do so. This alone is the reason why I have never voted in senate I am sorry that I did not better fulfill my duties as First-year Rep, but I guess that I was trying to make a point. SOmetimes your representatives do not represent you. Many times representatives are bought by corporate lobbyists to fulfill corporate agendas for world domination. Do not be fooled by rhetoric or promises, your voice is not the loudest or most important to the government in this country. We have to change that. In the same way as some reps in the U.S. government have ulterior motives for their votes I too had an agenda. I was asked to be a rep so that I could vote yes to the new Constitution. Although I completely support the new constitution, as it would create the type of government I would rather see, I have come to realize that my participation in senate is exactly what I do not want to see in politics: a person acting as a widget or a lever puller or a whole puncher. My sole purpose was to raise my hand one time and vote yes. I dehumanized myself. OOOPS, pretty easy these days. There should be an assembly like is proposed in the new constitution, but I do not want to continue to waste my time doing something that does not make me feel happy or healthy. I would rather be one of the people than one of them up there in the founder's room debating garbage.
Anyway, sorry is my main point. I should really apologize to myself for going against my gut. I have learned a lot about Pitzer from my experiences and anyone who would like to talk about it is welcome to speak to me, but as a person not your rep, which I unfortunately pretended to be. Sorry to anyone who was expecting more of me. I guess I made a lot of mistakes this semester. My bad.
Here is some good shit to read by the way. Perhaps a reflection on senate.
Wait-how could that be, that disaster are the apex of adventure, community, life itself? Does that mean that if we really want to live, we have to spend our lives as disastourists, quixotically chasing the few brief moments of upheaval destiny affords each of us, longing for the fleeting, borrowed wings of destruction and rebirth as we wade through the years of deadening routine in the mean time? Is that practical, praticable, worthwhile? Does the woman fed up with her car payments and marriage really crave tornadoes and typhoons, or is she just desperate for an honorable way out?
Perhaps we have everything backwards here-maybe disasters aren't so great after all, but the real Disaster, the worst one, is the Disaster we live everyday: the emptiness of our full schedules, the trivia that trivializes us, the machinery that runs on rivers of blood. That would explain why e feel so free whenever something, anything, however dangerous or difficult, interrupts all this. Perhaps the excitement and immediacy that break out in emergencies are simply indications of a return to our natural state, in the break they herald from the full scale slow motion train wreck that is our society. If that is the case, then it is not disaster per se that are liberating - it is rather, a question of perspective: a "disaster" that disrupts a life of constraint is experienced as a moment of liberation, when that "normal life" is actually Disaster in disguise.
Most of the disasters we really suffer from can be traced to this invisible Disaster, anyway. The destruction of rain forests and the ozone layer, holocausts perpetuated with biological weapons and smart bombs, even global pandemics like mad cow disease, anorexia, bulimia, depression - these would not be possible without centralized state and corporate power, and the meaningless busywork of billions that engenders it. To live with the unknown ahead of and around us, to struggle only with the "natural disasters" our ancestors faced, would almost be adyllic after all this.
Could we fight Disaster with disaster? If we stopped feeding its flames with our hard work and attention, if we ceased paying tribute, the Disaster would surely crash and burn once and for all. If this status quo is the ultimate Disaster if it really is disorder and tragedy normalized as a system, no lower-case disaster could be worse, Interrupt the the Disaster!
Some of us are already practicing this. We don't live in the Disaster, but in encampments at its edge-yes, in a state of ongoing disasters and difficulties, but nothing compared to the misery of life in the Disasters area proper. We don't fall for popular propaganda about disasters; we're conducting our own experiments with them. We don't have to wait for catastrophe to strike to enjoy its benefits-we can throw a disaster anytime we like. And we are.
--Disastrounaunts Dilemma Goldman and Calamity Jane of CrimetInc Collective
Anyway enjoy the time away from the prison(remind you of the first year dorms at all)/school
--
Arthur Levine
This morning First-Year Representative Arthur Levine '13 sent the following email to student-talk, announcing his resignation from his position. You may remember September's botched election and Arthur's victory in the re-do election. [Author's hyperlinks have been omitted; blogger's emphasis supplied]:
http://static.newworldencyclopedia.org/thumb/1/11/Panopticon.jpg/250px-Panopticon.jpg
Dear First year students and Pitzer community. I would like to announce my resignation from the Pitzer student senate. I would also like you to read this as I have laid out some reasons, opinions, reflections, and other words. I have also included a link to a wonderful documentary called Beyond Elections. I also recommend Why We Fight to anyone interested in government or your own survival. Please watch these and maybe you will understand why I have left my position. I just could not devote any of myself to something that I do not believe in.First I would like to thank you all who voted to elect me. For those of you who I spoke to while I was campaigning you may remember that I was running with the idea that representative democracy was ridiculous: that people should represent themselves and be welcomed by their government to do so. This alone is the reason why I have never voted in senate I am sorry that I did not better fulfill my duties as First-year Rep, but I guess that I was trying to make a point. SOmetimes your representatives do not represent you. Many times representatives are bought by corporate lobbyists to fulfill corporate agendas for world domination. Do not be fooled by rhetoric or promises, your voice is not the loudest or most important to the government in this country. We have to change that. In the same way as some reps in the U.S. government have ulterior motives for their votes I too had an agenda. I was asked to be a rep so that I could vote yes to the new Constitution. Although I completely support the new constitution, as it would create the type of government I would rather see, I have come to realize that my participation in senate is exactly what I do not want to see in politics: a person acting as a widget or a lever puller or a whole puncher. My sole purpose was to raise my hand one time and vote yes. I dehumanized myself. OOOPS, pretty easy these days. There should be an assembly like is proposed in the new constitution, but I do not want to continue to waste my time doing something that does not make me feel happy or healthy. I would rather be one of the people than one of them up there in the founder's room debating garbage.
Anyway, sorry is my main point. I should really apologize to myself for going against my gut. I have learned a lot about Pitzer from my experiences and anyone who would like to talk about it is welcome to speak to me, but as a person not your rep, which I unfortunately pretended to be. Sorry to anyone who was expecting more of me. I guess I made a lot of mistakes this semester. My bad.
Here is some good shit to read by the way. Perhaps a reflection on senate.
Wait-how could that be, that disaster are the apex of adventure, community, life itself? Does that mean that if we really want to live, we have to spend our lives as disastourists, quixotically chasing the few brief moments of upheaval destiny affords each of us, longing for the fleeting, borrowed wings of destruction and rebirth as we wade through the years of deadening routine in the mean time? Is that practical, praticable, worthwhile? Does the woman fed up with her car payments and marriage really crave tornadoes and typhoons, or is she just desperate for an honorable way out?
Perhaps we have everything backwards here-maybe disasters aren't so great after all, but the real Disaster, the worst one, is the Disaster we live everyday: the emptiness of our full schedules, the trivia that trivializes us, the machinery that runs on rivers of blood. That would explain why e feel so free whenever something, anything, however dangerous or difficult, interrupts all this. Perhaps the excitement and immediacy that break out in emergencies are simply indications of a return to our natural state, in the break they herald from the full scale slow motion train wreck that is our society. If that is the case, then it is not disaster per se that are liberating - it is rather, a question of perspective: a "disaster" that disrupts a life of constraint is experienced as a moment of liberation, when that "normal life" is actually Disaster in disguise.
Most of the disasters we really suffer from can be traced to this invisible Disaster, anyway. The destruction of rain forests and the ozone layer, holocausts perpetuated with biological weapons and smart bombs, even global pandemics like mad cow disease, anorexia, bulimia, depression - these would not be possible without centralized state and corporate power, and the meaningless busywork of billions that engenders it. To live with the unknown ahead of and around us, to struggle only with the "natural disasters" our ancestors faced, would almost be adyllic after all this.
Could we fight Disaster with disaster? If we stopped feeding its flames with our hard work and attention, if we ceased paying tribute, the Disaster would surely crash and burn once and for all. If this status quo is the ultimate Disaster if it really is disorder and tragedy normalized as a system, no lower-case disaster could be worse, Interrupt the the Disaster!
Some of us are already practicing this. We don't live in the Disaster, but in encampments at its edge-yes, in a state of ongoing disasters and difficulties, but nothing compared to the misery of life in the Disasters area proper. We don't fall for popular propaganda about disasters; we're conducting our own experiments with them. We don't have to wait for catastrophe to strike to enjoy its benefits-we can throw a disaster anytime we like. And we are.
--Disastrounaunts Dilemma Goldman and Calamity Jane of CrimetInc Collective
Anyway enjoy the time away from the prison(remind you of the first year dorms at all)/school
--
Arthur Levine
Related posts:
- 1st-Year Rep Election Is Unconstitutional I realized that there was something very wrong going on with the first-year representative elections when I clicked on the online ballot out of curiosity. Instead...
- New Senate 1st-Year Rep: Arthur Levine Congratulations to the newest elected member of Student Senate, Arthur Levine '13! Arthur squeaked out a 50.72% majority against Jon Rice '13 and Hallory Sindelar '13....
- Former First-year Rep Addresses Summit From Michael Hernandez-Henderson at 10:29 am on September 22 [my emphasis supplied]: Dear pitzer Community, I was also a part of the Budgetary Committee last year...
Pretty illustrative of the whole senate this semester really.
The real bummer is that the kids who were serious about taking this position got totally ripped off by this Palin-esque guy. I think for some of them, having student rep. credentials on their resume is a big pro for grad. school / work — but because of this “joke” they lost that opportunity.
I assume the administration will step in here since this is a little more damaging than the usual antics the senate pulls. And also, it seems from this kids email that he’s really not a fan of Pitzer or being in school in general. If he really thinks there is a ponopticon type-deal going on here, he might want to put down the bong / crack pipe for a few minutes before he hits the send button… or at least get a second opinion from a grown-up.
Moe: Regarding the panopticon concept, I can be that second opinion. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it was a model for a prison where not only could each room be visible from a central location, but that you could never be sure when you were being watched. I do know that some in residential life have been said they like the layout for safety reasons over a design like Holden or Mead because of the visibility of the new design (although it’s been years since I was a mentor, so I can’t recall who said it). And as a self-confessed introvert, I felt uncomfortable living in PAS due to the structure, so I don’t think it’s fair to brush Arthur’s observations off as drug-addled or immature without looking into them.
Sam,
I’m very familiar with Bentham’s panopticon — and that’s why I’m calling this analogy as bullshit paranoia. If Arthur is even remotely serious about this suggestion that the architect who designed the dorms did so with malicious and scheming intent, then I think that would definitely be the sign that college maybe isn’t the best path for him to be on at this moment. It’s pretty clear from his email that he thinks people are out to get him/us and that the college is involved in some kind of brainwashing conspiracy. Did he choose to come here or was he forced?
Have you ever been to a hotel with a pool? Ever notice how the rooms surround the pool? To suggest that the dorms were designed with the panopticon in mind is BEYOND childish, irrational, and ignorant. It’s the shoddy work of the quixotic yet coddled mind. And considering this is a institution of higher learning, it’s a very poor (and hopefully isolated) reflection on the quality of education being dished out at the 5C’s.
Quitting before a term is up… making inanely irrational statements that reek of conspiracy theories … What’s next? Viewing Russia from the roof of Scott Hall?
To be honest, I side with his reasons — but why string it out so long? My concern is for the people who would have actually liked to take this position and take it seriously. From the tone of his stream-of-consciousness and evasive ramblings on battling “disaster with disaster”, I think it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t realize what he’s done and the harm he’s caused Pitzer.
M. Lester
I have to disagree with both of you:
Sam, I don’t know why you, especially as a Senator, are focusing on the least important part of Arthur’s resignation. Do his actions sit well with you?
Moe, I disagree that the real victims are the people who ran unsuccessfully for the position (Hallory Sindelar ’13 and Jonathan Rice ’13). The REAL victims are the first-year students who have been purposefully disenfranchised.
I have to agree with Amy here.…This does personally bother me because of losing the position, but that’s not the main point.
I don’t think Hallory or myself would say we are “victims” because we can’t put the position on a resume. That’s not what this is or was about.
It bothers me more that my class, because of this set-up, didn’t get to the right start and therefore is going into second semester uninformed and fragmented.
That infuriates me, and that’s not fair to member of the class of 2013.
Thanks for responding, Jon. I’m glad to hear your take on the situation.
You and Amy are both right that it’s the other students who really got screwed. I also see future repercussions from this as how is the administration supposed to trust students and senate in the future after the farce? I think a huge amount of credibility has been blindly pissed away and it’s a fat shame.
Any suggestions on what can be done to fix it?
At the moment I have no idea.
And this is what happens when we check out of our student-talk email for break.
Just as many of us had suspected (not necessarily of Mr. Levine), but rather of the entire student senate and its assembly, now there is evidence.