Category Archives: Campus

Your Election Day Plan

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Heading down to the Community Center to vote today? Good. Now, I want you to ask yourself a few simple questions, and hold yourself accountable to your answers:

Where is the Community Center? It’s down the hill, behind the KAC, but I want you to picture it. Which precinct do you report to once you get there? (Everything north of Aclands is in Gambier A, Aclands and everything south of them are in Gambier B. Check the link to confirm your polling location.)

When are you going? Were you planning on voting right before your afternoon workout, or after your morning exam? When does your spare half-hour usually fall? Polls are open between 6:30 am and 7:30 pm; it’s fast, it’s easy and even if you have work to do you definitely have the time.

How are you getting there? Are you driving? Are you walking? Are you riding down in one of the shuttles leaving from Peirce? Are you going by yourself, or with a group of friends?

What do you need to do in order to be ready to vote once you get there? Have you printed your proof-of-address (if not, you can find it by searching your email history for ‘accounting@kenyon.edu’)? If you don’t have it, do you remember the last four digits of your Social Security Number?

These questions may seem patronizing, but your answers are important (you don’t have to tell me, or anyone, but you have to know them). If you are an athlete, you already know the advantages of visualizing yourself at peak performance; the same holds true for voting. You don’t want to realize at 9pm tonight that you no longer have a chance to do that thing you’ve been forgetting about all day: voting. When you visualize the when, where and how of the process, that is far less likely to happen.

So, to recap:

  • Polls are open today from 6:30 am til 7:30 pm
  • Voting is taking place at the Gambier Community Center (115 Meadow Lane)
  • Shuttles will be leaving from Peirce all day
  • Bring your proof-of-address; if you don’t have it, make sure you remember the last four digits of your Social Security Number

Make a plan and hold yourself accountable. Your community is depending on you.

What our Study Told Me

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In my original post summarizing our study of medication at Kenyon, I included just enough of “me” to ruffle some feathers without adequately explaining myself. I felt that simply putting out the statistics that one in four Kenyon students have a prescription for an anti-depressant, and that one in three had used study drugs, among other things, wouldn’t get people thinking. This was especially the case given the fact that, as I pointed out, we implicitly knew those statistics already. I was shocked at the levels of anti-depressant prescriptions we found (I was expecting high reported levels of ADD/ADHD medication use, both prescribed and non-prescribed); I wanted to take a stab at why I thought I found them, and why my findings should lead us to do some serious soul-searching about the way we live our lives. I should have either said more or nothing.

So here is more:

I found it particularly interesting that my points concerning ADD/ADHD medication went essentially unchallenged while similar points concerning anti-depression were described as “highly offensive” “illness shaming.” Because of this, I will talk about depression, although most of these points are transferable to ADD/ADHD.

I think that we live in a culture that tells us we have a right to be comfortably happy, and that children of high-achieving parents live in a culture that tells them that they have a right (and responsibility) to be a good student. We’ve been told since we were two years old that everyone is equally special, and we’ve been told since we were five years old that we, in particular, are rightfully above average. The moment we don’t feel special anymore, or the moment we don’t feel above average anymore, we aren’t told that it’s okay; we’re told that we have a problem, a problem that can be solved with medication. And I think that there is something seriously problematic with a culture that sends these messages as they are, by definition, mutually exclusive. If we are going to have a serious conversation about our prescribed lives, one of these cultural axioms is going to have to give.

I think that medication such as Prozac and Adderall are supposed to be last resorts. Taking them comes with serious side effects, not the least of which is dependency, and even many who need such medication to function decide that the negative side effects aren’t worth the benefits. While there is no doubt that they do a lot of good for the people who really do need them, since when do one in four people revert to their last resort for anything? But when we are bombarded with ads for Prozac and Vyvanse on a literally minute-by-minute basis (I can’t watch anything on Hulu without seeing seven ads for Vyvanse per episode) and are surrounded by our friends, parents, teachers and doctors who, with the best intentions, tell us that we don’t have to feel the way we do, is it any wonder that what is considered a last resort becomes a second or even first resort? It is any wonder that the awkward phase in high school becomes a medical condition?

The funny thing about rights is that they define our terms for the way the world “should” be. If I have a right to be happy, but I’m not, then something is inherently wrong with the way that the world is working. If I’m supposed to be doing well in school, but I’m not, then clearly there’s a problem outside of my lack of interest in Social Studies that is causing the world to be out of whack. It would appear that we, the budding American elite, can’t be unhappy and can’t under-perform. We are self-defined joyful overachievers who sometimes need help self-actualizing.

*At the risk of offending those who actually do have a chemical imbalance irrespective of circumstance and are predisposed to feelings of depression, THIS IS A GENERALIZATION. And, to address a pet peeve of mine, “generalization” doesn’t have to be a dirty word.*

When I was diagnosed with situational depressive disorder early this semester after an excruciatingly rough week that involved a romantic tragedy of epic proportions, I found myself thinking exactly that: my life was “supposed” to be different because I was “supposed” to be happy. But, after a while, I started sleeping regularly again, got my appetite back and accepted the fact that I was going to be unhappy for a bit and that was just the way things were going to be. Emotionally, I was a wreck: I couldn’t focus in class, I lost interest in the things that made me happy and I felt like nothing would ever get better. But, biologically, there was nothing inherently wrong with me. I let myself hurt, and then I let myself get better. Life is supposed to suck sometimes.

But when the American Psychiatric Association prepares to modify its guidelines for diagnosing major depressive disorder to include feelings of depression brought on the by death of a loved one within two weeks of the loss, it encourages us to see hardships as medical conditions. You should feel unhappy when you lose a loved one. That’s natural. The idea that such feelings constitute a disorder is, to me, distressing.

And what makes me so certain that this is a cultural phenomenon at least as much as it is a medical one is the feedback I have gotten from international students. Practically unanimously, they have described their amazement at the pervasive use of medication among American students, usage levels that are unheard of for them. Like me, they didn’t realize when they first got here that there was a pill for literally any mental hurdle you could come across. And before you stop me to say that our lives are harder or more stressful than those from abroad, ask yourself whether life in suburban New York or rural Ohio is really that difficult compared to places that, in some cases, have been struggling to provide basic services and civil liberties for their citizens for decades. Being happy is a preference; it isn’t a right. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who isn’t from this country.

But let’s say I’m wrong, and that each and every prescription filled out for an anti-depressant is completely necessary. Then look around New Side and tell me if two people at every full table (one each at the wall tables) has a chemical imbalance that, after all other options have been exhausted, a prescription is necessary to remedy. Then, tell me that there isn’t anything wrong with that, and that this is “just how it is” at a liberal arts college with a competitive admissions process. If this is the case, it is perhaps even more indicative of something being seriously wrong with the lifestyles we have been told to lead. If getting into a school like Kenyon can’t be done without tripling your chances of picking up a prescription for anti-depressants along the way, maybe we as a culture should re-evaluate the premium we place on being above average.

At any given point in February, it wouldn’t surprise me if a quarter of the student population had the Krud; I find it incredibly hard to believe that such a proportion would, or should, exist for a psychological disorder. As I mentioned in my previous post, a proportion that high calls the use of the word “disorder” into question. If a quarter of Kenyon students really are depressed then our depression isn’t a disorder, it’s an epidemic.

The (un)Prescribed Life: Kenyon Students Medicating Heavily, with Questionable Legitimacy

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Overheard at Kenyon:

Student 1: Wait, where do you get your Adderall from?

Student 2: Chelsea, but she needs a refill soon. It’s cool, I have another hookup.

Every Kenyon student has heard conversations like this one; under-the-table Adderall (or other study drug) use has been standard practice in academia for a long time. But no one is ever sure if the stories they hear are representative or exceptional. How many Kenyon students are actually turning to Adderall to get through their classes?

I, along with psychology major Joshua Samuels, just completed a study in an attempt to quantify this anecdotal evidence that study drug use, among other forms of self-medication, are increasingly commonplace and socially acceptable as part of our college experience. Our survey was conducted online from Monday, April 22nd through Monday, April 29th and received responses from 374 students, nearly a quarter of Kenyon’s student body. We received levels of responses from various demographic groups (class standing, gender, race, etc.) that were in line with Kenyon’s student composition; given the level and nature of responses, we can be reasonably confident that our results paint a relatively accurate picture of Kenyon students’ behavior.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

In a recent New York Times article, it was reported that eleven percent of American children, including nearly twenty percent of high school boys, are diagnosed with ADHD. Moreover, two thirds of those who receive a diagnosis also receive a prescription for a stimulant, such as Ritalin or Adderall, in an attempt to treat the disorder’s symptoms.

And Kenyon is no exception. In our study, 11.7 percent of Kenyon students reported having a prescription for ADD/ADHD medication.

But some in the psychology community are becoming increasingly skeptical that such high levels of diagnoses are either necessary or beneficial. And given the behaviors of those who do have a prescription, their skepticism may be warranted. Only 30.5 percent of Kenyon students with a prescription for ADHD medication reported taking their medication on time; a majority reported taking their medication only up to half of the times they were supposed to and students were more likely to completely ignore their medication than to take it on schedule:

Clearly, a significant percentage of students who have medication prescribed to them consider themselves perfectly able to function day-to-day without the use of their medication. And when a large number of pills are prescribed and not taken, a surplus is created. This surplus, as you can probably imagine, is used to spur academic performance:

To put these charts in perspective, if you line up ten Kenyon students, one of them will have a prescription for ADD/ADHD medication, which they probably won’t need, and at least two others who don’t have a prescription will have used such medication for the sole purpose of writing a paper or studying for/taking a test.

While an imperfect comparison, these findings are in line with prior literature, mentioned in the Times article, which pegs the percentage of ADD/ADHD medication that goes to non-prescribed friends at about 30 percent.

ADHD has historically been estimated to affect between three and seven percent of children, but, as pediatric neurologist William Graf notes:

Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy.

And while current levels of diagnoses are already at record highs, the number is only expected to increase. As the Times article says:

…even more teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychiatric Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment.

…The final wording has not been released, but most proposed changes would lead to higher rates of diagnosis: the requirement that symptoms appeared before age 12 rather than 7; illustrations, like repeatedly losing one’s cellphone or losing focus during paperwork, that emphasize that A.D.H.D. is not just a young child’s disorder; and the requirement that symptoms merely “impact” daily activities, rather than cause “impairment.”

There is no official test used to diagnose ADHD; psychiatrists evaluate patients based on extensive conversation with the patient, their parents and teachers. It is also common practice for doctors to allow their patients to “set their own dosage” by prescribing increasingly high levels of medication until the patient finds one that “feels right.”

Given the choice, many psychiatrists would rather wrongly diagnose someone with ADD or ADHD than to turn a patient away when they really do have a disorder. While this thinking is certainly not without merit, it opens the door for pharmaceutical companies, parents and patients to push for diagnoses that are increasingly unwarranted.

Depression

While self-reports of ADD/ADHD prescriptions were high, 23.4 percent of respondents reported having a prescription for an anti-depressant, twice the rate of ADD/ADHD prescriptions.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that depression rates for Americans over the age of twelve is around eight percent.

As seems to be the case with ADD/ADHD, it could be that depression is heavily over-diagnosed. After all, one in four is an awfully high proportion for any psychological disorder, almost high enough to call the use of the word “disorder” into question. Like the third grader who doesn’t want to do their homework and winds up with a prescription for Ritalin, there’s a fine line between having an awkward phase in high school and having a persistent clinical disorder – a line that probably isn’t crossed as often as we think it is.

In conjunction with the findings related to ADD/ADHD medication, these numbers on anti-depressants could speak further to the idea that we are becoming increasingly reliant on pills and less reliant on each other when dealing with emotional stress/anxiety/hardship. While there’s no doubt that in many cases medication is, at least temporarily, necessary and does a lot of good, we may find it all-too-convenient to get a prescription instead of investing time in talking out our issues.

These sentiments aren’t new to the psychiatry community. University of New South Wales, Australia Professor Gordon Parker has spearheaded the growing concern that depression is being used to describe normal feelings of sadness, at the behest of pharmaceutical companies that have a vested interest in using depression as a “catch-all” illness. As the Guardian wrote:

[Professor Parker] said the drugs were being marketed beyond their “true utility” in cases in which people were unhappy rather than clinically depressed.

…the “over-diagnosis” of depression began in the early 80s, when the diagnostic threshold for minor mood disorders was lowered.

His 15-year study of 242 teachers found that more than three-quarters met the current criteria for depression.

Prescription anti-depressants are taken more regularly, and more responsibly, than ADD/ADHD medication. 59.8 percent of respondents with a prescription for anti-depressants take their medication on time; 19.6 percent reported never taking them:

Furthermore, only 6 percent of respondents who did not have a prescription for anti-depressants reported taking them for the purpose of coping with their environment. At Kenyon, using “happy pills” is practically nonexistent compared to the use of study drugs.

Anxiety

While our survey didn’t dive as deep into the use of anti-anxiety drugs as it could have, one interesting finding was that a higher percentage of respondents without a prescription for such drugs reported having taken them (16.0) than the percentage of respondents who reported having a prescription (12.7). Furthermore, students with a prescription for an anti-anxiety drug were even more likely to never take their medication (40 percent) than students with a prescription for ADD/ADHD medication (32.2 percent).

Perceptions

Not only are Kenyon students’ self-medicating behaviors high in volume, they’re freely discussed to the point at which Kenyon students are uncannily accurate in estimating the extent to which their peers are engaging in them. When asked what percentage of the student body they thought had used study drugs, the average estimate was 33.45 percent (actual percentage: 34). When asked to estimate the percentage of Kenyon students who take anti-depressants, the average prediction was 28.66 percent (actual: 23.4).

Perhaps the fact that study drug use is so candidly discussed is the reason that when respondents were asked to rate their favorability towards people who engaged in various activities, study drug use was barely rated unfavorably (3.41 on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being totally unfavorable, 4 being neutral and 7 being totally favorable), and was rated less unfavorably than cigarette smoking (3.25):

We are past the point at which everyone simply knows of someone who abuses study drugs, we are at a point at which everyone has a few friends who do it and find it socially acceptable to talk about it openly.

Perhaps the most shocking result of our study is that the results aren’t all that shocking. The volume, knowledge and acceptance of study drugs and anti-depressants on our campus should lead us to take a long, hard look at ourselves. Can we call ourselves a healthy community when one in three of us are taking academic performance-enhancers and one in four of us are depressed? Do we really need these drugs?

It would seem that the answer to both of these questions is: no.

For a more comprehensive look at the results of this study or to request its data, please email Jon Green at greenj@kenyon.edu, Joshua Samuels at samuelsj@kenyon.edu or the Kenyon Observer at tko@kenyon.edu.

Recap of a Recap: Manning Manning Manning

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Today’s Collegian features a review of Gracie Gardner’s production, Manning Manning Manning, that, as its own author would say, “boasted solid [writing] and high energy, but was ultimately perplexing in terms of what themes it was trying to convey.”

The review praised the show while at the same time refusing to like it, commending the actors and, for the most part, Gardner’s use of them in one breath while picking out less-than-crucial elements of the 45-minute play that apparently should have been expanded on in the next. It (rightly) praised the versatility of Phoebe Rotter ’14 and Allie Lembo ’14 in their roles as the Greek chorus, inadvertently pointing out the fact that the two of them conveyed in 45 minutes what it takes most plays ten actors, 90 minutes and seven costumes to pull off, but then complained that the show didn’t take enough time to flesh out the themes it was taking on.

But that was the whole point: Manning was a bare-bones production and intentionally left much between the lines. Having also been at the show this past Sunday, I would agree that it was ambitious, covering a lot of ground in its 45-minute running time. But I also thought that Gardner did an incredible job of saying what she needed to say with dramatic concision, efficiently taking on the male-dominated football culture of the South from a female perspective with seven actors and about sixty square feet of space.

With no seconds and no square inches of stage space to waste, those who wanted the storyline to be drawn out and spoon-fed were setting themselves up for disappointment.

As the author would put it, “The [review], in the end, was muddled and murky. Was it a [careful, nuanced critique of an overall successful production, a stubborn refusal to embrace a creative take on an uncommon theme, a complete misinterpretation of a production not meant for the passive observer] or all of the above?

In the end, what really puzzles me about the Collegian‘s review is that it eventually admits that Manning was actually quite successful in accomplishing what it set out to do. It recognizes the play’s intentional limitations on time and development, but only after wasting numerous paragraphs disparaging them (or missing them altogether, it’s hard to say):

When viewed as the first act of a play, as Gardner intended…Manning stands as a funny and promising segment of a larger work.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

What Happened to No Cell Phones on Middle Path?

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It’s one of Kenyon’s most well-known, but endangered traditions, and I’m definitely not the first to lodge this complaint, but I’ll go for it anyway: What’s up with all of these cell phones on Middle Path?

Most of us knew the ins and outs, as well as the rules, of Middle Path by the time orientation was over. There are certain things that aren’t a good idea, and certain things you just don’t do. It’s probably in your best interest to avoid wearing good shoes on the gravel; you’ll destroy them. But we never needed a rational explanation to know that you don’t walk through the Gates of Hell when the midnight bells are chiming and you really don’t use your cell phone on the path. Ever.

The principle sounded petty at the time, but as I look out on Middle Path and see a girl staring into her phone as she walks, unable to tear herself away from cyberspace and look up at what is an absolutely stunning early evening, I can’t help but feel that she’s missing out, and that what she’s doing is less-than-right. Sure, she isn’t hurting anybody by being absorbed in her phone (unless she walks into someone), but something feels viscerally wrong with what she’s doing in a way that it wouldn’t if she were staring into her phone while walking elsewhere on campus.

Ignore the phone call, step onto the grass if you must (it’s really not that hard), but Kenyon was founded long before the cell phone and will exist long after students are communicating telepathically. So put the technology of the current aside for a second and take the opportunity to share in as something as simple as walking from point A to point B with students past, experiencing this one sliver of our time here as they did: phone-free.

We don’t get that many opportunities to experience Kenyon in the same way it was experienced a century ago. We have more cars to dodge, more places to go to and more allstus to send. We can no longer park our horses under Old Kenyon, but we can call up the Cove at 1:30 am and have various kinds of deep-fried cheese delivered to our door within the half hour. It would seem that one of the few things we do have left in common with our predecessors is the ability to be present on Middle Path, unimpeded by buzzing or jingling from people who are anywhere other than walking next to or past us. In the interest of preserving the few connections we have to those who came before us, surely we can resist the urge to venture into cyberspace in the five minutes it takes us to get from South Quad to the Market, let alone the 90 seconds we spend on Middle Path between classes.

We’re told that part of going to college is the questioning of tradition: when we see things that are done simply because “that’s the way it’s always been done” we’re supposed to raise a skeptical eyebrow and ask why. This can make simple, unwritten social regulations, such as not stepping on the seal in Peirce, seem like unnecessary inconveniences unworthy of our recognition.

But when asked about our ethos as a community, what defines going to Kenyon, these little traditions tend to pop up in conversation. Bring a friend from another school to Peirce and the first thing you tell them is “Don’t step on the seal!” They aren’t going to fail any classes; they don’t even go here. But part of being on Kenyon’s campus means that you don’t do certain things. These traditions are part of what define us, and recognizing that definition lowers the skeptical eyebrows of the incoming would-be seal-steppers and Middle Path-texters.

Go to any established college campus and you will find quirky traditions that define what it means to go there as opposed to another college. At UVa, you streak the Lawn at least once before you graduate. At Colby you stay up drinking all night on St. Patrick’s Day, then meet with the entire student body on the steps of the library to watch the sun rise (it’s called Doghead). At Christopher Newport University, you are given a penny during Freshman orientation that you must keep your entire college career; you then throw that penny into the Canadian geese fountain after you graduate, wishing luck to remaining and future students.

Absent these traditions, would our Kenyon education change? Of course not, but our Kenyon experience would. Not only would we be further removed from previous, technologically lacking alumni, we’d be more like all of the other college students across the country who don’t have that one spot on campus where it isn’t OK to be plugged in.

So, as petty as it may seem and as silly as it may sound, to keep Kenyon Kenyon and literally for old-times’ sake: no cell phones on Middle Path.

Interview with Charles Murray

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In conjunction with his visit to Kenyon, American Enterprise Institute scholar in residence Charles Murray took some time to answer some of our editors’ questions relating to academic and political pursuits, rigor and debate.

TKO: It is possible for two people to view the same data and come up with very different causal stories to explain them. When you see data showing class separation, what are some of the possible causal stories that can be derived from said data, what is your interpretation and why do you consider it preferable to the interpretations of others?

CM: It’s not only possible, it happens all the time, and the reasons for the different causal interpretations are usually related to the analyst’s assumptions about human nature and often also related to the analyst’s first principles about human flourishing. That’s why it ought to be standard operating procedure for social scientists to do two things in every journal article and book they write. First, explicitly segregate the statement of the data from the interpretation of causes. And second, tell the reader where you’re coming from. So if you look at the opening of Part 3 of Coming Apart, you’ll see me saying to the reader, “I’m a libertarian, so I think these data constitute a call for limited government. If you’re a social democrat, you’ll think they’re a call for an expanded welfare state.” If you go back to Losing Ground or The Bell Curve, you’ll see the same kind of thing: chapters explicitly devoted to the presentation of data with no causal analysis, then a section of causal analysis accompanied by an explanation of the frame of mind I bring to that analysis. What gripes me is that you never see the same kind of straightforward statement in social science from the Left: “By the way, you should understand as you read me that I’m a passionately committed social democrat.” I explicitly avoided causal analyses for the formation of the new lower class in Coming Apart because I wanted the book to be one that people of the left could read. And it seems to have worked. For example, Nicholas Kristof felt free to write a column in the New York Times saying that I was talking about a real problem, even though my politics are nuts. For the record, I stand by the analysis of causes from Losing Ground. Answering your question more fully would take several thousand words of the Observer, so I’ll pass.

TKO: You have said before that too many people are going to college. Why?

First, genuine college-level material makes cognitive demands, even in the humanities and social sciences, that mean only about 10 to 15 percent of high school graduates can do well in college – not just struggle through, but flourish. About half of all high school graduates enter college. Something’s wrong with that picture. Second, the BA has become a credential of first class citizenship at the same time that it has become substantively meaningless. If the only thing you know about a person is that he has a BA, you don’t even know if he can write a coherent sentence. In effect, we’re saying to 17-year-olds, “You have a choice between a respectable white collar job or working at Wal-Mart.” We sneer at training in all the other ways of making a living that can be satisfying, absorbing, and yield a damn good income as “vocational training.” We’re saying that you have to go to a residential institution, stay there four years and spend a fortune so you can get a piece of paper that doesn’t say a thing about what you know. It’s idiotic and punishing to a huge proportion of young people.

TKO: Do the members of the “cognitive elite,” as you call them, have social obligations extending beyond utilizing their cognitive and economic potential to the fullest?

CM: Yes. And they’re failing in those obligations miserably.

TKO: Can you speak a bit about the “cognitive sorting” you described in Chapter 5 of Coming Apart? In educational discourse in this country, this feature is usually viewed as an unmitigated virtue; we want our schools to evaluate applicants only based on intelligence, to the extent possible. Do we need to give up this ideal, or is it possible to have meritocratic schools while bridging the gap between students in other ways?

CM: It’s one of those cases where a good thing – giving kids with talent a chance to realize their talent no matter what their backgrounds may be – has long-term collateral consequences that are problematic. The feminist revolution is another classic case. It doesn’t mean that we should stop sending the most intellectually talented students to good schools or that women shouldn’t have gotten a chance to realize their talents. Sometimes positive social trends have negative side-effects. That’s just a fact, and it’s important to ponder what might be done to mitigate them.

TKO: Some critics and reviewers, even those sympathetic to the book’s claims, have called your policy proposals implausible and idealistic. What are a few politically viable and practically feasible policies that can start to bridge the gap between the classes? Or, are these critics mistaken?

CM: I don’t think I’ve ever offered a politically viable policy recommendation. It’s almost become a point of pride, but the underlying reason is pretty simple: I can never think of any politically viable policy recommendations that would do any good.

TKO: You’ve heavily criticized the conventional wisdom that increased funding for pre-kindergarten programs would greatly improve outcomes. Why?

CM: Because the conventional wisdom is wrong. The data for long-term effects of pre-K from a program that could be implemented nationwide are terribly weak. Even the data from the most intensive interventions aren’t nearly as solid or as impressive as the advocates make them out to be. If the quantity and quality of data being used to justify universal pre-K were evidence for any less politically fashionable venture, they would be dismissed out of hand.

TKO: There was a bit of debate in Kenyon’s community in anticipation of your talk. Some were concerned that hosting you at Kenyon signaled some kind of approval of ideas which they found to be beyond the pale of reasonable discourse; others saw these complaints as inhibiting free intellectual exchange, and as not befitting an academic institution. As you’ve spoken at college campuses throughout the country and during your career, what is your sense of the attitudes of elite students (and their professors) to ideas which they find objectionable or offensive? Have you found changes in these attitudes over the years?

CM: With a handful of exceptions right after the publication of The Bell Curve, I’ve had a good time speaking on elite campuses. The interactions with the students in the Q&A have been serious and mutually respectful. The campus newspaper coverage the next day usually is to the effect that this kind of intellectual interchange is what universities are supposed to be all about. I would have thought that this kind of track record would eventually make me a hot ticket on the college speaking circuit, but it hasn’t happened. I don’t think it is students who think I am beyond the pale, but college administrators.

Kenyon Already Has a Code of Honor

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“…correct models and standards are set lest the worst social and moral patterns become impressed upon and stand for all the students of the community. It is with this…point in mind that Kenyon affirms basic standards of behavior that cannot be disregarded with impunity.”

The introduction to the Kenyon College Student Handbook (adopted in 1964 and revised in 1972) describes the moral and social reasoning behind the regulations that are outlined in the proceeding pages. This redefines our rules as values, which carry more weight because “patterns of student attitudes and conduct have even more far-reaching implications…when one remembers that students determine the character of the entire community.” When individual students behave honorably, our community as a whole is honorable.

Moreover, and unlike the proposed Honor Code, the rules outlined in the Student Handbook are backed up by consequences for non-compliance, providing a mechanism for enforcing honorable moral and social behavior. Moral guidelines are not adhered to out of convenience, and it takes more than a pinky-swear to ensure compliance. It is in this Rousseau-ian sense of moral freedom that we check our raw self-interest by setting laws that reflect our values and coercing ourselves into adherence.

With this in mind, I would ask readers what value a consequence-free wink-and-nod at Kenyon’s values would add to our existing standards for honorable behavior. As we consider whether to add an non-binding Honor Code on top of our existing value structure, I would encourage all Kenyon students to read their Handbook and see if anything’s missing. If you, like me, forgot where you put your Student Handbook, you can check it out at the link below:

http://documents.kenyon.edu/studentlife/studenthandbook.pdf

Event Recap: The Kenyon Torah (Lecture and Discussion)

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Event: The Kenyon Torah (Lecture and Discussion)
Date: February 12th 2013
Location: Gund Gallery
Correspondent: Jessica Lieberman

On Tuesday, February 12th, Peter Haas, visiting professor of Jewish studies from Case Western Reserve University, presented his research on what he termed “The Mysterious Torah of Knox County, Ohio.”  This discussion of the Kenyon Torah falls under the umbrella of the year-long symposium run through the Kenyon Review and the Gund Gallery, which raises questions of Art and Identity in light of the challenges of post-Holocaust cultural ownership.  After being introduced by Religious Studies professor Miriam Dean-Otting, Haas outlined his approach to the Torah.  An anthropologist by training, he identified the various layers of complicated symbolism which lead to the object’s unique personality.

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The crux of his concerns had to with the Torah’s mysterious history.  The scroll was purchased and donated to Kenyon under the assumption that it had survived the Holocaust.  Although the Torah did in fact come from eastern-Europe and hence could possibly have survived the Holocaust, the specific narrative that had been connected with the scroll was invented by the scribe who restored it, Rabbi Menachem Youlus. However, apart from the legal and political complexities of this scandal, more interesting moral and symbolic ambiguities linger over the scroll.   This misuse of the memory and trauma of the Holocaust raises serious questions as to how to treat both the scribe and the Torah.  That is, in the Judaic tradition, the Torah scribe (the sofer) is granted great respect for his dedication to G-d and his teachings (the text of the Torah).  The job is not a glamorous one, but rather a  precise and arduous labor (it can take years to finish a Torah) that is undertaken for reasons of religious zeal and interest in the continuity of tradition.  Therefore Youlus’ misrepresentation of the holy book has inspired a kind of cognitive dissonance (in Haas’ terms) in the Jewish community at large.

However, perhaps more pertinent to the Kenyon community is the question of the Torah itself and how, if at all, its meaning and sacrality have been altered by these events.  Haas approached the question of the Torah’s nuanced meaning through a sort of stratigraphical mapping its symbolism.  He began by explaining the symbolism which surrounds all Torot.  The Torah is both central and essential to the Jewish tradition.  The object is the most sacred in the religion and the contents of the scroll constitute the core narratives and values of Judaism.   The next layer that Haas urged the audience to consider was the symbolism created by the Torah’s purchase.  Despite the developments which would come out later, the Torah was purchased and received under the understanding that it had survived the Holocaust.  That gesture in itself speaks volumes to the commitment of its donors to Judaic history and practice.   Thus, Haas argued that rather than viewing the Torah as tainted by the profanity of human-wrong doing, we should appreciate it as having a complicated engagement with a human history that is flawed.  From this perspective, Haas argued that we should approach the events surrounding the Torah as a teaching moment, a notion which couldn’t seem more appropriate to me, given that the word Torah itself is commonly translated as “teaching,” and that the text puts forth a definition of Judaism that holds the struggle for identity through narrativizing at its very core.

Event Recap: Hao Tang Lecture on Wittgenstein

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This post is part of a new series by the Kenyon Observer which aims to cover the intellectual life on Kenyon’s campus. In the near future we will feature audio and video of lectures and events alongside commentary from our departmental correspondents. 

Event: Hao Tang Lecture
Department: Philosophy
Date: February 4th 2013
Location: Hayes 109
Correspondent: Javier Leung

Wittgenstein and the Dualism of the Inner and the Outer

Professor Hao Tang of Wuhan University came to Kenyon this week to present a lecture on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein titled “Wittgenstein and the Dualism of the Inner and the Outer”.  One of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein is primarily known for his philosophy of language, on which his views on logic, culture and psychology are based – Tang’s lecture, as the title suggests, addressed an important concern in psychology and the mind that Wittgenstein raises.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy is grounded in the premise that all thought is based on language; what can be said is the same as what can be thought, thus in order to understand one’s thoughts one must acquire an understanding of the nature of language. Language equips one with a mind. From this assumption, a distinction between what is considered “my thoughts” and “your thoughts” naturally follows; there are thoughts that seem to be private, and as Tang explains, we all make this distinction in everyday life. But this distinction undergoes a deformation – as seen in the history of philosophy, it has transformed into a problematic dualism.

This “dualism” is between the “inner” and “outer” views of the mind. Proponents of the inner – Descartes being a classical representative – assume a “private language”, so-called in Wittgenstein’s framework. Inner thoughts remain intelligible even if outer ones are not, and this leads to a kind of solipsism where we can never have access to other people’s thoughts. However, rejecting private language appears to result only in philosophical behaviorism, which considers only our outer behavior and dismisses inner thoughts as convenient fictions. The result is a dualistic view of the mind as being either inner or outer, two domains which are only independently intelligible.

Tang explained, in line with Wittgenstein, that these views do injustice to common sense; for example, when we see someone else in pain, we know they’re in pain – a claim which this dualism denies. Drawing from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Tang set out in his lecture to resolve this dualism by rejecting the intellectualist assumption of language (see Wittgenstein’s theory of language-games). Primitive expressions like “ouch!”, “yuck!” and “wow!”, examples of what Tang termed the “expressives function of language”, give us the key to resolving the dualism between the inner and the outer because in each case there is an immediate unity between the two.

This argument, Tang acknowledged, runs into difficulties within Wittgenstein’s framework of language; he thus explained that we must begin with an objection to Wittgenstein. While Wittgenstein seems to suggest that sensory consciousness is shaped by our language, Tang pointed out that there are non-linguistic, primitive expressions of sensation. These expressions, he explained, show a unity between the inner and the outer, such as crying when one is in pain – crying and pain, in the sensory consciousness of a child, are a whole. Tang therefore suggested that all we need is a reminder of some kind of unity between the inner and outer in order to resolve this dualism; recalling non-linguistic unities work just as well as expressives unities. Rather than merely rejecting the intellectualism of language like Wittgenstein, therefore, Tang presented a rejection of intellectualism in sensory consciousness.

Tang proposed a resolution to dualism based on his interpretation of Wittgenstein’s descriptions on learning sensation-languages. To learn a language is to acquire an intellect, and this begins with sensation-language. This is achieved through what Tang calls “incision”; children learn linguistic expressions that expand their primitive non-linguistic expressions, such as saying “ouch!” instead of merely crying, and later, “it hurts!” In this view, there is a simultaneous growth of both the inner and outer originating in our primitive expressions, resolving the problematic dualism. Our original primitive expressions, Tang explained, are submerged in a sea of language which has become increasingly and predominantly intellectual – we only need to be reminded of them to get ourselves out of the chimera of problematic dualism. Tang concluded the lecture by referring us to Wittgenstein’s quote of Goethe: language is a refinement – “in the beginning was the deed”.

Although many questions yet remain, such as how the first incision of linguistic expression can occur, Tang’s lecture was nonetheless fascinating and very stimulating. Having only studied very little of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, I found it hard to understand all of what was being discussed in the lecture, but Tang’s approach and exciting topic certainly re-kindled my interest in Wittgenstein – and his hope that the philosophical diseases of our age may be cured once and for all.