Horoscopes by Drunk Editors

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Pisces (Feb. 19 – March 20): Sandals and snow don’t mix. Boots were invented for a reason. Although boots and tall snow don’t mix well either, so you’re probably just screwed.

Aries (March 21 – April 19): This month we will lose an hour. You’ll need to work very hard to make up for this missed hour or work time or sleep time. Use your negative hour very wisely – you paid for it with a hangover in November.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20): See if any of the doors to the roof of your heart are open. Stargaze. Don’t get caught.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20): If there was ever a time to embrace Pass/No Record, now is not it. Good news, though – spring break is right around the corner. You’ll have an extra week to work hard.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22): If there was ever a time to embrace Pass/No Record, now is not it. Good news, though – spring break is right around the corner. You’ll have an extra week to work hard.

Leo (July 23 – Aug. 22): You will have to walk to school, barefoot uphill both ways in the snow. And this winter is about to be Boston’s snowiest winter ever.

Virgo (Aug. 23 – Sept. 22): When you see the bananas in the dining hall I bet all you can think of is the telephone. Use this as a reminder to call your family or reconnect with old friends. I bet they would love to hear from you.

Libra (Sept. 23 – Oct. 22): Stop. Stop procrastinating. Stop saying ‘no.’ Stop trying so hard. Stop not trying hard enough. Stop feeling guilty.

Scorpio (Oct. 23 – Nov. 21): Tennis balls are so perfectly round and fuzzy. They are fun to bounce. You can’t not smile when you’re holding a tennis ball. Next time you see one of these magical objects, make sure you give it its due respect.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 21): You can convince them of anything. Remember, people used to think the Earth was flat.

Capricorn (Dec. 22 – Jan. 19): You look like you need some ice cream. Guess what flavors the Dining Hall has? Peach.

Aquarius (Jan. 20 – Feb. 18): BACK UP YOUR DATA! EVERYTHING WILL CRASH AT MIDNIGHT!

So What Are You Watching?

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The film industry is based on a formula that “works.” Namely, a formula that makes money and a formula that is safe–and if you think about how much time, how many people, how much money, and how much love and care and effort that goes into making a film–it makes sense.

I was once told by a screenwriter, no one ever sets out to make a bad movie. But, like most businesses, they will not make anything unless profit is guaranteed – which is why you get sequels dragged into the ground and continual reboots are so prevalent despite the cry for originality. It does not matter how much people rant and rave about how great a film is, the box office speaks the loudest. If a film flies, expect sequels. If it flops, say goodbye. Dreamworks, for example, had an entire series planned for The Road to El Dorado, which was canceled because it was a box office flop and historically their worst financial film of all time at a total loss of $45 million [1].

That said, my point is that Hollywood is saturated with movies of white male protagonists and supporting females, because it is a formula that sadly sells. Strong female leads unfortunately do not – part because most films that pass the Bechdel test flop (this is false, but it’s Hollywood’s biggest argument [2]) – part because even if female moviegoers buy tickets, they don’t buy merchandise of male-targeted movies (strong females or not) [3] – part because even if over half the movie goers are female, they are watching male lead movies so why should anything change [4]? Also, don’t forget that the “rest of the world” is considered a market. Not just the US.

Well, I’m going to tell you a secret – there are a LOT of movies out there with female leads who are pretty awesome. It may not be the majority of films, but they very much exist.

They just get snuffed out by marketing. And memory. People dismiss their actions. And then the whole movie itself is mocked and torn to pieces when they don’t get it right, making the standards too high and the “risk” of making a movie with a female lead more daunting.

Let’s pick on Disney – and the phenomenon that acclaimed Frozen as being a revolutionary feminist film.

Remember Pocahontas? The Native American princess that threw her head on John Smith’s own as her father was about to beat his brains out and trigger a war that would have ultimately ended in genocide, and who eventually dumped John Smith for someone else because he was a jerk. It is not uncommon to exclude her from the Disney princess line up – along with Tiana, Mulan, and yes – sometimes Jasmine.

How about Melody from the Little Mermaid 2 – that mother, daughter story where the mother is not abusive and there are no men involved beyond a random crush stereotypical of budding puberty? Ariel’s daughter has never been included in the Disney princess line up because Ariel having a daughter probably ruins the fact that Ariel is marketed as a 16 year old (and with Melody, she is in her 30’s).

And for those of you wondering why Kida is not a Disney princess, it was because Atlantis was a box office meh. Just like Road to El Dorado, it had planned spin-offs focusing on its other characters that was quietly dropped. The Submarine voyage in Disneyland was originally intended to be Atlantis theme, and was changed into Finding Nemo for similar reasons [5].

Disney has a stream of female-lead movies, because “The Princess Franchise” is primarily what it is – a franchise. In fact, it is the #1 franchise in the world (Star Wars is #2) which is why they can experiment in the “dangerous waters” of female leads [6] due to the discovery that girls and women buy feminism [7]. The chiming word this time: merchandising – the other major lever on a film’s success outside of the box office.

Merchandising is why Pixar made a sequel for Cars (made $10 billion in 5 years on merchandising alone [8]). It’s why Young Justice, a wonderful show with a 50-50 male-female show of DC sidekicks, got canceled – because females were half the watchers and they “don’t buy boy’s toys” [9]. With the Disney franchise, toys go with the movies, showers of pretty dolls and dresses little girls are expected to beg their parents to buy. Throw in a minor side-kick character plushie like Flounder or Olaf for the boys. (As a side note, Disney does not include Princess Leila in their Star Wars merchandising, and Gamora for the Guardians of the Galaxy because Star Wars and Marvel are “for boys” [10].)

But moving away from Disney and animation. What about other movies with female leads? Why aren’t they all over our Facebook and tumblr feeds? Is it because movies actually lack a strong female characters, that the writing is bad so they are flat and boring, that the actress herself did poorly so it is not a performance worth acknowledging, or that we get so wrapped up with the men, we stop noticing the women?

Do we ever talk about the lead from Silence of the Lambs? Ignoring the fact that Hannibal was a supporting character popular enough for his own spin off franchise, of course. Do we ever talk about Alice in Wonderland? Because you’d think with every remake they do someone will acknowledge Alice as an iconic character like the Mad Hatter and Cheshire cat (kudos to the Queen of Hearts for escaping). How about the Wizard of Oz? How about Annie? Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Alien? Kill Bill? Precious? Million Dollar Baby? Easy A? Juno? The Help? Epic? Amelie? Iron Jawed Angels? Doubt? Coraline? Pan’s Labyrinth? Mary Poppins? One Night with the King? Prayers for Bobby? Legally Blond? Anything with Angelina Jolie? Every single horror movie not written by Stephen King ever? Gothika actually takes a spin on that and makes the female lead a black woman!

Or maybe, moving back to animation – here’s an even harder question – do you watch the Barbie franchise? Their most recent film was where Barbie got kissed by a chemically altered bug and gained flight, super strength, and the ability to shoot energy balls (also includes female twin engineers and questionable physics related to lava). Or how about the Tinker Bell franchise? It explores the back story of Tinker Bell, an overly curious tinker fairy and Tesla of the fairy world. Pirates and more questionable physics included.

If you don’t watch these, then why not? Because you never heard of them? Because they are for kids? Because you don’t think they are good? Or because they are “too girly”? Yeah – Barbie is all about her signature color of pink and “buy my dolls!” merchandising, despite the fact that she breaks more stereotypes than Disney films and can easily pass as a feminist heart throb. If you get past what she looks like, you discover she is also smart and a bit quirky. Tinker Bell is too.

However, a funny observation I’ve had is that movies targeted at girls are often considered inferior to those targeted at boys. After all, the cry for an original female superhero is loud. But why would boys be interested in magical sparkle transformations as they discover they are actually the long lost merman prince of Oceana with pearl power and a faithful pet fish? As a side question, does anyone else use “chick flick” as a derogatory term?

That said, I am not here to convince you to watch movies normally targeted at “little girls.” I am here to encourage you, if you want more of a certain type of movie, support it in every way you can, especially if you are not the target audience.

It is not getting better just because Hunger Games and Maleficent exist; it has actually gotten worse. In 2014, there were fewer movies with female leads than there were back in 2002 [11]. And at $90 million, 50 Shades of Grey is the highest gross film of all time with a female lead, a female director, and a 70% female audience on opening weekend (Frozen was $67 million) [12].

So stop harping on Disney Princesses to lead the way – they have been for years and people who are supposed to make animated films of pretty animated girls in dresses (or teenagers if you will) are not the ones to do it. Remind all of Hollywood you want epic female characters leading the way and nothing else will do. That you would pay to see female-lead movies more than any other film. That gender marketing is absurd. That live actresses are as well beloved and capable as animated ones. That female supporting characters are epic and deserve spin off series just as much as Despicable Me’s minions, Hannibal, and Wolverine. Drive the demand out hard – especially if you are a guy. With the deepest respect, if a heavily female audience goes to watch a movie targeted at a female audience, big whoop – that was supposed to happen. That is how gender marketing works.

So put a kink in that formula of expectations. Make that “risky” market look juicy so Hollywood has no choice but to step out of their comfort zone – and that if they flop, it’s a stepping stone – not an “I told you so” dead end. Give them confidence that the years of time, script writing, finding actors, introducing revolutionary animation/graphics, reputation investment, production costs, advertising, actually shooting the movie and so much, much more – is worth that “risk.”

Citations
[1]:http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/the-ten-biggest-animated-flops-of-all-time.php
[2]:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_04/fivethirtyeight_analysis_movie049791.php
[3]: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/fans-notice-lack-of-gamora-merchandise/
[4]:http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/27/mpaa_2013_numbers_women_buy_half_of_all_movie_tickets_but_that_won_t_mean.html
[5]:http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-nemo11jun11-story.html
[6]:http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/disney-star-wars-princesses-licensing-1200498040/
[7]: https://www.beaconreader.com/teresa-jusino/when-feminism-becomes-a-marketing-tool
[8]:http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/21/business/la-fi-ct-cars2-20110621
[9]: http://io9.com/paul-dini-superhero-cartoon-execs-dont-want-largely-f-1483758317
[10]:http://www.dailydot.com/geek/fans-notice-lack-of-gamora-merchandise/
[11]:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/10/female-movie-protagonists-2014_n_6652366.html
[12]:http://variety.com/2015/film/news/box-office-fifty-shades-of-grey-explodes-with-record-breaking-

LGBTQ and OPEN at Olin

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I recently sent out a survey asking students to answer a few questions about what sexuality they identify as and whether or not they considered themselves “out” to the community. The results confirmed some ideas that I have been noticing this year that have been bothering me. Out of the 117 responses that I received, a significant percentage of our population, 20% identified as LGBTQ. Olin has a heavy physical presence of LGBTQ students on campus. Unfortunately, this large population has little to no presence as an LGBTQ body. OPEN, the LGBTQ club on campus, has had almost no participation this year. As president, I really just want the club to exist as a place where people who identify as LGBTQ and allies can gather and be friendly every once in a while. This allows people to realize that they aren’t alone as an LGBTQ student, and allows the rest of the Olin community to realize that we are a large percentage of the population (maybe they should stop assuming they know people’s sexuality) and are all awesome people.

I have heard many people voice that the reason that they don’t attend OPEN meetings is because they feel like Olin is a place where LGBTQ treatment is not an issue. Everyone is cool with it. There is no need to try to continue to improve Olin’s openness to minority sexualities.

The fact is that Olin is not an ideal place for LGBTQ students. Although 20% of students identified as queer, another 11% were unsure or other. Of those students that identified as queer, unsure, or other, only 20% considered themselves “out” to the Olin community. 31% said that they were not out on campus or they were only out to a few close friends. Another 37% said that “coming out” was not important to them. I have personally encountered Oliners that faced confusion when they began coming out to their friends. Students are assumed straight unless otherwise stated, especially male students. Hetero-normative statements can be found in all areas of campus, perpetuating this assumed-straight idea and making many LGBTQ students uncomfortable. Wellesley asked students for their preferred pronoun when they enter orientation. No assumptions are made about gender or sexuality. Why can’t Olin have a similar culture?

Olin advertises itself as a diverse place open and accepting of all backgrounds and lifestyles. Along with gender, sexuality is another area that Olin is succeeding in creating a diverse campus. The issue is that it doesn’t feel that way due to the the inactivity of those students that identify as LGBTQ as a body. The stronger the presence we have, the less often hetero-normative comments and assumptions will be made. Olin students aren’t purposefully being close-minded, they just don’t realize that they are perpetuating ideas that go against what Olin stands for. By lowering these types of occurrences, we will create a community where those 17% of students who identify as LGBTQ but have not come out to Olin feel comfortable being themselves. Even if you are comfortable identifying as LGBTQ, or feel like it is not necessary to be an active ally, think about the Oliners who don’t feel comfortable fully expressing themselves on our campus. Do something to make this campus a better place to be gay.

I want to challenge people to do more, care more. Make Olin a more open place. If you identify as LGBTQ and didn’t see a purpose in participating in OPEN before, I hope you can recognize that participation shows others that Olin does care. That they have people to relate to. If you are an ally, and you want people to feel welcome, then show you care. Bring attention to hetero-normative comments and assumptions you come across. Be receptive when someone hints that they might identify as LGBTQ. Recognize that sexuality is a spectrum; people won’t fall into neat little boxes. Understand that just because someone else has never been attracted to someone of one gender, that does not mean that person never will. I challenge us as a campus to stop assuming.

A History of 3D Graphics in Video Games

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videogametrivia3D graphics – as in the type used in movies with glasses, not 3D models – has been a target that video game developers aimed at for years.

Though one might think that the ability to produce 3D models is a necessary prerequisite to creating 3D visuals, that is not the case. The Sega Master Drive, which came out around the same time as the NES and had similar power, came with an optional accessory released in 1987 that allowed a small subset of games to be played in 3D – despite the games being entirely sprite-based [1]. It’s not a surprise that Sega did it, though; they already had experience with the technology from Subroc-3D, an arcade game they released in 1982. Furthermore, Nintendo released a very similar add-on for the Famicom, the Japanese equivalent to the NES, the same year the add-on came to the Master Drive. Both systems used something called an LCD shutter to produce the 3D effect. These worked by blocking the view to one eye and allowing the view of the other to take in the image on the screen. The blocking disk in the glasses quickly rotated from the left eye to the right eye in sync with the images on the screen to create a fake binocular parallax (retinal disparity) [2].

Sega tried to continue this legacy of 3D games with their next console, the Sega Genesis, through a similar add-on called the Sega VR. With a form factor and function similar to the Oculus Rift, it’s not a surprise that they were interested in such a system. Unfortunately, the state of technology at the time meant that some users reported motion sickness and headaches, and there was fear that prolonged 3D video could damage the eyes of users. As a result, it was quietly canceled sometime in 1994 [3].

These reactions didn’t faze Nintendo, who came out with the Virtual Boy in 1995, a system that could produce stereoscopic 3D all on its own, not as an add-on to a preexisting system. It was essentially a set of goggles on a stand that the user peered into. It worked through vibrating mirrors that reflected a single row of LEDs,2 and its graphics were red and black only due to the high cost of other color LEDs at the time [4]. Unfortunately for Nintendo, their less-orthodox approach did not prevent the headaches and dizziness that users of the Sega VR had suffered [5]. Just over a year after it launched, Nintendo cut the price from $179 to $99, but even that failed to lift the console’s fortunes – they gave up on it not long after the price cut [6].

Though Nintendo had been burned by 3D with the Virtual Boy, they decided to experiment with it again when technology caught up with their ambitions. In 2002, they created an LCD screen for the Nintendo Gamecube that did not require glasses to achieve the 3D effect, and implemented the graphics into some games, notably Luigi’s Mansion. However, LCD screens were still quite expensive at the time, and the add-on was projected to cost more than the system itself. As a result, they shelved the idea [7].

A similar idea was tested with the Game Boy Advance SP, but the resolution of LCD screens at the time was too low for the effect to be convincing on such a small screen [8]. The idea remained dormant for some time, before re-emerging in discussions about the successor to the Nintendo DS.

Nintento didn’t want the DS’s successor to just be a more powerful DS, because that would not make it unique, so they revisited the 3D concept. After building a prototype, it became obvious that computing power and LCD resolution had both improved enough to allow Nintendo to fulfill its ambition: a true glasses-free, relatively inexpensive 3D system [9]. In 2011, the Nintendo 3DS equipped with realistic 3D effects came out, bringing things full circle.

Citations
[1] http://segaretro.org/3-D_Glasses
[2] http://www.pcworld.com/article/220922/the_history_of_steroscopic_3d_gaming.html?null
[3] http://segaretro.org/Sega_VR
[4] Ultimate History of Video Games, page 514
[5] Ultimate History of Video Games, page 515
[6] http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1065/retro-scan-of-the-week-the-99-virtual-boy
[7] http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/how-nintendo-3ds-made/1/1
[8] http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/how-nintendo-3ds-made/0/2
[9] http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/how-nintendo-3ds-made/0/4

Five Cool New Things in the Library

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libraryUncovered

  1. Cardboard Study Carrel
    Venture down to the lower level of the library to check out our brand new study carrel made entirely of cardboard. We heard lots of feedback about replacing the carrels, and we heard you. Don’t worry, it is very sturdy.
  2. Sprout Computer
    This new computer, located on the main level near the printer, combines a touch-screen Windows computer with a 3D scanner and a projector.
  3. Tools on Display
    The tools that were formerly locked up in the lower level tool shelves are now on display on the main level. This means that you can stop by the library any time of day and check out any tool with the self checkout machine.
  4. Fiction Section
    All of the fiction from West Hall is now in its own section arranged by author’s last name in the lower level of the library.
  5. Owl Crayons
    Multi-color owl crayons. ‘Nuff said.

GCSP and the Learning Continuum

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Before arriving at Olin, we had heard about the kind of flexibility and experimentation built into Olin’s curriculum, best exemplified at the time by Olin’s learning continuum and its frequently changing course catalog. In the spring of 2006 Olin went through a curriculum redesign exercise that involved the entire community. As students going through that experience, we fell in love with the idea that we had genuine ownership, control, and responsibility for our educational experience. In fact, being a part of this process was itself learning outside the bounds of the course catalog. However, by the time we were seniors at Olin, and having spent a good deal of time thinking about learning, it was clear that the concept of a learning continuum was still underdeveloped, and students’ experiences remained incompletely described.

Olin’s original curriculum documents (e,g., “Once Upon a College” or “The Olin College Curriculum — A Play in 5 Acts”) describe individual students’ Learning Plans as one of the five primary ‘wondrous’ elements of the Olin student experience. Oh yes indeed. #Martello. Learning Plans were meant to be a collection of personal objectives, be those curricular or affective in nature, and they were intended to serve as the basis for one’s portfolio of work. This idea of formalized Learning Plans was something that resonated with us when we first read through Olin’s curricular script. These plans seemed to capture part of what we felt was missing from Olin’s Learning Continuum, but they sadly never made it out of Olin’s first full year.

So, where are we on this front today? One of the first stops on an Olin student tour is by the wooden waterfall to explain a poster of Olin’s Learning Continuum. This poster screams, “learning happens beyond just credit-bearing courses, and we actually recognize it here!” Despite its holistic intent, however, this picture fails to capture the full Olin learning experience. Where on this poster would we place dining hall discussions, LOAs, Interesting Conversations, Olin startup experiences, or any of the many other things Olin students passionately pursue? How else could we express the many learning paths students explore while at Olin in a way that feels more complete than a collection of line items referenced on a transcript?

We may now be standing at the brink of something new here. Just as new generations of Oliners have revised the Honor Code, CORe, the Foundry, and many other aspects of the community in the spirit of continuous improvement, there is an opportunity to reflect on the student learning experience, and decide what an updated Learning Continuum might be. We spent some time thinking about this our senior year with Zhenya and several other Olin students, and while we maybe didn’t fully answer the challenge, our hope is that others will take it up and iterate on this idea again.

Our senior year, President Miller announced the Grand Challenge Scholars Program, a call to rally engineering education around challenges and global themes that needed solving. The Grand Challenge themes felt like an opportunity to showcase how Olin students identify with real world problems that need solving, and how our curriculum and community helps support exploration of these interests. To start, the challenges offered us a way to frame learning at Olin from any individual student’s perspective — “What problems do I want to help solve?”

A second goal was to support students in thoughtful reflections spanning their four years, helping progressively build up a portfolio. As it turns out, essentially every Olin student completed the core requirements of GCSP, often through existing Olin courses and other learning experiences. Just ‘completing’ this experience didn’t feel right, and for this reason our initial charter proposed additional requirements around reflection and portfolios as a way to connect together through narrative all the amazing experiences students were already having at Olin.

Imagine if every Olin student was recorded answering the same half dozen questions or so about their learning experiences and goals for them to review and reflect on each year. Now imagine that in a few years, after Olin has amassed hundreds of GCSP portfolios and reflections, an Olin student is interested in helping solve the same problem you were interested in solving while you were at Olin. That future Olin student might have access to portfolios and reflections of students passionate about similar challenges. Olin would benefit from an improved ability to demonstrate the richness and variety of each Olin student’s learning experience, highlighting our curriculum’s emphasis on real world themes and challenges. This sharing of portfolios, and connections between students and alumni through grand challenges also feels consistent with the collaborative spirit that is a part of Olin’s community.

So, you’ve heard a bit about what we felt were important elements of an updated model for student learning for Olin — thematic connectivity to real world problems and thoughtful reflection. Our hope is that people continue to think about how to make personal learning plans a part of the Olin experience, because despite GCSP only existing for our final year at Olin, the process of creating our portfolios yielded realizations that shape our work every day. Selfishly we ask that you take up the charge of updating GCSP and learning plans to fit your experience, in part because we would love to see a fresh take on the learning experience explained at Olin, but also because these plans wove into ways for alumni to participate in the community as challenge mentors and portfolio reviewers! Consider this as us alums fulfilling a part of Olin’s ‘Do Something’ clause. Tag, you’re it!

Build Day 2015, Anyone?

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When I came back to Olin after leading the Build Day team last spring, I was asked many times whether or not the event would happen again in some form this year. It came from First Years, eager to contribute to this community-building event that drew them to Olin. It came from staff members, fondly remembering the time spent with students exploring exciting activities. It came from faculty members, off-handedly recalling the passion and energy that makes working at Olin so engaging. In reply, I’ve always said: It could definitely happen… if you want it to. If a small group of dedicated Architects lay down the groundwork, the community will fill in the rest. And this year’s event would be easier to run than either of the past events by far!

Here’s why: when Build Day was first conceived in the fall of 2012, the Architect team had their work cut out for them. They had no clue what they were getting into. They were coordinating high-stakes projects while orchestrating a campus-wide event on a scale that hadn’t been seen at Olin in a long while. And they needed to convince the entire Olin community, from bottom to top, to get on board. It was quite a challenge. But the team rose to it, and Olin embraced Build Day 2013 as being a definitive part of our culture. The community wouldn’t need convincing again!

Of course, they didn’t work all of the details perfectly. They left that task to the subsequent year’s Architect team. Build Day 2014 took a once-tested process, a lot of feedback, and a set of extremely high expectations for success, and made a formalized version of the previous year’s experiment. All while, again, taking on major projects and choreographing a major event. It was a big job. But this formula worked, and Build Day 2014 succeeded in establishing a process by which future events could be run.

So, the two ground-breaking Build Day Architect teams left us with two helpful legacies: a receptive community and a simple, replicable process. Teams would be able to put on a welcome, relatively easy iteration of Build Day for years to come. But alas, those teams left one other legacy on their way out: the impression that being an Architect means struggle, exhaustion, and stress. After making Build Day as easy as possible to run for this year’s team, these two groups of Architects made it seem like it would, instead, be prohibitively difficult!

Well, take heart, Oliners. Getting things like this off the ground takes two years of hard work. Do it once, then do it better, and only then will it finally become easier. As a member and then leader of past year’s Architect teams, I promise that so much of the work has already been done, and so many lessons have been learned, that Build Day could definitely still happen this year… if you really want it to.

Be sure to check out:
www.twitter.com/BuildOlin for projects and photos from 2014, and think about it!

Free Speech Has No Limits

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In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo magazine attacks, I read an op-ed piece by David Brooks (“I Am Not Charlie Hebdo,” Jan. 8, 2015) of the New York Times containing something that really made me think. Mr. Brooks opens his article with “The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: if they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds.” This statement terrified me – because it was right in front of my face and I didn’t notice it until reading that article.

Colleges have devolved from bastions of free thought which encourage the challenging social norms to citadels of groupthink and arbiters of what is culturally acceptable. Multiple articles (one example appearing in the Wall Street Journal on May 12, 2014 – “IMF’s Lagarde Won’t Speak at Smith, Part of a Growing List; Douglas Belkin) have been published recently about colleges disinviting speakers upon pressure from students or faculty. These speakers had been invited by a group of students who wanted to hear from them, but in some cases, these speakers were disinvited because they had said some truly reprehensible things. That does not, however, mean that they should be inhibited from speaking in front of a group that wants to hear them. To allow someone to say repulsive things does not constitute endorsement of their position. To attempt to inhibit (legally or socially) their ability to present their message does constitute censorship of an even more insidious kind than what the state could ever pull off.

The most common attempted rebuttal I have heard is that we must allow people to speak, but we do not have to give them a platform. This is true – however, we also have no right to make moves to take away their platform. This is capitalism at its most basic: the marketplace of ideas. If there are people who want to hear the idea, no matter how reprehensible it is, to intervene and attempt to remove that individual’s platform is a fundamental wrong. By all means, set up a neighboring platform to debate the idea you hate. Hold a rally excoriating everything that was just said by the individual you disagree with. Do not, however, attempt to stop that individual from saying what they want to.

Fascists everywhere would be heartened to learn that the modern college has finally mastered censorship – we just traded the infallibility of the state for the sanctity of feelings. One can rarely have a serious discussion without offending someone, and if we, as a culture, declare topics or positions to be taboo because they might cause offense, democracy is dead. Censorship is the genie you can never put back into the bottle. Once society gives its stamp of approval to any technique designed to limit dissent, it will balloon out of control – and that’s what pushing for platform removal is. This is not my opinion, this is a fact borne out by thousands of years of history. There is not a single instance in recorded history of a society that made dissent unacceptable and then did not spiral into a dictatorship.

The problem is not with what is currently the main target of censorship: Neo-Nazis in Europe, firebrand American pastors, vaguely racist cartoons of holy religious figures. However, it is imperative that we protect the rights to speech of the worst society has to offer. If Rush Limbaugh cannot go on the radio and froth at the mouth about abortion, if Bill Maher cannot rant against Islam, democracy is dead. Without protection for that which is most vile, no one has protection. Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in Friends of Voltaire, wrote: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This attitude, which has largely died in recent years in favor of “Sure, I guess you’re allowed to say that…,” needs to make a comeback. While we are hopefully past the days of fights to the death to defend free speech, we must go back to celebrating dissent – not agreeing with, not necessarily even giving full consideration to – but hearing, and most importantly, defending this right against all enemies, governmental and cultural.

I am not advocating here celebration of that which is said with no purpose except to offend. There are, quite rightly, provisions to limit hate speech or speech which actively incites violence. The crucial distinction we must be willing to draw here is that most offensive speech is not hate speech. There is a time and a place for all tones – both a well-argued point and a position wrapped in a heavy layer of vitriol. I am an unapologetic free speech absolutist. There is no such thing as a position so extreme or offensive that it does not merit at least being heard.

We must defend and celebrate speech of all types because none of us ever know when our most deeply held position will be the unpopular or offensive one. Anyone who supports either form of censorship (cultural or legal) is taking a remarkably shortsighted view. This is Martin Niemöller’s “First they came for the Socialists…” for the modern age. Much of what is currently being censored by society is vile, horrible, and should never be put into action. However, if we allow any censorship at all, it will not be long until censorship grows like cancer and makes dissent, and therefore democracy, impossible. None of the American civil liberties movements (ending segregation, the fight for marriage equality, women’s suffrage) started as majority opinions. We must therefore always protect and advocate for free speech as if we were the minority opinion holder – or you may find that right strangely absent when you next need it.