Tag Archives: activism

Common topics include divestment, militarism, diversity & inclusion, protests & community organizing, etc.

On Solidarity, or What ‘90s Rap, Role-Playing Games, and Labor Activism Can Teach Us in Times Like These

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One of my earliest exposures to the concept of empathy came in the form of Everlast’s 1998 one-hit wonder “What It’s Like,” a slow rap on a backdrop of folksy guitar with all the requisite sound effects and turntable wiggles of the era. It’s no masterpiece, but it was overplayed on the radio beyond all measure of sensibility when I was in middle school, meaning it’ll stay lodged in my head for the rest of my days. Still, with its lyrics about the pain of addiction, poverty, and loss, it was among the first times I can remember hearing and thinking about the phrase “walk a mile in [someone else’s] shoes.”

This article is not about the bizarre pop hits of the late ‘90s, though hit me up if you ever do want to have that discussion. I bring up “What It’s Like” because, musical merits notwithstanding, it has an important lesson to share: empathy isn’t possible without understanding. And understanding isn’t possible without the story, detail, and background of what someone else is going through. The word “narrative” serves as a good catch-all for story, detail, and background. In society writ large, certain narratives get more airtime, representation, and discussion than others. The system of U.S. higher education is no exception to that, nor is Olin as a particular location within that system.

Because we live in a society, the narratives of certain groups do not tend to get attention at our institution.1 But we need information in order to empathize, and because the narratives of certain groups do not get attention, information that could lead to empathy for those groups goes unheard. Without that informed empathy, people become akin to non-player characters (NPCs)—characters in games that are not controlled by a human player, like the iconic “Hello, my friend! Stay a while and listen” guy from Diablo.2 They are creatures without agency that do not exist as ends in themselves but rather as a means to an end for others, perhaps moving one narrative along while not having a narrative themselves. It’s also tempting to assume you know what’s going on with NPCs when you don’t, because it’s easy to stereotype someone or assign their motives when you don’t consider them to be fully human.

Understanding and empathizing with each other takes effort, though, and if there’s one thing we don’t have a surplus of right now, it’s energy. Earlier this semester, I had a conversation with students about the cognitive dissonance between acknowledging that people are burned out and over capacity and needing to try harder than we normally would to be patient and understanding with each other. A friend at another institution who serves as a vocal labor advocate in her faculty union suggested to me that the extra expenditure of resources—if it’s truly in the name of supporting one another—is worth it, even (if not especially) when we’re this exhausted. It’s a rare case of pushing ourselves in a way that does not have to be exploitative, but instead can lead to what labor activists and sociologists call solidarity. Quoting the Wikipedia3 entry: “Solidarity is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes4, which rejects the class conflict.” You could think of students, staff, and faculty as separate groups or classes, and you could think of what might unite them as solidarity. To know what might unite these groups, you need some amount of understanding about what each of them is experiencing. Without that, you’re prone to start seeing members of groups other than your own as NPCs.

As I’m writing this in late November, there are abundant reasons to be annoyed, scared, and furious at larger forces in the world, at the U.S., at late-stage capitalism, at the criminal justice system, at tech giants, at the construction of pipelines on stolen land, at the COVID cases ticking back up yet again, at the effing Omicron variant. Not one of us asked to be living through history, and here we are, muddling through a watershed event with no end in sight. It’s valid to feel overwhelmed and hopeless in the face of these things. That said, if we work to build understanding, empathy, and solidarity, we might find ourselves with a way forward. This is not a solution, nor is it a new construction, but instead is a common ground we might be able to stand on if we try to find it.

There are many barriers to solidarity at Olin, as there are anywhere (again, we live in a society), but the big one I want to leave us thinking about is the compartmentalization of students, faculty, and staff. These roles have a meaningful functional difference and this is no argument for dissolving them, but true solidarity can and should overcome categorical distinction. If we can find no solidarity between students, staff, and faculty, this effectively denies the potential, and perhaps the very existence, of higher education. We also need solidarity between faculty and staff because as we try to walk the walk of incorporating ethics, inclusion, and humanities into our mission and offerings, we cannot deny the importance of expertise and lived experience of all kinds in this work. Not to mention, a lack of solidarity between different types of labor in any workplace is a liability when any one of us wants to push for better working conditions.5 Many members of our three groups want to see a better world, and many of us have quite similar visions of a better world, and that looks like a path to solidarity. This is not healing, or resilience, which asks us to impossibly return to a “before” state that can no longer be accessed and often negates our experience. This is not turning a crisis into opportunity. Instead, solidarity asks us to find a shared reason to come as we are, broken and mistrustful, from different levels of the system and with our pain validated. It’s a shift away from deficit logic, not toxic positivity6 or a denial of what we’ve been through, and therein lies its power.

The last line of the bridge in “What It’s Like” is this: “You know, where it ends, it usually depends on where you start.” We might try to start from a place where we acknowledge there are many larger and smaller intersecting systems impacting us inside and outside our Olin bubble, where all the players are seen as human, where we’re patient with each other’s mistakes, where solidarity helps us keep going as a group even when individuals feel as if they’ve got nothing left. In the uncertain times of COVID, we are all “stuck in a route of confusion, changing and waiting and seeking the truth of it all.”7 So let’s try to walk it together, if for no other reason than that the forces in the world we want to stop and reverse would like nothing more than to see us breaking off alone.

  1. See “Olin: An ‘Alien’ Perspective” in Frankly Speaking vol. 14, issue 3.
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2alFLXjty9o
  3. Spoiler alert: Librarians actually love Wikipedia, and many of us help keep Wikipedia entries up to date.
  4. Note that this is an oversimplification; of course there are many subgroups of identities, class years, job types, and much more within these three, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll keep it zoomed out.
  5. https://www.upbeacon.com/article/2021/11/university-of-portland-faces-staffing-issues-beyond-the-labor-shortage
  6. https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/mind/well-being/toxic-positivity
  7. I’m quoting a Swedish death metal band here in hopes of balancing all the Everlast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhohQNdSt7g

Olin: An “Alien” Perspective

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At Olin College of Unspoken Privilege, we don’t have enough open, honest conversations about the culture that makes you feel out of place for feeling out of place. And a lot of people feel out of place at Olin, a lot of people don’t vibe with the conversations in the dining hall, a lot of people feel awkward, left-behind, lonely – far detached from the caring, close-knit community they were promised at Olin. We need to recognize this, and we need to understand why.

We need to talk. Here’s an international student perspective. 

Over a month ago, I interviewed four international students, each from a different country. Those conversations were some of the most honest and powerful I have had so far in my life, and they made me realize that there are so many powerful stories hidden unexpressed behind these inspiring people, each with rich, unique sociocultural backgrounds. 

I suppose that’s why I’m doing this. To raise awareness that at Olin, there is a small community of students legally labeled as ‘aliens’ by the US government. These students leave behind most of what is familiar to them and fly across the world, and many of them struggle. I’m writing this to help unpack those stories, and to help unpack my story.

I don’t claim to speak for all international students. The opinions in this piece are my personal perspective, with reinforcement from my four interviewees, each of whom come from diverse countries and backgrounds and have vastly different views on America and Olin.

Olin’s work culture for example – coming from the hypercompetitive, scarce work environment in India, Olin initially seemed like a dream to me. People were living their life to the fullest and creating space for hobbies, clubs, project teams – things that brought them joy! But three of my interviewees had the opposite take – they felt that compared to their countries Olin, and in their experience, America in general, has too strong of a workaholic culture. One of them called it ‘internalized capitalism’. Neither viewpoint is incorrect. However, the sharp difference in perspectives was eye-opening, and it made me question my generalizations about my international student experience.

But we, international students, do have many shared experiences. One of the biggest challenges I faced when transitioning into Olin was simply being able to hold conversations. I was not at all prepared for how difficult it would be to engage with people. One of my interviewees spoke about not understanding the references from movies, the conversational contexts, baseball – it all fed into the imposter syndrome, the lingering feeling that they didn’t belong here. It’s often difficult to realize that American insularity exists, especially because of the tiny size of Olin’s international student community. While 28% of Babson’s undergraduate student body is international students, Olin is at around 8%. International students at Olin lack the cultural support communities traditionally available at other, larger colleges, and that can make settling into Olin’s environment significantly more challenging. An interviewee even suggested making an America ‘cheat sheet’ – a list of cultural elements international students need to be aware of before interacting in social settings at Olin. It’s important to recognize that the process of adapting to Olin’s cultural space was, for me and a lot of my interviewees, slow, embarrassing, and occasionally even hurtful. An interviewee shared how hurt they had felt when they got attacked for not knowing what Indigenous Peoples’ Day was – all they wanted to do was understand and clarify. They said, “Give us more slack – assume positive intent. We’re trying to adapt to a new way of life, it’s not always easy.” 

Due to the cultural force of the USA in global media, there’s an assumption in the USA that everyone must be informed of US history, geography, and liberal political contexts. That assumption is simply not fair on international students, who, for example, never learned US history or learned an inaccurate version of it. Moreover, that lack of context can make it difficult to understand prevailing attitudes at Olin.

For example, when I first got to Olin, I was struck by the sheer amount of US-bashing by Americans. “Yeah, America sucks,” was assumed to be the default attitude. Why would anyone like this country, with all of its flaws and inequities? Yet my first reaction was, why would anyone not like this country? There’s so much here – money, resources, jobs, dialogue, freedom of speech.

There’s a very American-centered conversation in the US around empowerment. It recognizes that despite the country’s championing of democracy, a significant number of Americans don’t have access to the aforementioned privileges that dominant groups in the country do. Olin has made some progress in creating a space for this conversation, and I also believe that we have much, much further to go. However, significantly more unrecognized is the fact that many international students come from countries that systemically lack the opportunities available in the US. All that US-bashing can get hurtful – yes, the USA has massive, entrenched problems, but there is so much privilege in being able to complain. And yes, while the criticism should not stop at all costs, it is important to recognize this privilege especially in front of students who have left behind so much – family, familiarity, and a sense of belonging –  to attend college in the USA. There’s so much privilege to be fearless; the last time I expressed significant dissent against India in my high school, I was physically dragged aside and yelled at by two high school teachers in front of my entire school for nearly an hour – an experience that left me disgusted, emotionally exhausted, and terrified. It’s still unbelievable for me to hear people at Olin effortlessly and casually criticize the USA.

Olin, by design, is a privileged space. I recognize that my entire ‘American’ experience has been an Olin experience, and Olin, by any stretch of the imagination, is not representative of the USA. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about privilege at Olin, often through many of the traditional American lenses such as race and gender but also about the privilege of simply being American. All of my interviewees expressed frustration at the lack of recognition of that privilege at Olin – the privilege of being able to return home for Thanksgiving, the privilege of being familiar with Thanksgiving in the first place, the privilege of not being branded as an ‘alien’, the privilege of understanding cultural references, the privilege of not being anxious about your limited time in the USA, the privilege of belonging. And yet I recognize that some American Oliners don’t have these privileges either.

When I first thought of writing this piece, I had initially set out to rant all about how international students feel like they’re left out, in a place of privilege where their time is ticking, unsupported in an unfamiliar culture at Olin by virtue of their background. But a lot of American Oliners feel this way too! People of color, people from low-income families, and many others – and we don’t talk about this enough.

There’s value in making connections, so that diversity and inclusion efforts on campus have another voice. Yet there’s also value in differentiating – international students come from a unique, different place compared to other minority groups at Olin. Supporting the experience of being an international student should be both merged with and distinguished from diversity efforts at Olin. The first step is recognizing that international students should be getting more support.

Thank you to all the faculty, staff, and students – both international and American – who helped me with this piece. You know who you are :)

It’s (Still) Time to Talk About Divestment

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The following article2 was published in the May 2016 edition of Frankly Speaking by two Oliners (and now alumni), Aaron Greiner and Izzy Harrison. They were part of a group of students who ultimately presented a proposal for fossil fuel divestment to the Board of Trustees in the spring of 2018. The conversation about divestment, mediated by Patty Gallagher (formerly the CFO), ended with students being told to wait until a new president settled into Olin.

Divesting Olin

By Aaron Greiner and Izzy Harrison on behalf of GROW

So, What is Divestment?

According to Wikipedia, “Divesting is the act of removing stocks from a portfolio based on mainly ethical, non-financial objections to certain business activities of a corporation.” One of the first times that divestment was used as a means to promote a social change was during apartheid, the extreme system of racial segregation, in South Africa. Companies, universities, organizations, local governments,  and individuals took their money out of apartheid-affiliated businesses and are partially credited with helping to dismantle the system.

Today, there is a new divestment movement. Five hundred and seven institutions and 3.4 trillion dollars have been divested from the oil and gas industries. The goal of this movement is to put financial pressure on the largest contributors to climate change and other environmental disasters in an effort to get them to behave in a more socially and environmentally responsible manner.  Sixty-one colleges have already divested in some meaningful way, and we hope Olin will join the movement.

Why Should Olin Divest?

Olin was founded on the principle of making the world a better place. Fossil fuels are unsustainable (they will run out), and are the single greatest contributors to climate change, so we believe it is against Olin’s founding principles to support fossil fuel companies  We believe that continuing to profit from the destruction of the environment through knowingly investing our money in companies that are accelerating the pace of climate change is fundamentally against Olin’s core values.

The scientific consensus is clear and overwhelming; we cannot safely burn even half of global fossil fuel reserves without dangerously warming the planet with disastrous effects1. Furthermore, as the market inevitably shifts towards more renewable energy sources, we believe an innovative institution such as Olin should be on the forefront of this change. 

We believe progressive action towards divestment will be a sound decision for the wellbeing of Olin’s alumni and current and future students. We deserve the opportunity to graduate with a future unimpaired by climate chaos.

What Have We Done so Far?

A little over a year ago, we started meeting with our CFO Patty Gallagher and Chair of the Investment Committee Doug Kahn to explore what it might look like if Olin were to divest. They were incredibly receptive, and we formed a close partnership. Over the past year, we have had many meetings and are making positive progress towards a solution that we can all get behind. In addition, we had a meeting with the investment firm that manages Olin’s money to get a sense from them about what divestment could look like while, of course, keeping the best financial interests of the school in mind. 

We are very fortunate that we are at a place like Olin where we can have meetings like this, and our collaborative approach has had positive results. The Investment Committee has begun to have discussions about the topic of divestment. We will continue to work with Doug and Patty to advance the conversation towards a mutually acceptable resolution.

Before we move forward, we want to be confident that this is something that Faculty, Staff, Board Members, and Students, can all get behind.  We are looking forward to continuing the progress in the fall and hope to keep the community updated.

It has been over four years since the article above was published. Since then, divestment from the 2003 holders of the most carbon reserves has been soundly rejected. Now, the Board is considering incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in our investment strategy. While a step in the right direction, this is essentially the bare minimum and is becoming, or has already become, standard practice4,5. This minimal acknowledgement of social and environmental realities casts them as mere externalities impacting our financial viability. Treating social and environmental issues as distinct and separable from economic issues in this way neglects the interconnectedness of the three. Olin, by continuing to profit on the climate crisis, is abjectly failing in its purported mission “to do good for humankind.” Olin is certainly not a leader among academic institutions in operational sustainability, nor in a holistic view of engineering. It’s time for Olin to recognize the contradiction of espousing leadership in integrating ethics into engineering while failing to take the action that so many of our peers (including Wellesley) already have.

Since the original article was published in 2016, the following U.S. schools have made commitments to divestment:

Interested in continuing Olin’s divestment movement? Questions, comments, or concerns?

Reach out!

gtighe@olin.edu

Trans Rights at Olin: A Call to Action

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Please note: this article has been collaboratively written and has no primary author. The “we” statements contained each only apply to some of us, and some authors are unnamed due to fear of retaliation.

Over the course of the past year, many transgender students at Olin have been actively threatened and harassed. When this was brought to the attention of Olin’s administration, those students were ignored. As trans students, alumni, and allies, we can no longer trust that the Olin administration will stand by us and keep us safe, so we write to discuss what needs to change in order for trans people to exist in this community. We hope this article leads to productive, honest communication and meaningful action to protect those of us who are trans. We came here to learn, and we are deeply disappointed that Olin has failed to prevent multiple forms of violence against us that have obstructed our education, in some cases to the point of impasse. We truly love this institution, and we want to be safe here. We are ending our long silence because we urgently need action.

Over the past ten months, several trans students have been targets of harassment. This article is not about those actions, and we will not discuss anyone involved. For everyone’s safety and confidentiality, we are exclusively discussing our own experiences and feelings about Olin’s response to what happened, or lack thereof. We are carefully avoiding giving any information that could identify anyone involved, and we implore you not to identify or retaliate against anyone in any way. This article is about Olin’s mishandling of our case, not about any person involved or the details of any case.

Over six months ago, several of us reported harassment to Olin through R2s, professors, Student Affairs, and the former Title IX coordinator. After many mediated conversations failed to stop ongoing harassment, we attempted to find resolution through the Honor Board. Under the Honor Board policy, “Absent extraordinary circumstances, a Hearing shall be held within sixty business days of a Report being submitted.” Olin’s administration chose to halt our honor board process without holding a hearing or providing written explanation because the case escalated “above the Honor Board.” They then failed to provide us with any alternate process until months later. During that time, we continued to experience and report increasing harassment.

Transphobia takes many forms, but our experiences specifically involve targeted, persistent harassment from a TERF. For those who may not be familiar with that term, we want to outline the principles of this ideology and why it is so actively harmful to the Olin community. TERF is an acronym that stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical “Feminist,” who occasionally refer to themselves as “gender critical,” “radfems” or “radical feminists.” The core belief of this group is that transgender people (those of us whose genders do not match the sexes we were assigned at birth) are somehow going against feminist values by simply existing.

This is a radical and hateful ideology. It aims to blame institutionalized misogyny on groups like nonbinary people and trans women who in fact suffer from extreme forms of that same gender discrimination, in addition to other transphobic violence. The narrative that the trans community is somehow misogynistic simply by existing has been fabricated by far-right hate groups to attempt to pit marginalized people against each other, and hearing that lie repeated on this campus by students and administrators shocks us to our core. The history of the trans rights movement, like the feminist movement, has always been rooted in dismantling the same restrictive gender norms that hurt all people. Radicalized TERFs focus their anger towards trans people, often leading to widespread misinformation and violence. Through their common desire to prevent trans people from existing safely and comfortably, they have amassed a surprising amount of institutional power from far-right hate groups and transphobic philosophy researchers. Other marginalized groups like asexual and bisexual people have also been targeted by TERFs. Olin’s failure to stand up against TERF ideology exists in the context of a larger failure by the academic community to recognize and dismantle institutionalized transphobia.

Often radicalized ideology is not immediately recognizable. It can be packaged as activism; it can be subtly integrated into humor (like jokes comparing trans people to objects); it can be spoon-fed to unsuspecting people, starting with a single experience (“this is how I feel”) and then slowly built into an ideology (“this is how the world is”).  We have begun to hear people repeating elements of TERF ideology on this campus, and it is horrifying that the same arguments used to target us are spreading to others. Trans men are male, trans women are female, and nonbinary people are nonbinary. We refuse to be vilified on this campus or anywhere else.

After a series of continuing incidents, some of us were able to receive very limited protective measures. We were told that any violations of those measures could lead to disciplinary action. Those measures were violated repeatedly, which we reported. Olin repeatedly modified the protective measures we received to retroactively allow the forms of harassment we experienced, even when that harassment escalated. By making these changes, Olin actively gave permission for our harassment. This continued over the summer for some of us who were on campus.

Throughout our meetings with the Interim Title IX Coordinator, Rae-Anne Butera, we requested a clear process to submit a single Title IX report from multiple complainants, and still have not received an explanation of how that process would work (except that Olin would prefer we keep our reports separate, and that eventually, some process might exist). Months later, we know of no such process, and most of us would no longer be comfortable submitting a report after such an extended period of retaliation. Even in writing this letter, we fear that Olin may retaliate against us again. We regularly requested stronger protection measures as situations escalated dangerously close to physical violence against us, and were denied every single measure we requested. We frequently reported ongoing harassment, and the incidents we reported were trivialized. We were told that we “[did] not need to feel physically unsafe,” while we were actively being threatened and while Olin was doing nothing to prevent this. 

Worse, the Interim Title IX Coordinator repeated the same transphobic language our harasser used. In one finding, she seemed to deny that transgender women are female, which is inaccurate and offensive, and found it was a violation of Title IX and referred an investigation against a transgender woman to external investigators for stating otherwise. We have observed and reported a pattern of harassment that makes us feel unsafe—by the very administrators who should be protecting us. Our reports regarding these incidents have been ignored, and some of us have been treated as suspects for referring to our harasser’s behavior as “transphobic.”

The Title IX process forced us to relive our trauma repeatedly. Our harasser continued violating protective measures and we reported those violations. Each time we asked for an investigation into these violations, we were denied a clear response. We are curious what the point of a protective measure is without any enforcement, let alone any process to determine if such a measure has been violated. Each time we reported these violations, we were asked to describe each incident in extreme detail again, reliving every moment, and then denied any changes to make us safer.

Olin is currently ignoring reports of ongoing incidents, ignoring reports of retaliation by our harasser, and ignoring reports of retaliation by Olin administrators. Not only is that a complete abdication of Olin’s responsibility to protect students from existential threats, it is in direct violation of Title IX.

While all of this was happening, some of us sought support through Colony Care. We are incredibly grateful to have access to therapy, which is a crucial resource. Unfortunately, many of the therapists at Colony Care had no training or background in working with LGBTQ students. One therapist made some of us feel incredibly invalidated. She compared instances of hostile harassment to a minor disagreement among friends, and repeated the same TERF rhetoric we were harassed with at Olin. She eventually made clear that she was seeing people who were being harassed, in addition to someone who was harassing those people. Sharing information about other patients can violate medical ethics standards and patient privacy laws. We are deeply grateful for Director of Wellness Beth Gramptero’s response when we raised this issue. In particular, we appreciate Olin’s new partnership with a provider from The Meeting Point, which has extensive experience working with trans students. We hope that Olin continues to raise expectations with other providers and demands accountability for situations like this.

We were incorrectly told that, under Olin’s policies and student privacy laws, we were not allowed to discuss our experiences of this. Throughout this process, we were all repeatedly retraumatized and required to recount the precise details of our harassment countless times, while being pressured not to talk about any of it to anyone outside of the group of people being harassed. The process was needlessly exhausting, and became traumatic on its own. Over the past year, we have had to drop classes and clubs for this, and our grades and relationships have suffered. We have been denied a regular college experience. The crushing weight of dealing with this situation has prevented us from having access to an equal education at Olin.

The pain and burden of the Title IX process has been almost as bad as the original harassment, and it has hurt more because we trusted Olin as a community to do right by us. We still want to believe in Olin as an institution to take steps to correct this, but at this point, we will need drastic measures to right the wrongs and let us begin to heal. We desperately need to be safe so we can focus on the courses, clubs, robots, and people we love here.

We care deeply about Olin as an institution, and we think it’s important that trans students are able to exist here. We have been chased out of similar institutions before. We could just leave. Yet the opportunities afforded to us have been integral to our development, as engineers and as people. In order to pursue an education at a school that boasts such prestige, we are forced to bear our burdens alone. No person should have to feel like this. Olin has always been structured in a way where students should come first, and has succeeded at that goal in many ways. We appreciate the fact that we even have the freedom to say this, but we are demanding change. Olin has given us so much, but the fact that we have to constantly live in a state of anxiety about something that has nothing to do with why we came here is heartbreaking. We hope the community will support and stand with us, because that’s the only way we can keep going.

This article is a call to action. Olin’s administration needs to hold itself accountable and create policies and meaningful action to stop harming trans students. This letter is specifically about trans people, but there are many other marginalized groups being neglected as well.  Currently, our administration is not delivering on its promise to the student body to do their jobs fully, quickly, and compassionately, and to Do Something—a promise that we, as students, agree to in the honor code. Our school has no formal harassment policy to process hate speech, intimidation, or harassment that targets marginalized people. It has happened here, it still happens here, and it is currently happening here.

While the administration is trying to rehire a Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Title IX Coordinator, that is not enough. Olin needs to hire a Title IX Coordinator who is independent from the institution as a whole. Giving StAR control of the Title IX process is a severe conflict of interest. As students, we expect the Title IX process to be taken seriously. The goal should be to hold those responsible for any Title IX incident accountable, even to the possible detriment of Olin’s reputation, which, by definition, conflicts with a majority of the responsibilities that StAR takes on. We have watched this conflict of interests lead administrators to manipulate us, deny us relevant information, minimize our safety, and avoid taking any meaningful action. This necessitates two separate positions held by different people: a Director of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion who is a StAR employee, and a separate Title IX Coordinator. It’s also crucial that Olin hire a Deputy Title IX Coordinator, so Title IX can remain fully independent of Student Affairs regardless of job changes. We demand safety and accountability as a minimum baseline (as does the law).

We also need recurring sensitivity trainings for faculty and staff, including trainings on how to spot hate and “Do Something” to keep students safe. We need comprehensive, up-to-date education about gender diversity and inclusion, every semester, for both the student body and faculty/administration. Students who threaten physical or emotional violence towards trans or other marginalized students should be expelled. Olin is small and tight-knit. Our people are our culture. Every single individual here defines that culture, which means that any radically violent person can sour the culture that is so precious to us. Without accountability, we cannot preserve the special trust we enjoy as a community. Neglecting to remove these people, and turning a blind eye to the hatred they foster, will cause their violence to create new standards for day-to-day life at our school. Especially in the present political climate, it is of the utmost importance that Olin publicly condemns transphobes, including trans-exclusionary radical “feminists,” and other radicalized hate groups, and makes clear that hate has no home here.

For you, the students, we ask that you maintain alertness and look for ways to support the trans students around you. Challenge notions that seem transphobic and have deeper discussions with those around you. Educate yourself by reading online sources or watching videos from trans people—or talk to a PA; they’re a fantastic and deeply knowledgeable resource. Be aware that there is misinformation online, in books, and even on campus, so it’s crucial to compare multiple viewpoints and think critically. And if you can, please attend and share protests or direct calls to action from trans people. You can also follow up by asking your friends who are trans to share their experiences—just remember to check in beforehand, and try searching online first. Many of us are willing to help you learn more if you ask for consent and make your intentions clear.

We are incredibly grateful for the work certain key faculty and staff have done to try to improve our community for us, but it isn’t enough. Your voice matters here. Thank you for continuing the crucial, never-ending work of making Olin the place that it should be, even when it means challenging the way things are. We hope you will join us in calling on Olin to change. We expect the administration to follow up promptly and begin taking the following steps, which represent the minimum necessary for our safety:

  1. Create an accountable Title IX process that can withstand changes in administration.
  2. Initiate fully independent investigations into what has transpired so far, including into violence against trans students and the mishandling of our case.
  3. Begin providing comprehensive education that prevents future harassment.
  4. Make clear statements of values. Our College must take a stand on transphobic violence on campus.
  5. Take steps to make significant improvements to daily life for transgender students, so we can begin to heal.
  6. Respond promptly to these demands. We also expect complete cessation of retaliation against us for submitting reports or describing our experiences. We ask for a substantive response within two weeks.

Olin’s administration should deliver quick and thorough responses to student concerns about their safety, and student demands for a better Olin. To see our proposed methods for achieving the changes we demand or express support, please visit https://olin.repair/. Our list of demands is not comprehensive, but it is urgent.

If even a single student feels comfortable sharing a worldview where transgender people are inherently liars, predators, manipulators—people who should not exist—the entire student body suffers. Olin’s refusal to act has allowed just a single student harboring this line of thought, consistently disregarding all barriers erected by students and the school alike, to push this toxic ideology to Olin’s most vulnerable populations, making over 10% of a current class at Olin suffer emotionally, physically, and academically. For Olin’s administration to see a sizable portion of its student body targeted, receive reports from such a large group, and not treat it as a matter of urgency enables this hate to spread. The Olin administration’s unpreparedness to protect our community from hate is not just an oversight, it is neglect. If action is not taken soon, we reserve the right to bring this conversation outside the walls of our campus.

In this current political climate, believing transgender people to be anything other than normal people who deserve to exist and be treated with equal merit is literally life-threatening. Being dehumanized is an existential threat. At a societal level, transphobic ideology shuts us out from shelters, leaves us to die on the streets, and denies us access to bathrooms and healthcare. It makes us targets of physical and sexual violence for having the audacity to ask to be seen, loved and respected as our true selves. To treat transphobic ideology as a harmless opinion, in practice, is to believe that your transgender students do not deserve a safe and fulfilling future. And what is the point of our innovative, cutting-edge college if not to give us a future we can all look forward to?

Sincerely,

Riley Zito, Dylan Merzenich, Gail Romer, Bo Bowen, Austin Veseliza, Micah Reid, Maeve Stites, Sam Daitzman, Celina Bekins, Alex Hindelang, Mika Notermann, Eli Nielsen

How to Change the World as an Engineer

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Dear Students,

As engineers, you have a greater ability to affect the future of the planet than almost anyone else.  In particular, the decisions you make as you start your careers will have a disproportionate impact on what the world is like in 2100.

Here are the things you should work on, for the next 80 years, that I think will make the biggest difference:

  • Nuclear energy
  • Desalination
  • Transportation without fossil fuels
  • CO₂ sequestration
  • Alternatives to meat
  • Global education
  • Global child welfare
  • Infrastructure for migration
  • Geoengineering

Let me explain where that list comes from.

First and most importantly, we need carbon-free energy, a lot of it, and soon.  With abundant energy, almost every other problem is solvable, including food and desalinated water.  Without it, almost every other problem is impossible.

Solar, wind, and hydropower will help, but nuclear energy is the only technology that can scale up enough, soon enough, to substantially reduce carbon emissions while meeting growing global demand.

With large scale deployment of nuclear power, it is feasible for global electricity production to be carbon neutral by 2050 or sooner.  And most energy use, including heat, agriculture, industry, and transportation, could be electrified by that time. Long-range shipping and air transport will probably still require fossil fuels, which is why we also need to develop carbon capture and sequestration.

Global production of meat is a major consumer of energy, food, and water, and a major emitter of greenhouse gasses.  Developing alternatives to meat can have a huge impact on climate, especially if they are widely available before meat consumption increases in large developing countries.

World population is expected to peak in 2100 at 9 to 11 billion people.  If the peak is closer to 9 than 11, all of our problems will be 20% easier.  Fortunately, there are things we can do to help that happen, and even more fortunately, they are good things.

The difference between 9 and 11 depends mostly on what happens in Africa during the next 30 years.  Most of the rest of the world has already made the “demographic transition”, that is, the transition from high fertility (5 or more children per woman) to low fertility (at or below replacement rate).

The primary factor that drives the demographic transition is childhood survival; increasing childhood survival leads to lower fertility.  Counterintuitively, the best way to limit global population is to protect children from malnutrition, disease, and violence. Other factors that contribute to lower fertility are education and economic opportunity, especially for women.

Regardless of what we do in the next 50 years, we will have to deal with the effects of climate change, and a substantial part of that work will be good old fashioned civil engineering.  In particular, we need infrastructure like sea walls to protect people and property from natural disasters. And we need a new infrastructure of migration, including the ability to relocate large numbers of people in the short term, after an emergency, and in the long term, when current population centers are no longer viable.

Finally, and maybe most controversially, I think we will need geoengineering.  This is a terrible and dangerous idea for a lot of reasons, but I think it is unavoidable, not least because many countries will have the capability to act unilaterally.  It is wise to start experiments now to learn as much as we can, as long as possible before any single actor takes the initiative.

When we think about climate change, we gravitate to individual behavior and political activism.  These activities are appealing because they provide opportunities for immediate action and a feeling of control.  But they are not the best tools you have.

Reducing your carbon footprint is a great idea, but if that’s all you do, it will have negligible effect.

And political activism is great: you should vote, make sure your representatives know what you think, and take to the streets if you have to.  But these activities have diminishing returns. Writing 100 letters to your representative is not much better than one, and you can’t be on strike all the time.

If you focus on activism and your personal footprint, you are neglecting what I think is your greatest tool for impact: choosing how you spend 40 hours a week for the next 80 years of your life.

As an early-career engineer, you have more ability than almost anyone else to change the world.  If you use that power well, you will help us get through the 21st Century with a habitable planet and a high quality of life for the people on it.

Fight Ignorance. Learn.

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I’ve heard the word “ignorant” used a lot in frustration toward 2016’s election. People throw their hands up: how do you fix ignorance?
Activism is local. Make it really local: educate yourself. Find an issue you don’t know a lot about, and then find a way to learn more. Maybe you know a lot about feminist issues, but not much about racial justice. Maybe you know about environmentalism, but not trans rights, or what it feels like to be an immigrant.
Find your own weaknesses and confront them.
There are lots of ways to research and learn.
Personally, I rely on two main sources: feeds, and books.
Justice Education Through Feeds
I get a lot of my ongoing social justice education through sources I stumble across and add to my feed reader. Two consistent sources I love:
Personal essays on disability in the New York Times
Intersectional feminism & personal discussion of being trans*, queer, and polyamorous by Robot Hugs (excuse the clickbaity titles added by the publisher– I subscribe to robot-hugs.com, which includes the artist’s comics on these topics and others, such as cats)
Another good source is people on Twitter who are active in native rights, racial justice, penal issues, etc. . If you know of great sources, please let me know!
Seeking Perspective in Books
Books are, and always have been, my mainstay. Long-form writing lets authors show you a world– whether that’s fantasy, history, or personal truth.
Walk a few hundred pages in someone else’s shoes.
There are some great reading challenges going around.
Ashe Dryden’s “Unpresidented” reading challenge highlights a marginalized group for each month of the year
The #DiversityBingo2017 card is all over Twitter right now as people suggest or declare books for each category.

The #DiversityBingo2017 book bingo card
The basic idea is to expand your worldview by listening to a perspective you don’t usually hear.
Is this enough?
Of course not. Educating yourself is a really good idea, and it does fight ignorance. But it’s not enough by itself. Here’s what it does:
Educating yourself– every day– keeps these issues on the top of your mind. If you build empathy education into your routines, you’ll think about these issues. You’ll talk about them.
Education shapes thought; thought shapes action. It’s a start.

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Fossil Fuels and Olin

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As alumni we were excited last May to read about the efforts of several students to engage the administration and work towards divestment. If Olin divests we would be in good company, joining other schools like BU, Stanford, Yale, RISD, UMass, and over 500 institutions with total assets of over $3.4 trillion dollars. But important questions need to be answered. Is divestment a sound financial decision? Is it an effective way to accomplish anything?
I hope to make it clear that investing in fossil fuels is almost certainly an unsound financial decision. Fossil fuel companies live and die by a measure called the reserve replacement ratio, which is the ratio of proven fuel reserves added to a company’s reserve base to the amount of fuel removed from these reserves (the amount of fuels produced). A ratio above 100% means that a company is adding as much or more than it’s using, and so will stay stable or grow. A ratio less than 100% means that the company will eventually run out of reserves and die. Dropping below that 100% mark can be disastrous for the value of a company’s stock. In summary, an accurate reserve replacement ratio is a huge determiner of the value of a fossil fuel company’s stock.
Scientifically speaking, it is clear that if we want to meet global warming targets set out in international agreements like the Paris agreement then there is a limit on how much CO2 we can emit, a so-called carbon budget. Current projections suggest a budget of around 800 GtCO2 (gigatons carbon dioxide) to have a 66% chance of staying below warming of 2°C (closer to 500 GtCO2 for an 80% chance), the current agreed-upon target. At the same time, proven reserves (which go into the calculation of reserve replacement ratio and thus the value of fossil fuel companies) are estimated to represent around 2,800 GtCO2 in potential emissions, or around 3-4 times the carbon budget (5-6 times for 80% chance). In other words, in order to meet current globally agreed warming targets, about 66-75% of what fossil fuel companies are valued by needs to remain in the ground, becoming so-called stranded assets. This suggests a market value for these companies that is far, far below the current market valuation, making continued investment in this bubble a very risky proposition.
Unless, that is, you believe that these companies will be able to dig up and burn all of these reserves, which would pretty much guarantee warming >2°C, with unpredictable but potentially catastrophic consequences. It is likely that this scenario would be exceedingly bad for global markets, and thus making an investment in this scenario is a very poor long-term investment for a school that, I assume, wishes to still be around for the later half of the century.
On the moral side, we are already seeing the negative effects of CO2 emission driven climate change in lives and livelihoods, from superstorms to increased droughts, fires, floods, famines, and war. The fossil fuel companies themselves are associated with large-scale destruction of ecosystems (think BP oil spill and tar sands) and blatant racism in the placement of fossil fuel infrastructure (think rerouting of the Dakota Access Pipeline through Native American land because of concerns about the impacts on predominantly white communities). Since the profits of these companies don’t account for these many externalities, Olin’s profiting off of these companies is tantamount stealing from everyone, including its students, who are and will continue to live their lives in this world affected by climate change.
A desire to “Better the World” is baked into Olin’s Vision and Mission, but these risky investments put that mission in jeopardy. Either the carbon bubble pops and Olin loses a lot of money again (recall what happened last time), or all of that fuel is burned and a better future is exceedingly unlikely. No matter what your belief or preferred argument I hope that I have made it clear that these investments are a threat to Olin’s mission and should be removed as quickly as possible.

Divesting Olin

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Divesting Olin
By Aaron Greiner and Izzy Harrison on behalf of GROW

So, What is Divestment?
According to Wikipedia, “Divesting is the act of removing stocks from a portfolio based on mainly ethical, non-financial objections to certain business activities of a corporation.” One of the first times that divestment was used as a means to promote a social change was during apartheid, the extreme system of racial segregation, in South Africa. Companies, universities, organizations, local governments, and individuals took their money out of apartheid-affiliated businesses and are partially credited with helping to dismantle the system.
Today, there is a new divestment movement. Five hundred and seven institutions and 3.4 trillion dollars have been divested from the oil and gas industries. The goal of this movement is to put financial pressure on the largest contributors to climate change and other environmental disasters in an effort to get them to behave in a more socially and environmentally responsible manner. Sixty-one colleges have already divested in some meaningful way, and we hope Olin will join the movement.

Why Should Olin Divest?
Olin was founded on the principle of making the world a better place. Fossil fuels are unsustainable (they will run out), and are the single greatest contributors to climate change, so we believe it is against Olin’s founding principles to support fossil fuel companies We believe that continuing to profit from the destruction of the environment through knowingly investing our money in companies that are accelerating the pace of climate change is fundamentally against Olin’s core values.
The scientific consensus is clear and overwhelming; we cannot safely burn even half of global fossil fuel reserves without dangerously warming the planet with disastrous effects. Furthermore, as the market inevitably shifts towards more renewable energy sources, we believe an innovative institution such as Olin should be on the forefront of this change.
We believe progressive action towards divestment will be a sound decision for the wellbeing of Olin’s alumni and current and future students. We deserve the opportunity to graduate with a future unimpaired by climate chaos.

What Have We Done so Far?
A little over a year ago, we started meeting with our CFO Patty Gallagher and Chair of the Investment Committee Doug Kahn to explore what it might look like if Olin were to divest. They were incredibly receptive, and we formed a close partnership. Over the past year, we have had many meetings and are making positive progress towards a solution that we can all get behind. In addition, we had a meeting with the investment firm that manages Olin’s money to get a sense from them about what divestment could look like while, of course, keeping the best financial interests of the school in mind.
We are very fortunate that we are at a place like Olin where we can have meetings like this, and our collaborative approach has had positive results. The Investment Committee has begun to have discussions about the topic of divestment. We will continue to work with Doug and Patty to advance the conversation towards a mutually acceptable resolution.
Before we move forward, we want to be confident that this is something that Faculty, Staff, Board Members, and Students, can all get behind. We are looking forward to continuing the progress in the fall and hope to keep the community updated.

Want to get Involved, or have Questions/Concerns?
Shoot us an Email!
Izzy@students.olin.edu
Aaron.Greiner@students.olin.edu

Identity Politics: Being Queer

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I’ve been seeing a lot of strong emotions surrounding identity politics, particularly on queer-related topics, like sex, gender, and sexuality. I’ve seen a lot of limited perspective on gender and sexual variation. Perhaps I get so much of this because of the people I’m around, or the fact that I put on The Laramie Project, but regardless, I think a little bit of queer theory is in order. Because the easiest way to explain the philosophical is to ground it in the personal, I’m going to start with my own identity.

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