Sirinyay

but i’ve been pissed pretty much all day long about the publication of a letter to the editor from an alumna of smith named anne spurzem. she graduated in 84. in approximately 300 words, she managed to get thousands of alumnae riled up over her “observations” that smith was now seen as a safety school for teenage girls in westchester and fairfield counties because it is now a haven for a) dykes, b) international students, c) poor women of color who chose smith bc it gave them the most financial aid and d) straight white women who got rejected by the ivy league.

the use of social media to respond to this letter has been immense. tumblr and facebook seem to be where it is at; i haven’t seen any rebuttal videos (ie alexandra wallace “asians in the library” style), but figure that is only a matter of time. most of the people who have responded have identified themselves as everything but the characteristics associated with category d (which is so narrowly defined anyway). but i wonder what they have to say (if there are any that exist).

as for me, i actually find this to be incredibly exciting. this is because i recall a time 10 years ago when social media was basically leveraged to inflame hate speech.

shit seriously hit the FAN at smith in spring 2002. there were a number of hate crimes centering on homophobia and racism that occurred during the spring of 2002 that i think smith handled very, very poorly. since we didn’t have youtube, facebook, tumblr, pinterest, twitter, linkedin, or comment-ready blog content management systems yet, the online boards of the smith college dailyjolt became where students went online to anonymously vent, rant, pontificate, etc. This, in my view, further inflamed the maelstrom and worsened campus climate.

quite possibly for the first time ever, my mother got involved. she emailed many administrators at smith to tip them off to the bullshit and angry, hateful speech occurring on the jolt (she read what happened to me - i had gotten cyberbullied, logged on and saw the deluge of hateful, hateful stuff). smith at the time saw itself as powerless to control the dialogue on a third party site that was having a devastating impact on its campus climate. smith (and likely many, many other higher education institutions) also had no freaking clue how to handle the impact of social media on its student population - forget using social media to market to prospective students.

so, 10 years ago, i recall a situation in which students used social media in order to basically turn on each other.

today, i see something totally different (i.e. www.pearlsandcashmere.tumblr.com. www.smith-squirrels.tumblr.com. www.smithd.org.) smithies using social media to share their lives together. they actually seem pretty HAPPY.

i saw the youtube video last night of carol announcing jane lynch as the commencement speaker. the camera panned to the students dressed in their resplendent gowns. they looked so freaking excited. i don’t remember being nearly that happy at smith. (then again, our speaker was judy woodruff, who was so condescending in her talk.) it made me feel pretty damn good to see that smithies today have it better. sure, things on that campus are not perfect (they talk about the need to be more welcoming of dissenting views…) but it is so exciting to hear about women coming together, talking about why smith is so important to them, and how we are empowered to affect change and lead impactful lives.