A Swelling Rage
It bothers me that I still have such rage in me about Ring Night. It's been 8 months since it happened, and yet when I was thinking about it tonight I started shaking uncontrollably again.
It bothers me that I never got to fight back against all the lies that were said about me. I think about it, constantly, all the ways I could have ripped their words to shreds. I hate that I was denied the chance to make them feel the hurt and shame that they made me feel. I hate that Ring Night will continue next year with no changes made to it.
I want to do something, and I hate that every time I come up with an idea of what to do, my brain talks me out of doing it - the same way I let Allison talk me out responding to all the libel letters we received.
I want to expose their hypocrisy. It drives me mad that they claim Ring Night isn't about hazing. I don't understand how otherwise progressive seeming people are okay with childish antics that are straight out of the worst of sorority stereotypes - just because we call it 'tradition'?
Ring Night is two days and three nights of treating girls who, just because they are a year beneath the seniors, are told they must act like slaves, and fulfill our demands, and then at the end we reward them baskets of gifts and they're told, “You're one of us, now.” There was a communications professor who, apparently, derided it as being a base-level version of breaking someone; I mean it makes sense, it's what the military does, you have to break someone to build them back up to be loyal to you. But it's not important because what Ring Night makes you loyal to isn't important. It's just petty bullshit.
I could never argue the abusive thing, in public at Hollins because it is just petty bullshit, but still. I'm so angry.
We say we don't do hazing, but I know there were cases of hazing brought to Honor Court this year. I was told about it from one of the Honor Court members who sat in on the cases. But I can never say that because I was told that in secrecy - because all Honor Court cases are kept secret. Which drives me mad because it's just a way to sweep under the rug that we -do- have problems at my school, that people do break the rules. But my school gets to pretend that we don't, because to discuss the fact that people do break the rules and are brought to Honor Court, breaks the rules, and will get you sent to Honor Court.
It's insane; it's a catch-22.
I'm so angry, but what can I do. I tried to talk about in the newspaper, and it was the worst experience of my life.
I mean, I know it's not easy to go against the status quo, but it just felt impossible. The whole weight of the world felt against me, and they just wouldn't even try to understand. We stood before Senate for 45 minutes, answering their questions which were never really questions - just accusations, and anger. And everything they said just validated what I already thought about Ring Night because they were so vapid, and stupid.
They asked me if I had thought about how my negativity could hurt the school's reputation - because the Board of Trustees might be so offended that I took offense they might stop donating money to the student government. As if it were incomprehensible that the Board of Trustees a) might actually agree with me and take offense to their wrong-doings and b) like I was required to only portray a view of my school experience that was positive in order to keep money coming and it was all the more frustrating because c) THE FUCKING BOARD OF TRUSTEES CONTRIBUTES NO MONEY TO THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT - THEY'RE CALLED STUDENT GOVERNMENT FEES AND THEY'RE PART OF OUR TUITION.
They told me it was impossible to do Ring Night if Seniors couldn't pick Juniors they already knew as their Ring Night Sister - all the more proving my point that the night isn't about forming bonds between the classes, it's about reinforcing bonds that already exist. When I tried to point out that because of this, juniors who did not know seniors were excluded from the event, and that it caused in equal distribution of “sisters” (that word looks so stupid to me in this contex) which in turn meant inequality in the distribution of gifts, they said no one cared about the gifts. I have the screencaps of them talking on facebook talking about how I was a bitter sister who just embarrassed about the size of the basket I gave.
But I never used that. I never got a chance to say any of that.
I hated them that night. I still kind of hate them tonight.
I don't know what to do with that feeling.
At the last Senate (or maybe the second to last) a professor I hate came before Senate and pronouced that after careful study the Professor and students who make up the Academic Policy board at our school had finished a semester long study of Ring Night and found it to be a noble tradition that would continue for years to come, with next year having the minor change of providing transportation between the senior apartments and the school on the last night of Ring Night (transportation that I argued for in an editorial the month before Ring Night because I thought it was stupid how we invited people to parties and offered them free beer but offered them no safe way home; coincidentally, during Ring Night, a girl crashed her car - drunk driving - going back to the apartments; it's a school tradition for the seniors to drink a whole bottle of champagne on the last night of Ring Night.)
I was sort of mad at the professor's announcement because - in his speech to us - he kept proclaiming how the board came to these conclusions after careful study, to which I said - well they never spoke to me.
And then, in the last week before classes, at least two or three weeks after that announcement that nothing was going to change had been made, I got the e-mail. It was a survey sent from the AdPol chair, asking students for their opinions on Ring Night. AFTER THEY HAD ALREADY ANNOUNCED AND DECIDED THEY WEREN'T GOING TO CHANGE IT IN THE SLIGHTEST.
That e-mail effectively said to me: Your opinion is worthless. What you think doesn't matter.
Try and tell me it's not true.
I'm so angry.
It bothers me that I never got to fight back against all the lies that were said about me. I think about it, constantly, all the ways I could have ripped their words to shreds. I hate that I was denied the chance to make them feel the hurt and shame that they made me feel. I hate that Ring Night will continue next year with no changes made to it.
I want to do something, and I hate that every time I come up with an idea of what to do, my brain talks me out of doing it - the same way I let Allison talk me out responding to all the libel letters we received.
I want to expose their hypocrisy. It drives me mad that they claim Ring Night isn't about hazing. I don't understand how otherwise progressive seeming people are okay with childish antics that are straight out of the worst of sorority stereotypes - just because we call it 'tradition'?
Ring Night is two days and three nights of treating girls who, just because they are a year beneath the seniors, are told they must act like slaves, and fulfill our demands, and then at the end we reward them baskets of gifts and they're told, “You're one of us, now.” There was a communications professor who, apparently, derided it as being a base-level version of breaking someone; I mean it makes sense, it's what the military does, you have to break someone to build them back up to be loyal to you. But it's not important because what Ring Night makes you loyal to isn't important. It's just petty bullshit.
I could never argue the abusive thing, in public at Hollins because it is just petty bullshit, but still. I'm so angry.
We say we don't do hazing, but I know there were cases of hazing brought to Honor Court this year. I was told about it from one of the Honor Court members who sat in on the cases. But I can never say that because I was told that in secrecy - because all Honor Court cases are kept secret. Which drives me mad because it's just a way to sweep under the rug that we -do- have problems at my school, that people do break the rules. But my school gets to pretend that we don't, because to discuss the fact that people do break the rules and are brought to Honor Court, breaks the rules, and will get you sent to Honor Court.
It's insane; it's a catch-22.
I'm so angry, but what can I do. I tried to talk about in the newspaper, and it was the worst experience of my life.
I mean, I know it's not easy to go against the status quo, but it just felt impossible. The whole weight of the world felt against me, and they just wouldn't even try to understand. We stood before Senate for 45 minutes, answering their questions which were never really questions - just accusations, and anger. And everything they said just validated what I already thought about Ring Night because they were so vapid, and stupid.
They asked me if I had thought about how my negativity could hurt the school's reputation - because the Board of Trustees might be so offended that I took offense they might stop donating money to the student government. As if it were incomprehensible that the Board of Trustees a) might actually agree with me and take offense to their wrong-doings and b) like I was required to only portray a view of my school experience that was positive in order to keep money coming and it was all the more frustrating because c) THE FUCKING BOARD OF TRUSTEES CONTRIBUTES NO MONEY TO THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT - THEY'RE CALLED STUDENT GOVERNMENT FEES AND THEY'RE PART OF OUR TUITION.
They told me it was impossible to do Ring Night if Seniors couldn't pick Juniors they already knew as their Ring Night Sister - all the more proving my point that the night isn't about forming bonds between the classes, it's about reinforcing bonds that already exist. When I tried to point out that because of this, juniors who did not know seniors were excluded from the event, and that it caused in equal distribution of “sisters” (that word looks so stupid to me in this contex) which in turn meant inequality in the distribution of gifts, they said no one cared about the gifts. I have the screencaps of them talking on facebook talking about how I was a bitter sister who just embarrassed about the size of the basket I gave.
But I never used that. I never got a chance to say any of that.
I hated them that night. I still kind of hate them tonight.
I don't know what to do with that feeling.
At the last Senate (or maybe the second to last) a professor I hate came before Senate and pronouced that after careful study the Professor and students who make up the Academic Policy board at our school had finished a semester long study of Ring Night and found it to be a noble tradition that would continue for years to come, with next year having the minor change of providing transportation between the senior apartments and the school on the last night of Ring Night (transportation that I argued for in an editorial the month before Ring Night because I thought it was stupid how we invited people to parties and offered them free beer but offered them no safe way home; coincidentally, during Ring Night, a girl crashed her car - drunk driving - going back to the apartments; it's a school tradition for the seniors to drink a whole bottle of champagne on the last night of Ring Night.)
I was sort of mad at the professor's announcement because - in his speech to us - he kept proclaiming how the board came to these conclusions after careful study, to which I said - well they never spoke to me.
And then, in the last week before classes, at least two or three weeks after that announcement that nothing was going to change had been made, I got the e-mail. It was a survey sent from the AdPol chair, asking students for their opinions on Ring Night. AFTER THEY HAD ALREADY ANNOUNCED AND DECIDED THEY WEREN'T GOING TO CHANGE IT IN THE SLIGHTEST.
That e-mail effectively said to me: Your opinion is worthless. What you think doesn't matter.
Try and tell me it's not true.
I'm so angry.