Scholarship Fund

Sexuality Studies Scholarship Fund

It is time to recognize that LGBT youth are in danger. We can no longer ignore the fact that the suicide rate among LGBT youth is twice the national average. Interventions are required, but what is truly needed is a sea-change in social acceptance of gay and lesbian young people. There are those who discuss tolerance, and that is at least better than outright rejection. But tolerance is a low-grade form of dismissal, a condescending attitude that says, in short, I allow you to be who you are, it's okay if you're gay, I'll allow that. This is nonsense. Imagine someone saying I'm okay that you're straight. I allow you to be a heterosexual, go ahead if you must.
             For our part, we're promoting a newly created scholarship fund aimed at youth who identify as LGBT. It's called the Sexuality Studies Scholarship Fund. It is available at The Ohio State University to undergrads and grad students with a Sexuality Studies minor. The SS Major should be approved soon at OSU, marking the first such Sexuality Studies Major in the nation. The scholarship award will be based on an essay of between 500 and 1,000 words. The scholarship is awarded to the student essay which best exemplifies how sexual or gender identity 'difference' has had a positive effect on the author's life and how this difference influenced their decision to work for positive change in society. The award is $250 or more, which will be applied toward tuition and fees. There will be a Fall and Spring competition every year. Our goal is to advertise and promote the fund until it reaches endowment status at $50,000. At that point it will create one full scholarship.
              Anyone wishing to donate to this fund should go to http://www.giveto.osu.edu. Enter Fund # 313427.
Donations can also be made through Campus Campaign via OSU payroll deductions. Consider also dedicating part of your estate funds to this worthwhile and timely fund. These young people need recognition and acceptance now more than ever. For more information go to the Sexuality Studies website.
http://sexualitystudies.osu.edu/scholarships/

Passage

We call it a Passage for a reason

This isn't a trick question, but what do you see here? Rocks? A gap in the rocks with the sea behind? An opportunity to enter a passage, and see what's on the other side? 
      Or are you one of those rare people who looks through gaps automatically, ignores the rocks and their jagged edges, their attempt to block any further exploration? Many of us see the rocks first, and focus on them. We wonder if there's room to fit through the gap, to make the passage? Or if we'll be able to get back through once we wedge our way into the narrow gap? Another concern is what lies just beyond, and whether or not we'll be safe once we make the passage? If we consider all the passages we've made since we let go of our mother's hand the first day of school and walked into that towering building alone, or left for basic training, or walked into a job interview for a position we knew was critical to our future we can't help the fear and physical adjustment that holds us back. But looking back, what we see is a history of success and satisfaction at having made the passage. And the view from beyond all those rocky passages has always been wider, clearer, more expansive and better. 
       I had an example of this yesterday when a student colleague pushed me through a gap of my own making. I thought I'd identified a deficiency in a piece of writing, a missed opportunity by an established writer to use her experience to expand her essay and make it stronger. The subject concerned her friend's struggle with cancer, and his subsequent death. The author chose not to include details of the patient's ultimately unsuccessful battle with his disease, and I judged that the paper may have been stronger had she included those details. My colleague pointed out that, on the contrary, using those details, exhibiting items her deceased friend may not have wanted to be made public showed a grace and restraint that the author should have used, and did. It was a conscious effort to strengthen the paper by omitting details. Less is indeed more. By choosing the reverential over the exhibitionistic, she made the passage from exploitive to considerate. Just because we can does not mean we should. It was a point well taken, and one I will keep in mind in all future writing. Passages like that are educational as well as informative. There's a difference. 

Blank Space

It's a dandy little notebook

Sometimes it’s better to be content with blank space, and the present tense. This is the last sentence of my English paper to be read aloud during class number 2. Here's how it all started. First assignment in English 568 is to "write about a thing." Sounds easy: I'm surrounded by things. Then the caveat: "Steer clear of memoir."
                 It's always something. Just when I thought I'd discovered the key to the universe--the simple regurgitation of my vast store of personal experience and encyclopedic cache of knowledge and wisdom--I'm admonished to write about stuff happening right now. No delving into the old brain box to retrieve war stories, anecdotes, parental/employment/marital or social tales and trials. Look around, find something interesting, and then write about it. What's so hard about that?
                 Here's one thing the assignment has shown already: that old, moldy stuff is interesting alright, to me, mostly. This can be a real break point in a writer's career, when he or she realizes that to write means to, as the old railroad crossing signs used to say--maybe they still do--stop, look and listen. Stop referring to one's past and all that happened then, because it's entirely possible that as painful as it might be to acknowledge, no one cares about that stuff. Look, for those interesting things in the here and now, and know that there are plenty of things people really want to read about. Listen, to those same people, and they will often tell a writer exactly what those things are that they'd like someone to write about. There are the following, for instance:
         The silly season and its affect on real people as we go to the polls.
          Social issues such as gay marriage, Tea Party nincompoops, the effect of climate change on things we never considered like new vacation destinations.
         Illegal mushroom farms, contraband cigarettes in NYC, the legalization of equality, famous acronyms you thought you knew and didn't. Why there are no more paper boys. The list goes on.
          Summarizing, memoir is fine, and has an estimable place in the canon. But non-fiction is bigger than personal history and past lives. Blank paper can be the most exciting journey of all.

Back to class

First Day of class Fall 2010

Back in class after a small hiatus. It's good to be back on campus, re-energized, ready to continue the pursuit of the elusive college degree. It's in sight; only three or four terms left until graduation--then I gotta find a job!

            First day of Fall Quarter is always energizing with the sheer chaos of hundreds of new, slightly mis-oriented students, full classes (which will be the case all of a week), and the general atmosphere of a fresh start. Earth Sciences 105 will be a very interesting course in the Geology of the National Parks. Extra credit will be given for filling in the blanks--names of political leaders involved in the National Park Service, prominent musicians at the time of the Parks' naming, social movers and shakers active at the time and various social phenomena associated with the National Parks, such as the interplay between government and those anxious to commercialize the areas. Stay tuned.

            Tomorrow, English 568 commences with Michelle Herman. Something tells me I'm about to find out just what kind of writer I am, and how far I can expect to go with my affinity for written words: Great American Novel? Or Great American error message? Word on the street is that Herman takes no prisoners, that she's an excellent instructor and she's typically unimpressed with prima donnas. We'll see how this pans out--can't wait. 

           As for the followup, meaning Winter 2011, the plan is to knock out a required math requirement. Again, stay tuned.

Hiatus

Room for one more?

Summer hiatus, and time to get out from under a bit of the backlog. School is out for now, and it seems that with less to do, there's more to do. Tasks fill up whatever time we devote to them. So it will be good to be back on campus in three weeks, focused almost exclusively on that task, working toward a graduation date that begins to appear on the not so distant horizon. As I slog across campus, I'll not be quite so burdened as the poor schlemiels above in their third-world version of the Mayflower moving van. Indeed, as classes become higher in number, the load of books, tablets and assorted academic detritus gets lighter. Almost as if the load has been or is being transferred into my nearly overloaded brain. Here's hoping there are no flat tires in my future, because there is no spare; I checked.