skype me! (actually, please don't.)

do you ever have random people add you on skype? i don't know if skype is popular in china, or what, but i usually get about 1-2 add requests a week from chinese people i don't know.

every night before bed, i try to remember to mute my computer. any number of sounds can be triggered by various programs (or if the computer spontaneously restarts), and more often than not, if i don't mute, i'll awake to some loud sound. (i typically have the speakers up pretty high from listening to music.)

well, over the past couple months, i've been woken up 3 or 4 times in the middle of the night when i've forgotten to mute my speakers by this very very bizarre, repeating sound, that i could not for the life of me identify. it was quite creepy. well, yesterday i finally realized what it was: the skype incoming call ring. all along, it was random chinese people trying to call me at 4:00 am (which, i guess, is during the day there). so, i've disabled the ringtone.

i know i haven't updated this in forever. i will soon.

hunger strike: revoltingly inappropriate

harvard's security guards, supplied through a contract with alliedbarton, earn $12.68 per hour, plus benefits that include health insurance, retirement planning, and paid time off. these guards are separate from the deputized harvard university police department, and generally assist with lockouts, small packages, and other unskilled tasks. most are stationed at desks with internet access, and are permitted to talk on the phone, listen to music, read, and surf the internet while on duty.

$12.68, which is above the cambridge, ma living wage of $12.19 and several dollars above the legal minimum wage, is not enough, argues the student labor action movement (slam). to protest, eleven of its members have undertaken a hunger strike "of indefinite length and proportions", according to their statement. yes, you read that correctly, a hunger strike. these eleven students say that they have not eaten for what has now been 6 days, and one of them has been hospitalized for complications. this is also the middle of finals period.

reasonable people can debate whether or not $12.68 is a fair wage for our security guards. i haven't considered the question carefully enough to reach a definitive conclusion, but my feeling is that it probably is. the job is unskilled and there is very little labor involved, either physical or mental. i'm not sure how much a person could reasonably expect to be compensated for those tasks. in fact, i can think of many much more difficult jobs that pay a comparable or lower amount: research assistance, beach lifeguarding, and technical support call center work all come immediately to mind. these guards must also be paid the same or more money than employees at many harvard square businesses, such as felipe's or qdoba.

there is no question that living anywhere near cambridge on approximately $13 per hour must not be easy. if i were one of the guards and found this to be too difficult a task, i would probably try to move to a less expensive area of the country, or else pursue education that would allow me to gain a better paying job. in fact, the security guard who is usually on duty in my house is extremely personable, intellectually curious, and highly intelligent -- i can tell the latter two by the books i see him reading. i find it impossible to believe that he could not find a skilled job that would pay him more money if he set out to do so. my guess is that the utility of the increased wages would not make up for the lost utility of such an easy job and a pleasant work environment.

therefore, while i am suspicious of the idea that our (unionized!) security guards are underpaid, i will accept it as a conclusion that reasonable people might come to. slam has been lobbying harvard for better conditions for the security workers for almost a year now, with negative results. now, they have upped the ante several orders of magnitude in an effort to force the university's hand. they want harvard to insert itself in what is actually a private negotiation between alliedbarton and the guards' union. the hunger strike has been accompanied by other actions designed to arouse feelings of pity and gross injustice, such as letters to president bok in poem form. an excerpt from one:

President Bok,
I know it may seem like
this is self inflicted hunger,
but back when i used to ask my mom
for hamburgers
she couldn't afford to buy
for all of my brothers
she would say:
None of us eat unless we all eat.

We are a community
and if one of us is hungry
we are all hungry.
I hope you take care of me
as well as I promised my mom
you would.

Love,
[redacted]

i guess i'll refrain from comment on that.

returning to the subject of the hunger strike, to resort to such a drastic tactic that is so shamefully disproportionate to the issue in question puts harvard in an awful position, and i consider it revoltingly inappropriate. protest tactics such as a hunger strike should be reserved for egregious violations of fundamental human rights. not being paid an above-market wage is neither egregious nor a violation of a right. are these hunger strikers willing to die because our security guards are only paid $12.68 per hour, plus benefits? this seems quite literally insane to me, and six days later i am still shocked that it is actually happening.

a simple thought experiment will allow anyone to see how this policy is unsustainable. imagine if any time a person's wish were not granted, he made a credible threat to kill himself. for example, what if every time a man was passed over for a promotion, he told his superiors that he would commit suicide if they did not change their mind? this puts all parties in an impossible situation and, if sufficiently widespread, would quickly bring all of organized society to a deadlock.

in this case, just like in the general scenario above, everyone is forced into an untenable position. the university has no jurisdiction over the guards' contract, and no interest in becoming involved, but it must carefully weigh the fact that as time goes on, several of its students are in (self-imposed) significant bodily danger. the hunger strikers at this point are so invested in the cause that they are unlikely to stop until they are satisfied with some concession. students who do not support the strike may feel uncomfortable saying so when classmates are at such risk -- but again, i emphasize that they have brought this risk upon themselves as part of a strategy which i consider unfair to everyone.

i can only predict that the university and slam will eventually agree to some mutually face-saving compromise. the hunger strikers are certainly well-intentioned, but just as certainly misguided. this approach is poor judgment and unlikely to result in any advances to workers' rights at all comparable to the magnitude of the protest.

speech codes

in my psychology class, "morality and taboo", which is co-taught by steven pinker and alan dershowitz (amazing), one of our recent topics was speech codes at universities. speech in a university, if one thinks about it for a moment, is far from free. as professor dershowitz remarked, "there are plenty of things i could say right now in this room that would get me fired...that would end my forty-[something] year career as a professor of law". restrictions on speech exist de facto whether or not a university has a written speech code; professor dershowitz actually supports speech codes, because one of his mantras is to always prefer articulable rules, agreed upon ex ante, to inarticulable discretion, exercised ex post. of course, his ideal speech code says something to the effect of, there are no restrictions on speech.

speech codes are rarely called such -- rather, they may take several guises, most commonly that of a "harassment policy". in his book the shadow university, harvey silverglate (who believes there should be no speech codes) exhaustively reviews the various policies in place across the nation, many of which are astoundingly broad, prohibiting language that may knowingly or unknowingly embarrass (or intend to embarrass), offend, make uncomfortable, etc. (all of these phrases are quoted from various speech codes) a member of a protected group; the remarks need not be directed at a specific person or group of persons. prohibited actions can include not only oral remarks, but also writing, gestures, sign languages, certain ways of looking at a person, laughing (yes, laughing), sounds, and even the absence of an action (e.g. a resident advisor's refusal to wear a pink triangle distributed at a gay and lesbian sensitivity training event, for which he was fired at carnegie mellon; the ra sued and settled with the university). the effect is essentially to license the university to punish any student for nearly any remark -- and this authority is, of course, exercised extremely selectively, as draconian speech codes probably produce hundreds or thousands of actionable incidents each day. therefore, looking at who and what a university chooses to prosecute is quite interesting.

some of the codes truly go beyond the pale and into absurdity, notably west virginia university's. wvu's policies instruct students to "value alternative lifestyles...use language that is not gender specific...[and] educate yourself about homosexuality". it seems that it is not enough to simply not be homophobic at wvu; one must also actively research alternative lifestyles. they are told "do not determine whether you will interact with someone by virtue of his or her sexual orientation". is this not blatant thought reform? does this open the door to someone being punished for having no gay friends? all of this craziness is particularly ironic because i imagine (although this is a complete guess) that wvu is probably a fairly homophobic place to go to school.. certainly less gay-friendly than other more liberal universities, which don't instruct their students to be nice to gay people and use gender-neutral language under threat of discipline.

now, when you think about it, you can see how a lot of these cases really could be construed as harassment. that is, a resident advisor's conspicuous refusal to wear a gay rights symbol at sensitivity training could make one of his homosexual advisees uncomfortable because it could be reasonably inferred that the advisor at least does not support gay rights, if he is not actively homophobic. therefore, the student has a reasonable complaint: the person who lives on his hall in a supervisory role, who is supposed to be an advisor and mentor, is apparently in some sense opposed to his sexual orientation.

i agree that this complaint is valid, and i agree that the student has a right to an ra who is not homophobic. but consider the alternate scenario: what if the ra had simply gone along with things and worn the pink triangle? he would still have been just as homophobic (if he was homophobic) as before; wearing the symbol would change nothing about the situation, other than removing the overt threat. the gay student would thus not be "harassed", but he would have no indication that his ra had some problem with homosexuals. this could potentially lead to much larger problems in the future. more broadly, moving to the example of wvu, what would gay people prefer: for everyone to pretend to accept them, and completely falsely be nice to them (out of fear of punishment), or for students to voice their opinions about homosexuals as they so choose? the latter would help gay students identify who their true friends were, and it would allow open discussion of and debate about homosexuality and homophobia in the free marketplace of ideas, and allow whatever homophobic opinions were voiced to be judged in the court of public opinion rather than by a quasi-judicial university administrative board. (forgive the hackneyed metaphors.) and finally, still more broadly, from a free speech perspective, it is untenable to suppress some subjectively undesirable forms of expression while permitting others which could be equally objectionable to some people, but that the group in power (the university administration) agrees with.

neither of the options in the previous paragraph seems good: the ra's refusing to put on the pink triangle could be threatening or uncomfortable (i am accepting the premise that it is a goal of the university that gay students should not be made uncomfortable because of their sexuality, and that this goal is possibly as important as the right of freedom of expression), but on the other hand his disingenuous compliance would only veil his homophobia, which could well become clear later on. the solution is to simply not hire homophobic people to be resident advisors in the first place, instead of hiring homophobic people and then suppressing their right to express this belief. prospective ras should be told that they will be overseeing a diverse group of students -- and that this diversity includes diversity of sexual orientation -- and be asked their thoughts on this subject. addressing issues like this during the hiring process would have preempted a conflict between the values of tolerance and free speech.

i'm still not totally sure where i stand on the subject of speech codes. there are compelling reasons for and against them. i think it's most important to simply be aware that there are very real limits on speech in most settings, whether or not they're enumerated in a (quasi-)legal document.