By Na’im Madyun, associate dean
A recent request was made by the academic community to place an academic voice at the intersection of cell phone usage and leisure behavior. Admittedly, there is a little irony about a call for a cell phone to have voice, but it is definitely a call worthy of a response. This response to a call to give voice to a medium is by no means unprecedented. A Face in the Crowd demonstrated the importance of responding to voices present in a medium. Listening to the power of the voice that emerges from particular conversations was one noticeable soundbite I took away from this film.
On Nov. 20th, I attended the last of four campus climate conversations scheduled for the fall. The first and second conversations were for our students. The third conversation was held for staff and the fourth was for faculty. The student conversations were nicely attended. Unfortunately, there were approximately 4 times as many staff present compared to the faculty. Interestingly, there was a sound bite throughout all 4 conversations that amplified in my mind as I listened and reflected.
To what degree are our voices both reflected and respected? For too many, there is a cost to just “being” in academia and sometimes the costs are real when one adds voice to the inequity of their existence.
It’s troublesome to hear stories of colleagues receiving “retribution” for either carrying out their job description or illuminating disparities as engaged University citizens. I privately reflected on how courageous one must be to add voice to the presence of injustices when knowingly not protected by academic freedom.
This commentary was probably one of the more difficult commentaries for me to write because of the nature of this topic’s peculiar relationship to bias and inequality. Recently, when voice was given to the nature of this peculiar relationship, a social media engineered tornado was created and targeted to the source of the emerged voices. An impressive amount of time, energy and force was directed at the voice’s livelihood and any voice that dared to share the path. This brings me to another soundbite I took away from a Face in the Crowd– the power of the medium in leveraging destructive voices over just ones.
If you are not aware of Gamergate, please educate and then converse. The misogyny in many video games is as natural as using the female body to lure dirty cars in for cleansing at church fundraisers. Because participation in gaming is so high (59% of Americans are gamers and average 14 years of experience), the outcomes are socially acceptable (Phil Collins was in Grand Theft Audio, what can be more evidence of acceptance?). Because gaming helps to satisfy leisure needs, intersections with female objectification are either overlooked or to some degree expected. Our climate is conducive to sustaining the female body’s use to support some of our leisure needs. As Gamergate has revealed for some of us, our climate is not conducive to sustaining voices attached to the disruption of leisure experiences if they are tied to that same objectification.
A professor’s attempt to add a disruptive voice to this leisure activity was canceled due to threats of a campus shooting, a “disruptive” female gamer found the death date of her Wikipedia page altered to coincide with scheduled public appearances, writers have left their profession , and some voices have even left their homes.
Despite threats to her business, her name, her physical home, her physical body, her family and her life, one face in the crowd has vowed to maintain a disruptive voice and has even vocalized a counter . I doubt she is doing this to satisfy her leisure needs or as a strategy for self-preservation. To me, she is clearly deciding to stand up for those who cannot now or shouldn’t have to in the future.
It is noteworthy to recognize a wrong. It is commendable to add voice to disrupt the wrong. It is courageous to project against the wrong amidst real acts of retribution. However, to selflessly sustain a voice against a wrong with little evidence that a chorus will emerge and even less evidence of protection for one’s life and the lives of loved ones is something we should desire to have consistently, naturally objectified in our diverse and equitable climate.
