Fight The Power

So, I'm trying to keep up with my students in terms of blogging this semester. I think frankly I'm doing better than many of them are but we'll see how many play catch up by the end of the semester. I was planning to discuss their blogging silence during my next class on Wednesday. But now it appears I may have to hold off until next week thanks to a little thing called a strike scheduled for this Wednesday among the students.

The thing is, I don't really blame them. Life at AUC has been hard this fall. From incomplete classrooms, to food shortages to housing nightmares in which international students are asked to move out of their roach-infested army hotels in order to accommodate a political conference -- its been a trial by fire for most of these students. For more information on those stories, you really should check out the student newspaper Caravan's online publication at http://www.auccaravan.org

That's not to say there haven't been some definite positives by moving to Kattameya. For one thing, I can actually breathe air that isn't laced with heavy doses of lead and carbon monoxide. The campus is beautiful and there are moments when I'm walking down the Avenue that I have to stop and take a look at the architecture.  And I do believe that as the kinks are worked out, AUC will really be a force to be reckoned with in terms of technology and programs. 

It's just for students right now, the growing pains are, well, a lot more excruciating than they expected.

So a Facebook group has sprung up calling on students to meet in front of the HUSS building during assembly hour on Wednesday. It's expected to be a daylong protest, complete with red striped bands around the wrist in a sign of solidarity as well as a large bed sheet for students to commemorate their bad experiences for everyone to see. Its a sight I think I'd like to see, if only for the fact that AUC students are truly doing what we see so often in colleges abroad -- uniting in protest over a common cause. 

While news of the planned strike has been circulating for a while, it seems that professors are taking it serious this time with many canceling classes -- whether in solidarity with the cause or simply because it saves the trouble of having to trek out into the desert to attend a class that may only have 2 students, I don't know. In any case, from my point of view, I think the strike is a good sign. Not because I'm an instigator who revels in chaos (although I have my moments). But rather because this type of protest is particularly important to see in an Arab country where freedom of expression is not easily come by. 

And if I don't have to make the arduous journey out to the desert to teach an empty classroom, well, that's an added bonus.

Stereotypes and Biases

Blondes are dumb, Muslims are terrorists, Asians are good at math and science and Israelis are generally evil.

Those were the words I uttered to my classes over the last few weeks. No, I'm not trying to start a race riot. Nor was I letting out pent out frustration. I was talking about biases and how we as reporters -- whether professional or student journalists -- are always full of opinions that somehow seep out into our articles. Every semester I try to do a lecture in which I force my students to face their biases. After all, knowledge is power right? And if we're aware of them, we can try to overcome them, at least when it comes to our articles.

But this semester I put a different spin on it. I had the students actually tell me  where they think I come from based on my appearance in class, such as the way I carry myself, my speech and my general demeanor. Here are some of the comments: 

1)Wealthy or upper middle class background 

2)private school educated 

3)from a conservative family in which I was the rebel

4)from an educated family

5)maybe a society girl with friends with connections

Now, here's the reality:

1)I'm from East New York, Brooklyn -- one of the poorest ghettoes in Brooklyn

2)My junior high school was in the basement of a parking garage and I went to college on a scholarship

3)My family is pretty moderate and while I may have rebelled in private, I was hardly a menace to my parents

4)This is true: all my family members are extremely educated

5)I despised society girls and the only connection I had growing up was the friend that knew how to steal cars.

When I told my students my background, it really is amazing how their faces changed. Did they think less of me, did the respect me more? I don't know but I know the stereotypical image they had of me was shattered. And I think that's the point of making them confront their own biases. You never really know what you're going to get when looking at a person.  And that became even clearer to me this semester.

Early Morning Squatter

AUC faculty received an e-mail a few days ago urging us to make sure we get to class on time so that our students don't suffer any more of the delays in classroom time that they've had to deal with since the semester began. Given the fact that the buses are often late and with two week-long Eid holidays slated for the semester, its understandable that parents and students (not to mention professors) are a little concerned that the student body is getting short-changed. So as a compassionate faculty member *cue violins* I do my best to brave the early morning hassles (such as my one-year-old's demands for chips at 5:30 a.m. or my five-year-old's meltdown over having to wear a blue shirt to school) and catch the early bus that will get me to my first class at 8:30. But then there are days like today when it seems like the Fates are mocking me and I think why do I bother.

Today, I taught class in my office. Literally. Squatting on my office floor, kneeling before a whiteboard in a red skirt, surrounded by a bunch of AUC students sitting cross-legged on the floor, I attempted to teach my students about online journalism without having the capability to provide students with a computer in a class to actually DO online journalism. I think you could call that ironic. They say necessity is the mother of all invention. I guess that's true of teaching styles as well. And my squatting stance made for some interesting Kodak moments I'm sure for the students. But somehow I can't imagine this is what either they or I had imagined class at the new campus would be like.

Now to be fair, it was a one-time inconvenience (I hope). After waiting for my locked classroom lab door to be opened by someone for 15 minutes, we decided to conduct class down in my office. The show must go on. And I've since been given a magical key to ensure that this doesn't happen again. But one of my students said after class "I can't believe my parents are paying this much to have me sit on the floor." It's a sentiment I can concur with.

Another Day, Another Dead Body

When I was told last year that the American University in Cairo would be switching campuses from Tahrir Square to Kattameya, I remember wondering just what kind of transportation experience I could expect. Now as a native New Yorker, born and bred, I am no stranger to transportation woes. The New York subway is chock full of challenges including singing winos on the cars, aggressive rush hour Wall Street types, trains that suddenly stop for an hour mid-station with the lights suddenly going out and of course that odd piss smell in the subway underpass at Port Authority Bus terminal. Having had those experiences, I felt oddly at home in Cairo's Metro as I travelled to Tahrir from my home in Ma'adi. But then we moved campuses and I suddenly was introduced to a whole new level of terror in transportation: The Ring Road. 

I heard stories about the dangers on Ring Road. Not a week goes by that I don't hear or read something about an accident that claimed the lives of one or more people. And being a bus rider on Ring Road, I often get the bird's eye view of cars swerving in and out of lines and stopping short in the middle of the road only to make a completely illegal and frightening U-turn, causing cars to screech to a halt. I had even seen a couple of accidents, complete with crumpled up cars. But today I saw my first real indicator of the horror that is Ring Road. Today I saw my first dead body.

Riding the bus to school this morning at some ungodly hour, I was half dozing when I heard my seat mate let out a gasp as she looked out the window. And there he was. Sprawled out on the side of the road, bare feet and bloodied. The remnants of what was once a human being, now lay like trash on the side of the road, a pool of blood around him. I was told by some of my students later that he was wrapped in newspaper when they saw him. But he hadn't been mummified yet when I lay eyes on him. And its an image that will stay with me. It will be one of the many images that will stay with me when I think of the new campus. It's an image that makes me long for the Metro in Cairo or even the piss-filled subway underpass in New York. 

Welcome!!!

To those who said I would never create a blog, I've proven you wrong. You can thank my students at the American University in Cairo for bringing me over to the dark side of blogging -- at least for the fall semester 2008.

My mission for this semester is to show my students the world beyond the sand and desert of Kattameya, where AUC has now opened a new campus. It's been a trial by fire for students and faculty alike and my goal by assigning my Intro to Multimedia Writing classes is to give the students an outlet to share their thoughts, frustrations and achievements on the new campus while learning about blogging and other electronic media at the same time. Your mission as bloggers is to provide outside readers with a window into life at AUC as it goes through a tough transition. My classes are about journalism and my students are reporters. Their blogs will not only provide a diary of their experiences -- good, bad, and ugly -- but will also demonstrate the types of stories that come out of a campus in flux. 

Good luck with your blogging experiment and I look forward to reading all that you have to say!