[Air-l] Re: peace

Steve Jones sjones at uic.edu
Mon Mar 24 15:27:30 PST 2003


This is not directly, and perhaps only very indirectly, internet/war 
related. I had a very odd experience today giving a guest lecture to 
a group of undergraduate students in an introductory course. We spoke 
about the internet and its potential during the war...or I should say 
that I spoke about it, virtually to a person none of them seemed to 
want to talk about the war in any way, shape or form. I couldn't tell 
if it was fear, anxiety, not caring, etc. Now, meantime, at that very 
same time today and just outside the lecture hall, a demonstration 
was going on (I don't know how many students were there since I was 
in the classroom, but judging from the police presence afterwards 
they must have expected quite a crowd). One student said after class 
that she was tired of hearing about the war, "there's too much news 
about it even when there's no news" and it breaks into regular TV 
programming, while another said he prefers to get war news online 
because he doesn't care for the reporting on TV, radio and print. In 
the main they seemed, if nothing else, to want to keep the war 
"compartmentalized" or at least outside the boundary of the classroom 
walls. I'm wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience? Our 
campus is very, very diverse (from a university publication: "The 
nearly 25,000 students who study at the University of Illinois at 
Chicago come from  the city of Chicago and its suburbs, and from all 
50 states, three United States territories,  and  95 foreign 
countries. The student body is rich in its diversity, its youth and 
maturity, and  its cultural heritage. Of the more than 16,000 
undergraduate students, 55 percent are  female and 45 percent are 
male. Minority enrollments comprise 50 percent of the total 
enrollment") and our student body has been a model of racial, ethnic 
and religious understanding and tolerance, IMHO, while it has also 
been somewhat politically active (though it's hard to compare it to 
other campuses very easily on that score). I'm wondering quite how to 
account for the attitudes I encountered today.

Sj

At 11:35 PM +0100 3/24/03, Rune Dalgaard wrote:
>David, I generally agree with your skepticism of the Iraq war. I find my
>country (Denmark), as one of only 3-4 countries participating in war against
>the majority opinion here in Denmark and around the world - a very
>frustrating experience, when you belong to that majority!
>
>I too, have noted the absence of war-related mails in a couple of days, not
>just on this list but also on at least one other I am participating in. I
>have a feeling that once the war started some of the discussions leading up
>to it seemed futile to many (to late to avoid it). Second, there might have
>been a general need of a little time to make sense of the information coming
>from the war zone.
>
>As to the appropriateness of discussing 'non-curricular' issues on a list
>like this? Generally, I think not, unless the discussion is clearly related
>to the Internet as a phenomenon. However, some times there are exceptions to
>rules - I think a war like this is exceptional enough for people to voice
>their opinion in this forum (as exceptions to the rule - a continued
>discussion could be carried out off-list) - sorry for carrying it on here
>;-)
>
>Best,
>Rune
>
>________________________________________________
>Rune Dalgaard  |  MA, Ph.D. Candidate  |
>Information and Media Studies  |  Aarhus University  |  Denmark
>runed at imv.au.dk  |  http://www.imv.au.dk/medarbejdere/runed
>
>
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