Activist Dinner: No Animals Harmed

By Courtney Andree | Friday, June 11, 2004

To kick off Activism Week festivities here at the College, the blandly-titled "After Hours" program offered a cookie-cutter introduction to the wild world of activism, glorifying the mundane and celebrating the meaningless. A whopping fourteen student activists were in attendance, a chosen few worthy to receive the pearls of hard-tested wisdom that were sure to be proffered. The program began when Assistant Dean of Student Life and Advisor to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) Students Pam Misener propped up a placard that read, "Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes." And on this note, day one of the series "Get Active—Looking at Activism" began.

— Saving the world, one surf & turf platter at a time. —

A veritable who's who of campus activists were arrayed at the front of Collis Commonground, with OPAL (Office of Pluralism and Leadership) guru Tommy Lee Woon, nutty English professor Shelby Grantham [See opposing page], Mary Turco of the Women's Studies Program, Xenia Markowitt from the Center for Women and Leadership, anti-war crusading History professor Bruce Nelson, and Special Advisor to the Deans of the College Robert Binswanger gracing the stage.

Following a brief introduction, Mary Turco began by relating her stalwart efforts to publish the writings of incarcerated juveniles. Rehashing the Nature vs. Nurture argument—and unambiguously taking the side of Nurture—Turco stated: "We're punishing hundreds of thousands of children annually...lots of these children have been maltreated." (As have their victims.) Turco continued, telling of her efforts in California, where she encouraged other writers to go to juvenile camps to teach creative writing, in order to replace guns with pens. After a child writes his magnum opus conveying his inner torment and rage, the organization works to publish it. Here one might recall James Michener's words on young writers: "Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you."

After Turco's moving presentation, Tommy Lee Woon stepped up and began to fire questions at the audience, working to shatter their prejudices with his "intuition." "When you think about activists, who do you imagine? Can you imagine an Asian American as an activist?" he dared. Yep, but I guess that makes me special—"I bet most people can't." After this challenge, Woon proceeded to list the names of scores of Asian American activists, just in case we thought he was a fraud. Woon even had a friend who had been confronted with great adversity throughout his struggles in activism: "One of these brave freedom fighters had chairs thrown at him...chairs thrown at him in a meeting." Word has it that the street cred of this "freedom fighter" skyrocketed afterwards.

However, only when Professor Shelby Grantham took the microphone did I feel with certainty that I was being confronted with a true activist. Knowing what an integral role she played in our nation's history, I could not help but be in awe of her: "In the seventies, I was one of those people that stopped the war in Vietnam. It took us a long time, but we stopped it. I went to jail twice." Protesting the war in Vietnam had always seemed so much more of a comprehensive effort when the history books told it; their failure to cite Grantham as the true impetus behind war's end is surely a grievous oversight. If any glamour-hungry young souls in the crowd were yet to be inspired to a life of activism, Grantham's further assertions surely pushed them over the fence: "It was kind of flashy, you went to jail, got your picture taken, your name in the paper."

Grantham was quick to say that her new role as a parent precluded any option of arrest. She is, however, able to continue her life as an activist, but on a more local and minor scale. The most recent "leading" she has had was in the Hanover area, specifically in the lobster tanks of the Hanover Co-op. I kid you not. "Hands closed with rubber bands, a tank so clean that it is clear that they aren't being fed... slowly starved to death... I've got to do something about it, I'm not sleeping at night," she wailed. And so, Grantham took up arms to seek relief for the helpless lobsters unable to speak for themselves. She even conducted internet research on the inhumanity of selling live lobsters. The Horror!

Her activism routine was not just limited to action; her sartorial choice of glistening Indian fabric had a deeper meaning: "I'm being an activist by wearing my Kucinich button. I'm being an activist by wearing my cross-cultural dress... I have a whole host of reasons for doing it, not the least of it is [that] I like it."

Grantham finally recounted a "leading" that occurred last summer when she learned that her power company was boosting production, which, in turn, could jeopardize the nomadic existence of a Native American people to the north. She profoundly realized that "I have the power to use less electricity," and so embarked upon an experiment in which she and her children lived for thirty days without it, discovering that "I don't need a refrigerator… I don't need a dryer." Opting not to kill her pet fish, she allowed the tank to run. She also decided not to press her adopted children into hauling water from the river on their backs—surely a fate they would have suffered had they remained in their native land.

Following Grantham came Robert Binswanger, a guest for the evening whose achievements in activism include membership in the Greek Life Steering Committee. Binswanger apparently missed the memo: He proceeded to share light-hearted, irrelevant anecdotes about his volunteer experiences over the years. He even recounted a memorable coaching experience, in which his underdog inner-city boys feared facing off against future basketball great Wilt Chamberlain and were consequently "killed" by him in the big game.

Xenia Markowitt then addressed the diminishing crowd, telling of her past exploits in the activist bent, even acknowledging that "It was ridiculousness... I remember being a part of the anti-Waldorf Astoria Group." These valiant youths were responsible for confronting the visiting dignitary de jour, lurking in the street with signs of dissent and dissatisfaction. She also recounted a plan for a sit-in scheme proposed by a student several years ago: The student pleaded, "Teach me, teach me [how]." Markowitt gently reminded the young woman that she was part of Parkhurst, and thus could not offer advice. As an ambassador from that den of iniquity, she urged the crowd to think "new millenially [sic]" about the administration.

Next in line was the famed anti-war professor Bruce Nelson, a card-carrying member of the Review's annual "Worst Professors" list. He recalls: "The first year I came here was the year that there were shanties on the green," an instance of student activism which he claimed led the College to divest from its holdings in South African stock companies. He failed to note that, in another display of campus activism, Review staffers "removed" the eyesores from the Green. But Nelson was not without breadth: Princeton, as far as activism goes, is "a pathetically white and conservative place."

Misener finally ended the program by curiously telling the audience that she had never had any intention of speaking on her life as a professional gay activist. I sheepishly confess that I put my pen down in defeat: I had been converted. As usual, Dartmouth assembled a powerful and punchy program that would motivate nigh anyone to cast off the oppressive yoke and rush headlong into traffic. Or, in my case, sit slack-jawed in amazement that my college actually employs professors who spend their time promoting the civil rights of lobsters.

Activist Dinner: No Animals Harmed

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