WORD NERDS: this is NOT your nanay's blog

a poem-report (and a work in progress).

I overheard a horde of grad students discussing their current living situations. One lives off of the un-friendly side of Euclid Street. She noted the increasing amount of thefts and police presence abundance of black men that populate her neighborhood. This conversation became one of grading their students and evaluating campus climate. "I'm just gunna give all of my students As!" a T.A. says. As if alleviating a factor contributing to high stress levels would ensure your safety. That doesn't solve their problems, you dumb fuck. Doesn't. Solve. The. Problem.


Dekalb. (02/14/08)
Oxnard. (02/12/08)
Memphis. (02/11/08)
Baton Rouge. (02/08/08)
Portsmouth. (02/07/08)

5 U.S. school shootings over the past 8 days.

Quell a school plot conjured in Germany.
Quell another in France.

2 international plots foiled.

Remember Santee.
Remember Columbine.
Remember V-Tech...

..amongst the many.

This is not coincidence.
Why does the media cast these incidents as projects of pathology?
Pass off taxonomy as Truth
Classifying youth
Deduced to a faceless, nameless individual that people saw
but never knew

Schools like prisons,
Why does the media insist that students are model citizens?
The products of an ongoing conditioning process
That originally excluded Other, womyn, and (descendants of) immigrants

Remember violence.
Remember self-hatred.
Remember silence.
Remember to awaken.

No wonder...
Even the free-thinking are imprisoned
The free-spirited have clipped wings

No wonder..
Isolated students are like lost souls

What takes place in the university is no different from society
You have students with heightened sensitivities
You have steamroller ideologies
You have victims of a school/prison system
Wading in what feels like damnation

Education does not mean mind control
Voices are calling
Classroom violence happens so often
Access to weaponry, pulling the trigger
and being triggered
is a microcosm
of the fact that we haven't yet realized that
We. Have. A. Problem.