A Rebuttal to Humor the Guy in the Front

While reading the response piece to Anonymous’s article, which echoed more than a few people’s sentiments about this university, I thought it best to discuss what nationalism means as it pertains to education. There’s an elephant in the room, I must admit, and I do hope to address it as eloquently as I possibly can, so as to avoid possible offense. I do not mean what I say to be offensive to the men and women on the “fourteenth floor”, NYU Shanghai’s colloquial “tenth floor of Bobst”. Moreover, I do hope to avoid offending anyone on the floors below the fourteenth as I know the work that is done on my behalf by people that I scarcely see is laborious, often painful, and non-stop. My classmate, Michael Margaritoff, wrote an eloquent article - hop on over and read it, it’s been linked below. His article responds to the portrayal of the grading practices in the Global Perspectives on Culture and the Global Perspectives on Society courses. My peer makes an excellent point, among others, that these classes are not just meant for writing, that they are tools for us to compound our knowledge, and as Professor Claverie puts it, “to learn how to build our fires before dark”. However, where I think Michael goes wrong, is to explicitly state that those desiring an American education, and with nationalistic sentiments towards their educations, are dangerous to this university and to the concept of the Global Network University. He says that we are “stuck” in GPC and GPS and should just make the best of it. He gives us the prolific NYU Shanghai roundabout answer to the frustrations of many students here regarding this class: we are the first class of a new university, which is to say that some things just will not work the first time around. NYU Shanghai is on a ten-year plan after all, however, like many students here, including Anonymous, I am on a four-year plan. Michael argues essentially, in my interpretation, that potential sacrifice in education and freedom must be done for the collective good of becoming a global classroom. Any nationalism and push back against this argument is wrong, especially in regards to our integrated education. Here is why I not only disagree with Michael Margaritoff, but I vehemently think he is incorrect in his assumptions: I woke up from a nap in Sevilla; I’d been eighteen years old for one and a half hours. My hotel room had no windows and my internal clock rang with dread. Something was weighing on my chest and it nestled itself like a coiled serpent in between the spaces of my ribcage, squeezing and constricting me, and its body into knots. This was the first day of the next coming three years that I awoke because of anxiety. I felt compressed, very short, and very afraid of what lay ahead of me. In a subconscious state, my fingers found the smooth glass of an iPhone screen that I unlocked by second nature. I went into my family email and found an acceptance letter. I was shocked, to say the least, and confused. Like so many other students will tell you here, I had merely checked a box when I applied to New York University’s campus in Shanghai; I was not thinking clearly about spending four years of my life in China. Despite this, however, I allowed NYU to fly me to New York where I promptly fell in love with Maggie Walsh, Tyler Rhorick, Rima Mehta, Reida Akam, and Sarah Chang. I emailed Kiril Bolotnikov for weeks after we met, talking about nothing, and about many things - mostly just things I do not remember. I thought to myself that I could spend years with these people, growing in a network of committed friends, and on this count I have not been disappointed. Nevertheless, in getting back to Michael’s point about Anonymous’s nationalism being damaging to a cross-cultural university, I would like to share a sense of disappointment in what I have encountered here. In New York, those in charge of the admitted students weekend talked about an American education, they lauded and name dropped and took us for lunch. When I wanted to meet my parents to discuss it, as I would only be in the United States with my family for the weekend, the head of the program denied my requests. I was put in an awkward position, rushed in and out of meetings, and made to feel important. Then, perhaps what manipulated me the most was when the men and women in charge called us cowards if we had doubts. Specifically, I remember John Sexton answering a question posed to him during a lavish dinner in the Presidential Penthouse. President Sexton said to us, a room full of seventeen and eighteen year-old children about to make one of the most defining decisions of their lives: that if we have any doubts, this program is not meant for us because if we were second guessing NYU Shanghai, we should not come. He said although we could pick any university in the world, this program was exclusively for the brave, the original, and the prolific ones who “wanted to play another octave on the piano”. Those words stuck with me, and when I think back to that candidate weekend I often cry, knowing that what I needed was someone to be honest with me, and what I got was brand pushing. I was too young to make this decision on my own, and despite having parents available, I felt estranged from them. In a state of sleep deprivation I clung to the words “American university” and “American education”. I clung like the Medusa-esque garden of serpents had been clinging and multiplying inside of my torso, and held fast in the comfort of a community that I felt, for no explicable reason, I fit well inside of. Although there are many other factors included in other students’ decisions to attend this university, what comforted me most, as I sat and relished in my impulsive decision to throw myself into this program, was that I was explicitly and repeatedly promised exactly what Anonymous argues for: an American education built on freedom of thought and freedom from discrimination. I did not want a Chinese style education or even an American style education. I was throwing myself into the system I was bred for, and now the terms of my agreement with this school have changed. I believe that I, like many students here, have a right to be angry about that. I do not hope you interpret this as me trying to point fingers or relieving myself of the responsibility of this decision and its inherent repercussions on my life. I know that in the end I made this decision, but as I learn in Public Policy, the crux of the market model of society is that all people have access to open and complete information. I am living proof that this is not true. I am merely saying that I was not in a point of growth where I could have considered myself a year from eighteen and one and a half hours old, could not have considered the face I hold and the stories my skin could tell, all that I had to go on was what I was being told repeatedly. This is the product I intended to buy. I did not know myself and did not grasp the weight of this decision. I built a life on top of that shaky foundation; I was manipulated in a very real sense. I do not regret this decision wholistically, though I wish that I could have made it in a more complete mindset. This is the problem with deciding things in one’s teenage years. I know now that youth buoys a decision like no air could. I am not trying to say that there is no inherent value in what we do here at NYU Shanghai, and am not trying to say that I have not learned important things, not met important people and have not been given an opportunity to be thankful for. I am thankful for this opportunity. I am so proud of our students, so incredibly thankful to have a community that stands by each other through thick and thin, small divisions, and difficulties beyond measure. The beauty of NYU Shanghai is a boundless education, one that does not limit itself to any one nation, and that is something I find very special. But, to sell students who are too young to make a decision of this magnitude alone, to students who are pushed into this university for financial reasons, and to students who are like me, a combination of the two, but who are also manipulable, one product and then to give them another after they have entered into a contract is immoral and illegal (see promissory estoppel, Michael). This is something that I encounter here daily: the realization that nothing can ever be what it was promised. Despite this being an important lesson in life, I can confidently say that if I could go back understanding all that this university could and could not offer me, what starting out really meant, and what “American enough” implicates in my education, I would have chosen differently. Again, this is not to say that this school is not a great school, but that its target audience is different from the one it markets towards in the United States. Anna Schmidt, a former student of NYU Shanghai put it wisely when she said that when she came to NYU Shanghai, she knew she was good at academics, that she was smart. Anna’s SAT scores proved her ability to study, her GPA told her by all human markers that she was intelligent, and she was confident in her education. What she wanted, she said, was to be the girl who could move across the world and the person that could do “this”, whatever the highly personal “this” is to each of us. Her reasoning resonated with me like shockwaves vibrating out from an earthquake’s epicenter. It is not that I am not proud to be a “global citizen”, but rather that I think we should stop saying the idea of this university must fit all students equally and that they should not complain. Not every student must accept unanimously the idea of this school, wear the motto on our chests, and bleed purple. For every individual security as a concept varies in action, some need more, and some need less, what we cannot do if we hope to succeed is invalidate very real reactions to this environment, especially from dissatisfied students. Like it or not Michael, Anonymous in all of his or her infamy is your classmate and you depend on this person as much as he or she does on you. What I believe we should admit is that we should not sell this to incoming class members the way Haynes sells socks: one size fits all. It does not take just bravery, ingenuity, and difference to make NYU Shanghai a good fit. It takes determination, a strong sense of self (which sometimes makes it harder to adapt), and clarity of future goals. I came here not knowing what I wanted because I believed this was based in American liberal arts, a foundational education that is based in the idea that to find what one loves, they must find themselves, what they dislike and what they like. My options here are limited, for whatever reason we may chose out of a long list, this I accept, but to say it fits me in this instance is a lie. One size fits all does not apply here because we do not grow in uniformity, though we grow as a community. I do not believe in shaming any student; I do not hope to shame any teacher or any personnel of this university. I am thankful to them all, (especially you, Lords Pe and Bernstein, though the latter no longer works at NYUSH). What I know is that every student here has put exactly the same amount of investment into this university: his or her life. Michael, I am as indebted to the idea of the GNU as you are, as Anonymous is, as Anna was, as Tyler is. I am here. I believe in every student. I do not agree with selling a product to eighteen year-old children, calling them cowards if they do not buy it, and then calling them nationalists for demanding that that product be delivered. If, Michael, you can say to me that you would have applied to East China Normal University as an undergraduate, then you are more cultured than I am. If you can tell me, Michael, that you did not apply to NYU because it was an American University, or if for no other reason than it was directly in your path as an American student, I respect you all the more. Many students here did not and cannot say the same, and shaming them for being frustrated, or shaming them individually for trying to open a dialogue, however poorly conceived and rushed it may seem to you, is essentially saying that the hegemony’s opinion is more valid than any dissenter. This is the true danger here, not any nationalistic sentiment. ------- Anonymous’s Article: The Discriminatory Nature of GPC Response to Anonymous: Humor the Guy in the Front This article was written by Natalie Soloperto. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit:Zhang Zhan