Constituting Social Justice,Letter to the Editor: the Long-Term Effects

Constituting social justice Throughout this semester, this column has attempted to offer reflections about how the values that Grinnellians espouse relate to the real world. The premise was to restrict my lens to conversations in the dining hall: our mealtimes offer us precious unstructured time, in which we can discuss with our friends the things that matter most to us. I learn the most about Grinnellian values, however, when I leave campus. Riding with my uncle to northern Minnesota this past Thanksgiving reminded me of this. “What is social justice,” asked my uncle, after I described it as a central goal of the Occupy movement. A minister by profession, he had heard the term, but did not know its precise meaning. Ironically, although it was a term that I used often as a tour guide, I had no definition to give. Phrases like “rectifying inequality,” “social responsibility,” and “respecting the rights of the underrepresented” were the best I could muster. Upon returning to campus, to my surprise, other students could not define “social justice” any more clearly than me. For some, the term had professional connotations, entailing a non- profit career of “social justice” as an activity pursued during the workday. For others, it meant the equality of initial opportunity, perhaps something to be provided by government. “Social justice” in this sense is more a voting acting act inspired by social responsibility, without a requirement of personal financial sacrifice. Grinnellians’ uncertainty about the precise meaning of the term is unsurprising when one considers that the College itself offers none. Defining social justice often relies on deferring to other Grinnellian staple terms, such as “self- governance” and “personal responsibility” (“A Historic Commitment to Social Justice”). The Social Justice Action Group, the primary on-campus group officially dedicated to social justice, promotes “peace, justice and positive social change,” and targets its efforts toward “fight[ing] hunger, promot[ing] volunteerism and build[ing] understanding.” The Social Justice Prize provides no defining terms at all, asking nominators to categorize how the nominee’s action “disrupt[s] the status quo or create[s] systemic change” to make a particularly positive and long-lasting effect on the world (Prize: FAQ). This lack of definition seems to have little effect at Grinnell. After all, while on campus, we need do virtually no cognitive work to evaluate the social justice of an action: the information is provided to us, free of charge or effort. Campus-wide symposia tell us what social justice means, and college-sponsored Prizes show us cutting-edge projects that we can support and aspire to. Our peers give us endless “worthy” initiatives from their tables in front of the dining hall, as they collect signatures, volunteers, and monetary and in-kind donations for innumerable causes. But beyond campus, this clarity is largely absent. Without dining hall tablers to pressure us into awareness and action, and with many more immediately pressing concerns to handle, how will we find the time, energy and motivation for concepts like “social justice,” to which we were so dedicated in college? This apprehension likely stems partially from the fact that I am a senior, and that I sometimes worry about how being faced with new ways of living and ‘doing business’ may change my own priorities. For seniors considering employment in the for-profit sector, the matter seems to be especially pressing: how to maintain one’s own not-necessarily-only- motivated-by-profit values without the support structure of institutionalized like-mindedness (or at least open- mindedness) that we find in our college? What I propose is that, next semester, SGA lead a process of student discussion about the meaning of social justice. As official representatives of our self-governing community, SGA is uniquely well-situated to address such issues, which have been central to the College since its founding. I propose that we write a constitution, documenting in concrete terms what we consider our social justice mission to be. An excellent side effect of the process will be that we can see the true diversity of understandings of this fundamental concept. The best-laid plans, if not written down, are easily waylaid, or worse, forgotten. I hope that this one small communal act of definition will provide us the clarity to better pursue our goal of a socially just world. At the very least, we could then confidently share with our uncles, on future Thanksgivings, precisely what is means to be socially just. Letter to the Editor: The long-term effects of football Even with one of the largest per-student endowments of any university in the country, the question remains: how can Grinnell College save money and plan for a long term sustainable budget? Recent college developments indicate the Humanities are under increasing scrutiny, and at least part of the reason is because the college must maintain a tight budget for the future. We suggest a conversation about the future of Grinnell should begin with the issues on the periphery of the school’s education. The story of David Duerson has shocked us into writing a letter. Duerson, an NFL lineman, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest, and implied in text messages to his family that his brain should be studied by science. As the New York Times reports, “ After years of denying or discrediting evidence of football’s impact on the brain—from C.T.E. in deceased players to an increasing number of retirees found to have dementia or other memory-related disease—the N.F.L. has spent the last year addressing the issue, mostly through changes in concussion management and playing rules.” Dozens of players are now submitting their brains to science. The evidence of the harmful long-term effects is mounting. In 2009, Purdue University conducted a Neuroscience study with a high school football team. The researchers concluded that even the sort of minor head-to-head contact that occurs on every play has traumatic effects on players’ brains. The two players focused in the study weighed roughly the same as many Grinnell players at 260 and 190 pounds, respectively. Two Purdue engineering professors and their staff, Sports Illustrated reported in 2010, “fitted 23 helmets with accelerometers and gave both the players IMPACT test—a computerized neurocognitive exam that tests memory and concentration—and tests of working memory while their brains were monitored with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).” The engineers combined accelerometer figures with IMPACT scores to get a sense of how players were affected by football. Researchers considered anytime an accelerometer exceeded 80 Gs was enough force to cause a concussion. Multiple hits in the first contact practice they attended exceed 100 G’s. One offensive lineman suffered an impact of 289 Gs (289 times the force of gravity) while holding an extra-point, an event that occurs multiple times in most games. The scores of one lineman before and after the preseason were examined, and he scored 20% lower on the visual memory section of the IMPACT test, which requires rapid identification of recurring patterns. Other players also fared particularly poorly on the test. And the scariest find of the entire study? Four players were categorized as “functionally impaired” with apparent symptoms of which none the four were cognizant. Schools have responded to this and other studies. The New York Times reported: “‘Because of the seriousness of the potential consequences, the presidents determined the league needed to take proactive steps in protecting the welfare of our student- athletes,’” said Robin Harris, the executive director of the Ivy League. According to new rules, teams will be able to hold only two full-contact practices per week during the season, compared with a maximum of five under N.C.A.A. guidelines. On the other days of the week, practices cannot include contact or live tackles, and no player may be ‘taken to the ground.’” Grinnell has adopted similar measures, but this avoids the inconvenient fact that even during these two practices and particularly during games, significant, concussive-inducing hits occur. The other disturbing consequence of playing football is the constant pressure to gain weight and eat an unhealthily large number of calories. An American Medical Journal article published in January 2007 classified an astonishing 45% of the high school linemen it studied as overweight, and 9% with adult severe obesity. The article concludes, “Severe obesity in adolescence can have an important impact on quality of life and accompanies several comorbid conditions.” On a nationally read blog, one Grinnell football players details his strategy for gaining weight rapidly in order to play college football. He writes that he gained 100 pounds between his sophomore year in high school and his first year in college. One of the central thrusts of Grinnell athletics is to encourage wellness. How does encouraging rapid weight gains fit into this purported institutional philosophy? Another less considered argument was advanced by Swarthmore College when they ended their football program in 2000. College spokesman Tom Krattenmaker said at the time, “it’s basic math. If you eliminate football, you suddenly have a lot more spaces for everything else.” As a small liberal arts college, Grinnell’s recruited football players represents a chunk of each incoming class. The College Sports Project has cogently summarized the data at 84 selective Division III schools. They concluded that male recruited athletes at the 24 most selective of these schools in certain target sports significantly underperformed academically compared to their peers. As an institution we must always ask ourselves if we have best utilized our coveted admission spots. At a minimum, Grinnell would do itself a great favor by participating in such useful data collection to show the impact of this recruitment.

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