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@imv.au.dk | http://www.imv.au.dk/medarbejdere/runed
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