(no subject)

[chelseagirl]

This semester I'm teaching two T-TH evening classes -- one from 7:05-8:20 and the other from 8:30-9:45.

One of those classes will fall on Halloween. I was anticipating that students might cut class to go the parties or the Village Halloween Parade, or that some of the grownup students with kids might cut class in order to take them trick-or-treating. I thought some of them might turn up in costume.

And once again, my students (at JJ, the city university school) and I live in different worlds. No, the students in the 8:30 asked if class was cancelled because Halloween is gang initiation night and there is violence in the neighborhoods many of them live in. They want to go straight HOME from work where they will feel safe.

I asked some questions to try and gauge if they were BSing me in order to go to parties that night, and not so much. They had details. They had incidents. One talked about how she planned to drive to school that night, though of course they all shouted out that she'd be egged, but what did that matter if she was safe.

For my middle-class, white, downtown-based self, Halloween means something entirely different. Parents took their kids trick-or-treating in my part of Chelsea, just like in the 'burbs. (Not in my building, but lots of the brownstones had people giving out candy on the stoops; I'm wondering if there will be signup sheets in our East Village building as it's high-rise and there are a fair number of children in the complex.) The brownstone next to our building did up the front lawn with gravestones and fake cobwebs and a mini-Frankenstein's Monster.* And this is one of the reasons I value teaching at JJ; because I have to examine my privilege nearly every time I'm there.

*Dammit, when I teach the book, he's the Creature because it's less judgmental. Hard to even type Monster.

Comments

[retsuko]

Wow. That is really sobering. The school I teach at doesn't have a violence problem (the campus itself is pretty safe), but I know some of the nearby neighborhoods do, and occasionally one of the students will mention an issue with that, or ask to leave early to pick up a relative from a dangerous spot. I'm sorry to hear that your students are actively afraid.

[chelseagirl]

Oh, not the school, that's not what makes them nervous, but traveling back to their own neighborhoods -- the student who first raised the issue said she lived in a "rough area" in Harlem. This is a CUNY school where most of the students are from the city, many of them the first generation to go to college, most of them PoCs, and apparently their experience of Halloween is entirely different from mine.

This school is in an area of Manhattan that is getting rather appallingly gentrified, with new luxury towers going up seemingly all the time. I've never been nervous there, not even leaving late in the evening, and I think the last time there was gang violence in that neighborhood was in the era of West Side Story. ;-) But wow did that force me to take a look at my middle class privilege.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

Halloween has long been my favorite holiday, so the idea that it's a night of real terror, not the shivery-fun kind, both upsets me (and, as you say, brings home what a lucky accident of birth put me where I am) specifically because it's Halloween but brings home on a much broader scale how shitty this world is in so may ways, and how much worse it seems to be getting, at least in this country.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

M. said this sounded like they were copying the movie The Crow. I suggested that would presume that a fairly diverse group of students had all SEEN the Crow, and since only one of them gets my geeky references (ever!) that's unlikely. But The Crow has got to be based on something . . . I think this has been going on for a long while, but in my shiny happy middle class world, it hasn't impinged on me.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

There's long been that whole Hell Night thing in Detroit on October 30th, which involves arson and violence, but the direct Halloween connection was new to me. Not terribly surprising, I suppose, but new. And awful.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

I guess they just moved it to the night itself.

Sometimes I think this city is getting ridiculously gentrified, but my students just reminded me there's a whole other thing going on.

[anicca-anicca2.livejournal.com]

Wow. Different worlds indeed.
I'd wish the experience (not living there, just being cofronted with it from time to time) on quite a few people I know.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

It's salutary to realize that people one interacts with on a regular basis can inhabit very different worlds. It also makes me want these students to succeed so very much. (Although they still need to learn to proofread. I keep telling them that when they get the jobs they are going for with these degrees, their writing can't be sloppy.)

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

Really interesting and definitely a wake-up-and-check-your-privilege type of scenario.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

So very yes.

[ancarett]

Cities can have very different cultures and experiences of the same event. Usually the worst thing we have to worry about up here are ice on the streets and walkways at Hallowe'en. Sorry that your students are getting their education disrupted by having to plot around such Hallowe'en destruction and danger.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

It is absolutely startling to me. I have lived in this city for 30 years, and Halloween has always been citywide party time. I have even taught at this college for four years. However, I have never had a class scheduled this late at night at this college on Halloween before.

I grilled them about it, because part of me wondered if they were making excuses to go to parties. But the way they answered my questions was convincing -- their experience of this holiday is very different than mine and that of "my" NYC. (This is a city university school with a largely PoC, largely working class population, all commuters.)

[studiesinlight.livejournal.com]

>"*Dammit, when I teach the book, he's the Creature because it's less judgmental. Hard to even type Monster.

For myself, I separate the Creature, the individual character, from the Halloween manifestation of a class of monster very loosely inspired by that character (called Frankenstein's Monster at best, and Frankenstein when necessary).

:-) Did you hear about Frankenberry (and Count Chocula) being resurrected for Halloween only? :-)