frustration

A few things that have frustrated me today:

I didn't sleep very soundly. Shuba was very fidgety last night, and extremely gassy. That might sound funny, but it was bad enough to wake me up last night. I didn't know it was possible to be woken up in the middle of the night by farts. Nonetheless, I didn't get nearly enough sleep.

I got to my 8am class a little late because getting up at 6:15 apparently isn't early enough to let Shuba out, get him set for the day, and get to campus when it's snowing.

It's difficult to shuttle all of my books and assorted academic paraphernalia between the house I'm dog sitting at and school. This is mainly a problem in the afternoon/evening when I'm trying to get my homework done, and want to make sure Shuba doesn't go completely crazy as well.

Today was not the greatest day to be in my body. It just wasn't comfortable. It wasn't the worst it could be though, so that's good.


One of the other student senate members made a ridiculous proposal at the meeting last week that I didn't get a copy of until today. I had skipped Senate to go to the lecture on Queer Theology, which was completely worth it. A little background on this jerk from Senate before I tell you about his proposal. Last semester he wrote an article for the Luther Review about Islam. His article was rather poorly written. He didn't cite any of the "facts" he quoted. He implied that Islam was an inherently violent religion, and stated that wherever there is Islam, there is terror. As you might expect, after this article was published there was a bit of an uproar on campus about it. Several Letters to the Editor were sent to Chips, and it was a common topic of discussion. Apparently this student feels like that was an unfair attack on him because this semester he submitted a "religious speech resolution" to Senate. Basically, he wants Senate to back this resolution, asking Luther student publications to "respect the freedom of student writers to criticize religion" because "speech that criticizes a faith tradition should be embraced as a contribution to the competition of ideas and our common academic goal, 'to seek truth.'" Specifically, he wants to add the following sentence to the Inappropriate Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy: "...toleration of a diversity of ideas, including those ideas that vigorously criticize faith traditions."
This is problematic to me for several reasons. For one thing, he was not being attacked for his article. No one submitted a letter saying it shouldn't have been published, or that he couldn't hold those horrendous beliefs about Islam. Students that responded to his article were trying to open discussion with him on why he thought that, and tried to point out where his arguments were flawed. On a technical level, his resolution wasn't written very well. To me, it seems that he is suffering from white, wealthy, heterosexual man syndrome. He was criticized, and feels like he has been unduly attacked. If he's going to write an incendiary article like that, he should know that other students will disagree with him.

On the upside, it's almost Wednesday, which means the week is almost half over. I know that I will have an excellent weekend. And Pride is getting off to a good start, which is relieving.