A Second Clarification: Why I'm Hating on the Lariat

This post is in reference to my previous post entitled, "Stay Classy, Waco! -or- A Freaking Elephant, Man!" as well as the comments and general amounts of knowledge dropped afterwards. I appreciate the enthusiasm with which all of you wonderful peeps have responded to my various ramblings, and wanted to stop, collaborate and listen... or just clarify why it seems I have taken long slow drinks of Haterade™ toward the Baylor Lariat. Before I go on, I would like to point out that this should be expected of me, and I have placed a barely-visible disclaimer to this blog in the subtitle under the "Bigger, Louder, Everywhere" title that reads "an irresponsible blog at best." I will say this-- I would have never picked this topic for blogging if I would have known that my readership included the rare zoologist/journalist hybrid! Rule number one of good writing is knowing your audience (well it's one of the rules at least) and I failed miserably at that! Sorry if I ruffled some feathers! Let me explain:

Just to clear things up, I want to point out that my main motivation in that post was to be humorous. If you know me well, you know my brand of humor is scathing, sarcastic, and sometimes downright mad-hater-ish (not Mad Hatterish). I also was trying more to point out a subtle perpetuation of "the Baylor Bubble" at work by the Lariat rather than simply scolding their journalistic integrity. Aside from the comical purpose of that post, I stand beside my comments and critique of the Baylor Lariat.

I appreciate that some of you guys, in defense of the Lariat, were willing to question my knowledgability of the field of Journalism and of the process of creating a "non-professional" student publication. But I also wanted to give myself some ground to stand on by pointing out that I am not speaking on these things out of ignorance.

I have a very colored and sordid past, as some of you know, which has afforded me to have some excuse to speak about everything from food to football and jail to journalism. The reasons I feel totally justified in being critical of the Baylor Lariat are many. The most efficient way to prove this is for me just to list them... so here it goes:

1) My own flesh-n-blood, the Matriarch, my mother was a member of the Baylor Lariat staff back in the day.
2) This same woman teaches high school journalism and sponsors yearbook, newpaper, and other publications, which I grew up around my whole life.
3) I was an editor of such publications in high school and have written news articles and features and editorials.
4) I have researched and conducted interviews for such things.
5) I have been invited to and attended journalism confrences at the University of Texas and Columbia University where I even (get this!) received awards for my journalistic abilities!
6) I have worked as an intern for WOAI news radio in San Antonio for two and a half years where I specifically worked in coverage of the Spurs (I was there during the short-season first championship answering phones and getting highlights! It was pandemonium!)
7) The staff and publications I worked on were no dumb-bum crack-pot pieces! They were award-winning on the national level, and have been written about in education and journalism journals (which I think is a little redundant).
8) As I head toward graduate school next semester, my cognate area within the School of Education will be Journalism/Mass Communications.
9) I have been under and met tight deadlines for such publications and still never reported on irrelevant, goofy crap as serious news.
10) I have been a part of events that have happened in which the Baylor Lariat has misquoted, misinformed, and downright mis-sed-up articles about. (See the most recent issue of March 9th, front page, "Violence stalls WISD, Baylor collaboration... the first sentence is just false. Not true. The program was never "temporarily ended.")

So I feel like I have some space to talk (though maybe not as much space as I've taken, I'll give you that). I know the Lariat is a student publication, and not professional (although I think they do get some cash-money in work study), but I don't think that is a valid excuse for creating such a mediocre publication! The Lariat could be MUCH better. For that matter, MOST media outlets could be MUCH better. I refuse to give praise to a publication that rips most of its best articles straight off of the AP, and whose other articles are littered with inaccuracies, hearsay, and articles about elephant encoutners at the zoo instead of newsworthy items both within the local and global settings which pull students out of the bubble they live in rather than perpetuating it.

I am not impressed with the Lariat. There are some great journalists and articles that make up the Lariat, but they are far outshadowed by bad journalists and bad articles. Most of the time, I am embarassed by the Lariat as a Baylor student. I also don't think that every person who wears Birkenstocks or pops their collar is a bad person, I only think most of them are! See! Not so bad! (obviously I am being sarcastic here).

I'm not just being negative for negativity's sake. I promise. I am being honest, and my honest analysis of the Baylor Lariat is that most of the time it isn't a good newspaper. Not a good student newspaper. Not a good lab newspaper. I'm making this statement as a student and as someone who has been involved in publications and journalism. Besides, I don't think I'm the only guy out there saying that the Lariat isn't good (i.e. my roomate Paul just said it was bad...see!). Maybe it's not that everyone dogs on the Lariat for no reason, maybe it really isn't very good and these claims are legit.

My name is Matt Singleton, and I approve this message. (Translate: I can be an unapologetic a-hole sometimes... give me time... I come around).

Busting the Baylor Bubble -or- An Independant Study in Ignorance

I am now fully convinced that Baylor University has a problem. When I moved to Waco and Baylor U from San Antonio the one aspect that shocked me most (and I've been saying this since my freshman year) was the mass amounts of racial tension. I'm from the city of fiestas, margaritas, and good food... I never experienced this type of tension! Maybe we were always too tired, had too many margaritas, or too busy eating at places like Henry's, Jacala's, and Mexican Manhattan.

Baylor's problem, in my opinion, is this: Ignorant individuals in an environment that unintentionally breeds ingnorance.

As you might have seen in the news, a Baylor student went to a "thug" themed party hosted by one of our campuses greek orginizations, and used bronzer to darken her skin to appear black... because, apparently, her idea of "thug" meant "black." This is horrible. This is the perfect example of the ignorant perpetuation of stereotypes that occur everyday around Baylor. This happens, unfortunately, when your target student body is financially elite caucasians who have managed to stay relatively seperate from other cultures and lifestyles.

I think if you target this audience, part of the responsible education you should give them would address the stereotypes and presuppositions they are bringing with them, that do not work in "the real world."

Baylor has only been a racially integrated institution since 1964... that's only a little over 40 years ago. We can't assume that all of the issues that go along with stereotypes and cultural differences are solved in so short a time. So something needs to happen. At a campus wide forum for discussion over this issue yesterday that I attended (there was an impressive 400 people there, which is a good thing), conversation took place among students and while many good, right things were said, there were some things said by people that convince me further that this student body is largely ignorant of such issues.

What is Baylor doing to ammend this ongoing problem? Well, they're creating forums like the one yesterday, which is a good start... they offer a course on multicultural studies... okay. The problem is this: the majority of Baylor students can go through their academic experience here without ever having their cultural beliefs and stereotypes addressed and corrected. This is not a good "Christian" education.

At the meeting yesterday, I suggested that if Baylor can justify requiring chapels and Christian Scriptures and Heritage courses as a part of accomplishing our uniquely Christian mission, why can't it require a course on Social and Cultural Issues? I think this needs to happen. I think this would be effective. I think you have to force people to take part in these conversations or they will go on in ignorance.

If Baylor can make "Campus Diversity" and initiative of the 2012 Vision, we can certainly make more intentional strides to create dialouge and education concerning issues of cultural ignorance.

The nature of the majority of the student body at Baylor University is such that most of them have not had an opportunity to go outside of their culture and form relationships where myths can be busted. Baylor University needs to take on more responsibility in this aspect of educating its students... and it needs to happen NOW and drastically.

Language Fails -or- Thanks, College!

Q: Why do we pay so money much to attend institutions that only reccomend good books to read?
A: So we can come to the end of that education and realize that the books didn't really say thåt much.

This is coming from someone who is passionate about literature, who even teaches it. But let me let you in on a secret: language, all this writing and reading and stuff we do... it only takes you so far, and usually by way of a circle. The point may be walking the circle (that's my point at least) but it is fair to note that you end up in the same place you started, just with different words and worldviews.

I will not disagree that language is powerful. It is! I think it's the most powerful thing we have as humans. But that doesn't mean that language is successful. I think language fails utterly. The deepest ideas we can ponder, we assign goofy, short, awkward names for; infinity, God, space...

I would argue that in all of these cases, language doesn't do the concepts justice. It can't.

So now that my personal beef with language being outed for what it really is can finally be put aside, let me move on. I was prompted to write about this after an e-mail exchange with my good friend Jason, who lives in the best city on God's green earth, San Antonio.

For me, at least 80 % of the problems I have with Church today could be solved with language. I know this sounds messed up. But the people I know who mean really well, and aren't meaning to say over-simplifyed, cliche, or misleading things... do just that.

Can we be more thoughtful about what we say and how we say it? People are listening. And we're supposedly talking about the most important thing in life! Listen to a conversation between your average parishoners about matters of faith, and try to wade throught he cliche and metaphor and find out what is really being said... it's near impossible. I do this with my own language... I'll say something or (as Kyle pointed out) pray something, only to realize that i have no idea what I mean by that!

We can't use the same metaphors to describe God. We can't apply the same cliche sayings when describing how our faith is working out. When we do, we slowly chisel authenticity away from our faith, our message, and our God. Most of my energy now is placed on figuring out new ways to say things-- real ways. Most of my thoughts are about how can I, Matt Singleton, articulate my experience with God? For instance, I'm really big on describing myself and most UBCers as "over-churched refugees" as opposed to "burnt out" or "rebelious". Some more examples of changes I've made in my language (and subsequently my thinking) to be more authentic to what I believe are as follows:(notice that the new words have ENTIRELY different meanings as opposed to definitions... think about the connotations with the first words in our culture too)

"doubts" have become "mysteries"
"saved" has become "rescued"
"church" has become "community"
"non-christian" has become "someone outside of church"
and I feel like even "Christian" has become "Christ-follower"

I feel like these transitions in thought, understanding, and language help me be more authentic in my faith. I'd love to hear some, if any, of the changes any of ya'll have made on the language level.