meet the press

As I got off the bus one morning last week, squinting through my morning glasses in the Cairo sun, I noticed a man being hassled by the smiling bus attendants for his ticket fare. This is not a particularly unusual occurrence: the passive-aggressive attendants—who on their website, urge those with fake bus passes to turn themselves in for punishment. ha—are constantly checking and then re-checking to make sure they have been paid or will get paid for an over-priced seat on their cramped buses. What caught my sleep-filled eye was this man: white, older, tourist cargos, epic camera slung around his neck, no arabic and utterly confused. This man, one Shawn Baldwin, turns out to be a photographer for the New York Times. His article about American University in Cairo appeared in this Wednesday's paper.

The article's approach was interesting. I thought it did a good job of highlighting the regional novelty of individual thinking—something that I have always taken for granted in my education. To be honest, before reading this, the idea of a collegiate education existing without critical analysis hadn't occurred to me: Its a philosophy that I expected from my university back in the states and I seemed to have transferred that expectation to my education when I arrived here.

And I'm not the only one. From the program I'm involved with (Student Action for Refugees), I've overheard some of the English teachers complaining in consternation about their student's utter plagiarism on completed papers. It seems that the students turned in paragraphs of full quotation pulled from various sources. No analysis. No transitions. The teachers were not having this. We have to tell them that this isn't OK, I overheard them say.

So clearly, this plagiarism or rote memorization or data regurgitation (whatever you want to call it), its prevalent, its accepted here. A non-issue. And AUC is trying to combat this, is making it an issue. As my friend Emily pointed out, this is even evident on class evaluations where they ask whether or not the professor encouraged students to think for themselves.

The problem is that they often don't ask you to think for yourself. From my experience, at least. My Modern Movements in Islam class, a 400 level course, consists of the American professor going through the assigned reading, page by page by page, giving us his analysis of the material. Discussion is minimal to say the most. Architecture of Islamic Cairo, well...its an art history class. We go through slides in the dark. The professor describes each slide in painstaking detail. When the hour and a half is up, the lights are on, we get up, we leave the room.

Another thing I wanted to comment on here is the articles seemingly blase or even boastful acceptance of the school's "elite" stereotype.

"We are all rich and spoiled," they quote one student saying, following this with an AUC faculty response: "If we teach the elite to be good citizens, thats not a bad thing."

Yeah, its not a bad thing, this teaching of the elite in the ways of civility, but what about the non-elite? What about everyone else? No one's saying that its bad to educate the elite and so I find her response irrelevant. In my opinion, her comment utterly fails to justify the school's admittedly elitist reputation.

This is perhaps the time where I allow insights into the everyday experience of AUC regarding the elitist reputation and behavior of such students. So here we go.

Begin generalizations:

Observation 1. Students do not attend class.

As evidenced by the constant hoard eternally socializing on reported Gucci corner. Further proof is the witnessing of certain girls on the earliest bus back to Zamalek when I know that girlfriends didn't take the two early buses into campus. There are also students in some of my classes whom I have seen only once. Maybe twice total.

Observation 2. Students are disrespectful to professors.

The back row of my Architecture of Cairo class, which seats about a third of the 25 person class blatantly talks throughout the entire lecture. Once there was also a girl who sat next to me (the back row was full) who proceeded to text with her phone on full volume for half of the lecture. When the girl on her other side asked her to stop as it was quite distracting, Phone Girl got up and left in the middle of class.

Observation 3. Students are disrespectful to the campus and campus maintenance crew.

Evidence includes the layers of trash left on tables in the food court. I have also watched a girl drop her McDonalds bag to the ground behind her chair when a garbage can was no more than two meters away AND A CLEANING PERSONNEL WAS SWEEPING BUT ONE METER AWAY.

Alright. Anyways. Despite these observations, despite my reaction to the article, I do love it here. I'm loving Cairo. Its been a great experience and I'm still learning something new everyday. (Today, for instance, I learned how to type in arabic on my computer: !ممتاز ...a little behind the times, I know, but what else do you really expect from me?... and I learned that jewelry stores, despite their fancy-pantsy marbled facades, are actually small and casual inside and that its OK to go in in your Saturday-morning-brunch leggings and tshirt and ponytail, no casual wear necessary.)

My school term is wrapping up in the next few weeks. During finals week I will be traveling to Tunis with visiting moomoo mama Jan and then hosting her in Cairo. ان شاء الله I will be moving into my own flat out of the dorms by June (this will be the most welcome of changes) and summer session will start shortly thereafter. In other words, lots that I'm looking forward to and more updates to come!

مع السلامة

p.s. archived footage! found a post that never got published now below: