Good Times on Campus
Students at the University of North Carolina get down and boogie with the SuperTarget mascot at a midnight shopping spree officially endorsed by the school's top brass.
Teddy bears, booty shorts, sandals, cut off jeans, hand claps, crunking, shopping carts … welcome to the school where learning doesn’t have to be just about books.
This year’s welcome week at the University of North Carolina was outsourced to a host of consumer companies, including the mass wholesaler SuperTarget. The box store giant organized a fleet of buses to take freshmen on a midnight shopping frenzy in their store as the week’s grand finale. The entire event was officially chaperoned by the vice chancellor of the university, who also acted as Target’s tour guide for the evening. The New York Times also reported that American Eagle Outfitters hired popular sophomores on the same campus, ideally those with significant online social network presences (500+ friends), to be brand ambassadors. Their job during the week was to recruit their friends into volunteer moving squads, all wearing gift AE swag, to help new students carry their belongings into their dorms and to give a warm welcome on behalf of American Eagle.
On a more optimistic day, I would tell you that the students involved in this fiasco are able to identify the not-so-subtle-manipulation at work, and that if a party isn’t in the school budget, then why not let SuperTarget or Walmart or Nike throw a bash; or that free duds from a company desperate for market share is a fair trade for a poor students’ time. On a more realistic day, I would tell you that this cohort is the same one that American sociologists are pointing to as the empty-headed Icarus generation now beginning to fly.
Christian Smith and his colleagues at Notre Dame University recently produced a study Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood which revealed that the majority of America’s young adults on campus navigate ethical propositions based only on time, feeling, benefit and desire. Principles such as honor, valor, virtue, morality, God, chivalry, familial piety, ideas that dominated the Western mindset well into the 20th century, were non-factors. Most surprising to them the Times writes is that participants in the study were not at all bothered by “rabid consumerism” and lacked even the basic language to formulate ethical queries about consumerism. To them the market was a benign and neutral reality.
The implications of this objective ethical free-fall are contested and the debate flounders between pragmatic optimism and cautious realism. It isn’t that bad to have finally chased superstition, pre-judgment, and patriarchal precepts to the ends of the earth. On the downside, the trend points to the emergence of ethical silo’s where moral considerations – like should I care about the environment or should I help a stranger or should I buy this product – are nudged to the periphery of the soul in the same way that religion and philosophy have been pushed over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, out of sight, out of mind.
52 comments on the article “Good Times on Campus”
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meh
Is that you, Horatio Alger?
I will take your wonderful advice and go buy as much useless crap as possible, spend 100k on a pointless education, put my nose to the grindstone, never dissent and prat to ascend to the coveted 1% so we can finally beat those nasty reds. I hear they even put people in gulags and have the politburo eavesdropping on the citizenry. Not in my God Blessed America!
Down with the commies!
meh
Is that you, Horatio Alger?
I will take your wonderful advice and go buy as much useless crap as possible, spend 100k on a pointless education, put my nose to the grindstone, never dissent and prat to ascend to the coveted 1% so we can finally beat those nasty reds. I hear they even put people in gulags and have the politburo eavesdropping on the citizenry. Not in my God Blessed America!
Down with the commies!
rimarayd
Republicans created this mess democrats continued it they all are in kahoots with bankesters and zionists. “You’re on your own” economics" which has been a critique progressives have been leveling since Theodore Roosevelt’s day is perpetuated by a crony government and justices. But while that may be a plausible summary of the policies that have been hurting middle-class Americans for decades now, it doesn’t really capture the policies that contributed to the financial crisis. The financial crisis wasn’t primarily about rampant individualism. If it had been, the Wall Street bankesters and who gambled away billions would have, as individuals, paid the price. Instead, after profiting individually when the market went up, they forced the rest of the country to save them when the market went down. The financial crisis was an example of what happens when the richest Americans are allowed to practice “you’re on your own” economics when it suits them but demand that everyone else bail them out when it doesn’t. You are on your own economics is a war against minorities inside USA. This war is coupled with hiking of utility prices, gas, and food in order to wipe out middle class and enable the corrupt greedy richest Americans to recruit from this base for their wars abroad. Send your own kids to war. Prosecute the criminals who have played us all. End hidden structural racism around the world. Stop the lie machine.
rimarayd
Republicans created this mess democrats continued it they all are in kahoots with bankesters and zionists. “You’re on your own” economics" which has been a critique progressives have been leveling since Theodore Roosevelt’s day is perpetuated by a crony government and justices. But while that may be a plausible summary of the policies that have been hurting middle-class Americans for decades now, it doesn’t really capture the policies that contributed to the financial crisis. The financial crisis wasn’t primarily about rampant individualism. If it had been, the Wall Street bankesters and who gambled away billions would have, as individuals, paid the price. Instead, after profiting individually when the market went up, they forced the rest of the country to save them when the market went down. The financial crisis was an example of what happens when the richest Americans are allowed to practice “you’re on your own” economics when it suits them but demand that everyone else bail them out when it doesn’t. You are on your own economics is a war against minorities inside USA. This war is coupled with hiking of utility prices, gas, and food in order to wipe out middle class and enable the corrupt greedy richest Americans to recruit from this base for their wars abroad. Send your own kids to war. Prosecute the criminals who have played us all. End hidden structural racism around the world. Stop the lie machine.
Anonymous
YES - "Republicans created this mess democrats continued it they all are in kahoots with bankesters and zionists".
However, there is one Republican, Rep. Ron Paul, who is wants to change past's mistakes. He is with OWS and against giving billions of dollars of military aid each year to Israel. He has also pledged to save hundreds of billions of dollars by closing US occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is also against no Zionist wars against Syria, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran and Somalia. That's why the Zionist Lobby is running a smearing campaign against Ron Paul.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/ron-paul-bush-boys-were-happy-after-911/
Anonymous
YES - "Republicans created this mess democrats continued it they all are in kahoots with bankesters and zionists".
However, there is one Republican, Rep. Ron Paul, who is wants to change past's mistakes. He is with OWS and against giving billions of dollars of military aid each year to Israel. He has also pledged to save hundreds of billions of dollars by closing US occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is also against no Zionist wars against Syria, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran and Somalia. That's why the Zionist Lobby is running a smearing campaign against Ron Paul.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/ron-paul-bush-boys-were-happy-after-911/
99%
Paul seems to have part of it right. He has the part right about people being able to do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others but he seems weaker on the notion that we rise together. Both strands are needed. Both parties are bad but Paul should switch parties. Paul at least doesn't come across as paid for but he would eliminate the safety net. The contradiction there is I see no purpose in being a part of this nation or participating in it if I don't get something out of it and the safety net is the primary good. Defense for instance is simply a part of that net but it can't be the only part of it left as Paul would likely have it.
99%
Paul seems to have part of it right. He has the part right about people being able to do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt others but he seems weaker on the notion that we rise together. Both strands are needed. Both parties are bad but Paul should switch parties. Paul at least doesn't come across as paid for but he would eliminate the safety net. The contradiction there is I see no purpose in being a part of this nation or participating in it if I don't get something out of it and the safety net is the primary good. Defense for instance is simply a part of that net but it can't be the only part of it left as Paul would likely have it.
Business last, ...
I think that is what we are looking for. A society where business and business concerns are made least and last. If that's our goal we can make it happen. We will have to change some laws and the media but it can be done and should be done. No more sponsored news casts especially those starting off with the useless and insulting DJIA.
Another goal seems to be shutting down Goldman Sachs. It seems the intent may be to shut it permanently. That's fine. Two strategies seem obvious. Work to get its corporate charter revoked in all 50 states and work to get people to stop using its products and divest its stock. Also boycott and make it a huge liability for any politician to take Goldman money or see its lobbyists- this can be found through research. Constantly point out and call attention to the whereabouts and doings of its directors and officers relative to other firms and organizations and shame those outfits for association. Seek the legitimate prosecution of Goldman and its shadowy supporters. Any firm or organization with interlocking boards etc. with Goldman should suffer under its taint.
It seems we are hearing more about business than ever at a time when under Bush the US shuttered 55000 manufacturing plants. So much for job creators they are more like job bull shiters.
After shutting Goldman we can get real economic measure that measure the real economy that effects everyday people instead of the fake one fattens rich parasites. We can then focus closing the private banking racket with constitutional amendments etc.
Business last, ...
I think that is what we are looking for. A society where business and business concerns are made least and last. If that's our goal we can make it happen. We will have to change some laws and the media but it can be done and should be done. No more sponsored news casts especially those starting off with the useless and insulting DJIA.
Another goal seems to be shutting down Goldman Sachs. It seems the intent may be to shut it permanently. That's fine. Two strategies seem obvious. Work to get its corporate charter revoked in all 50 states and work to get people to stop using its products and divest its stock. Also boycott and make it a huge liability for any politician to take Goldman money or see its lobbyists- this can be found through research. Constantly point out and call attention to the whereabouts and doings of its directors and officers relative to other firms and organizations and shame those outfits for association. Seek the legitimate prosecution of Goldman and its shadowy supporters. Any firm or organization with interlocking boards etc. with Goldman should suffer under its taint.
It seems we are hearing more about business than ever at a time when under Bush the US shuttered 55000 manufacturing plants. So much for job creators they are more like job bull shiters.
After shutting Goldman we can get real economic measure that measure the real economy that effects everyday people instead of the fake one fattens rich parasites. We can then focus closing the private banking racket with constitutional amendments etc.
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