This Story Is Just ... Sad

Similar story in DC/at Georgetown: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-04-13/opinions/35454053_1_public-charter-schools-incoming-freshmen-classmates

I think there was a similar article in the Post sometime this year, but I didn't have time to search harder.

 

He's the cutest damn kid. I wish him well.

I wonder how Kurt Streeter got his story. Plenty of photos, from I assume the Spring '13 semester.

 

Every college has "Easy A" classes, and students from every discipline take advantage of them. When I was in school at LSU, I was friends with a half-dozen engineering students. Smart people. Every single one of them used one of their two elective options on a music appreciation class where, to get an A, pretty much all you had to do was show up and go to a couple of on-campus concerts. The engineering curriculum was tough enough. Music appreciation was a nice break and a GPA booster to boot.

This kid seems no different from a lot of college students who find themselves in over their head in their first semester. Everyone that goes experiences it to some degree, whether it's academic or social. His was both. In a lot of ways, as the story points out, he lived as sheltered a life as the geeky white suburban kids who focus too much on school work and not enough on extracurricular activities. Kashawn is different because he comes from a violent neighborhood, but there's probably a thousand kids on Cal's campus -- and every campus in America -- who are going through the same thing.

 

I had the same thought. If this guy was at a southern university, the story would be about this instead of a misfit on the verge of flunking out.

 

Maybe it's because I've been following the whole thing for 20 years, but this didn't strike me as too odd. The many lawsuits and the Prop 209 end of affirmative action have taken their toll on the numbers and the mood at the colleges. I remember about 10 or 15 years ago there was a big news story, and it was supposedly a startling revelation, about how dramatically African-American enrollment had dropped at Berkeley. But if you take even one minute to consider who was backing Prop 209 and who was suing to end affirmative action and who stood to gain and who stood to lose, that's exactly how it was supposed to work out.

Also, for all the history of Berkeley and its image as the bastion of liberal hedonism, it really isn't. It's a community of highly career-oriented students, with a plurality of Asian-Americans, where the most popular major is electrical engineering and computer science.

 

I agree with Ragu. I found it inspiring that this student was overcoming his difficulties to make a go of it at Cal. Heck, we've all seen people at college who came from all sorts of circumstances who just flamed out once they got away from the familiar and stepped onto a campus. We've also seen people who work hard but don't seem to know how to improve, or get so frustrated the hard work actually boomerangs on them. I hope sophomore year is better for this kid.

Also, you can't underestimate the advantage/disadvantage kids get if their parents are/aren't college-educated, or do/don't prepare them almost since birth for such an environment. I don't mean flash cards at 6 months old or no TV, ever. My kids go to a high school that has about half the kids eligible for free or reduced lunches. I don't know the percentage of parents with college degrees, but I suspect my kids are in the minority with having two college-educated parents at home. It makes a difference. When the school talks about things counting now as a freshman, and plotting out your classes, and checking to make sure what you're taking will get you into a certain school, and all that stuff, my wife and I know this, and have already communicated it to our kids. No doubt, there are families where it's a single parent who isn't college educated who can do this, but my kids have a living, walking embodiment of college in their house. That's why I thought it was interesting the story talked about Kashawn's roommate, whose mother had a college degree and who had prepared her son for the same course all the way around. I'm sure there were other reasons he was pulling a 3.8, but he certainly didn't have the pressure of first family member in college, or just the pressure of having no idea what he was getting into.

 

I don't know that I came away from the story feeling sad. Actually, I felt a bit hopeful for the kid in that he's getting another semester or year to keep working at it. A 2.0 GPA is Cs, so it seems likely that his A-minus was offset by a couple of Ds. That's not good, but it's not the end of the world just yet.

I am concerned that someone could pull a 4.06 GPA and not be able to write coherent sentences in his freshman writing class. And, as someone above pointed out, the segregated dorm aspect bugged me. But it seems that while segregation in the '50s and '60s was a policy promoted by racists to deny opportunity, this policy is promoted African Americans themselves with the idea of giving struggling kids an environment with which they can be comfortable. I have no problem with that but can't help believe that Kashawn would be better off in the long run integrating sooner rather than later.

I'd really like to see next year's installment on this story.

 

Maybe it just hit me at the wrong time of the year/my life [/crossthread], but I felt really down about a kid getting slapped in the face so hard -- and so unexpectedly -- about his academic shortcomings. I don't know that he would have been better served by being at a lesser school, but I sure wish (for his sake) he'd had an earlier heads up about just how far behind he was going to be.

 

I thought it was strange that a group of kids who chose to live in the "black" dorm, eating with each other while talking about the other (one can assume non-black) students "don't want them there" at Berkley, one if the most liberal campuses in the country.

If only they could go full-out Oberlin...that would really get the tears flowing.

Sounds like a great kid who bit off more than he can chew. That being said, I think most of us struggled in our first year of college. It's a culture shock for everyone. I don't know why this kid deserved an extensive feature.

 

Fox News wingnut myth fail, as I noted earlier.

 

To repeat someone's mantra on another thread: "Deserve" ain't got nothing to do with it.

Come on, Ben. It's a human-interest feature. He's, theoretically, representative of a larger issue. And he let the reporter into his life to illuminate this larger issue. Not sure how a journalist could possibly take issue with that.

They could have done this story on my best friend in college, a white guy from rural Kentucky. He was valedictorian of his senior class in high school, and I didn't get the impression that anyone else was remotely close. And he struggled like an SOB with the course work in college, at first, particularly writing. He just wasn't prepared. He said that his entire senior English class in high school was putting on one play. No writing. No reading.

 

Well, let's put it this way...Berkley is not a conservative campus. In fact, let's call it a middle-of-the-road campus, politically.

Kid with a group of friends, isolated in their "black" dorms, eating together, taking black studies classes together, etc. Are we supposed to feel bad for the kid because he doesn't feel like he fits in? Do you think if he would have went the route of plenty of other freshmen...signing up for housing in dorms that are not segregated...it may have helped with his feelings of frustration?

One of the best part of college for me was making friends during freshman and sophomore years. I met a muslim kid from Yemin, Baszin, who is one of my better friends today the first day I moved into my dorm. He was the first muslim I ever really spent extended time with...that never would have happened if he decided to live only with other muslims.

College is about getting grades, learning and growing up. This kid needs help with all three it seems like. I get the impression he closed himself off and is hanging with a group of people that see themselves as victims.