It's always a treat when my students teach me something new, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm being pranked. Chessboxing: hybrid sport or elaborate hoax? There it is in Wikipedia, big as life--grown men in silk shorts cavorting around a boxing ring to beat each other senseless with, alternately, boxing gloves and chess moves. What's next, Scrabble Bass-fishing? Jump-rope Jarts? Nuclear Fission Badminton?
Ridiculous juxtapositions were the name of the game in my Life Writing class last week when I asked students to bring together unlike elements to suggest a connection without naming it. According to my students, writing is like cooking or woodworking, anxiety is like lousy weather, and an elementary-school playground has a lot in common with the monkey house at the zoo. Every writing assignment they submit gives me something to smile about, a much-needed reminder that creativity continues to thrive despite the harsh winds swirling around all of academe.
One of the topics at yesterday's faculty meeting was the "Dear Colleague" letter released by the Department of Education last Friday, which gives colleges two weeks to comply with federal anti-DEI guidelines or risk losing federal student aid (read about it here). Principles in the letter are vague and ambiguous but the threat is real and terrifying. Tomorrow some of my students will be writing in-class essays addressing how certain literary works relate to the College's core values, one of which is Global Perspective and Diversity. How do we uphold those core values if we're not allowed to promote diversity--or perhaps even use the word?
I keep hoping to wake up from this horrible nightmare and find that someone was just having a laugh, but if Chessboxing can be real, anything is possible. If my job gets rudely yanked out from under my feet in the next couple of weeks, maybe I can take up a second career in Cross-stitch Archery, or Chainsaw-juggling Yahtzee, or Defenestration Yoga. I'm about as well suited for those pursuits as I am for the coming academic apocalypse.
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