Contextual orientation

Top of the frickin' morning, y'all. I'm back and badder than ever (also knows as "worse than ever). One of my favorite rap lyrics of all time is when Run DMC refers to a big bad wolf and then tells us, "Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good." You know your slang is having issues when you have to spell out that you don't mean the exact opposite of what you're trying to say.

In yesterday's post, I wrote more about my fondness for playing around with words. Somewhere in there I mentioned that words can be powerful. While we all know that words can start revolutions and yadda yadda yadda, I was referring more to the fact that word choice in conversations can have a subconscious yet profound effect on people. The penis mightier than the sword, indeed. Damn, where'd the space bar go when I needed it?

Much like a hot plate at a Mexican restaurant, I've very briefly touched on this subject before. Now, though, I shall now expand my thoughts. (Cue the expanding sound.) While working for Orientation, we were hyper-sensitive when it came to the language that we used on a daily basis. For example, we referred to the students as men or women instead of boys or girls. This may seem like either an obvious or a negligible distinction to you, but we had our reasons. The parents at these orientation sessions were often not completely at ease yet with the thought of their "babies" leaving home and living without them. By referring to them as men and women, the idea was to (even subconsciously) subtly remind the parents that their babies were adults. I'd often have the students themselves tell me, "But I still call myself a girl, so what's the big deal with insisting I'm a woman?" I understood their point, and if they were failing to grasp mine, I'd ask, "If you made the basketball team, what team would you be on?" They'd think for a moment and then say, "Yeah, the women's team." "It was the girls' team in high school, but you're now men and women and we will treat you as such." I know, I dole out such tough love. A lot of it was empowering them to start acting like adults as well. If they wanted to go get a burrito at 2am, no one would be calling and asking why they hadn't finished their homework yet. With great power comes great responsibility, no?

The other word choice we'd use is one that I still think of with great frequency. Students would always want to know how to "get out of" or "get rid of" certain requirements. My fellow professional staff members and our student workers used different vocabulary though. "And this is how to satisfy that requirement" we'd say. Sometimes we'd use "fulfill" as well, but the point was always the same: we were using words with positive connotations instead of negative ones to plant whatever seeds we could.

There were yet more choices that we consciously made in our daily speech, but they were of a different variety. There were departments that preferred to be referred to in a certain manner, and as some of the first people these new students would be meeting, it was our job to follow through on that. The largest one in this category involved "dorms." The Office of Residential Life wanted the buildings referred to as "residence halls," because that gave more of a community feel to the living area instead of just the rooms themselves. In their defense, they did have tons of programming and offered much more than just a place to crash from 2am to 9am.

This insistence on using certain vocabulary led to some hilarious discussions with parents. Here is a sample one that probably happened word for word a hundred times in my five years total with Orientation:

Parent: Are kids allowed to drink in the dorms?
Me: No, students are not allowed to have alcohol in the residence hall rooms, and there are Resident Assistants and professional staff there to enforce the rules.
Parent: What if a kid is caught with alcohol?
Me: Students caught with alcohol are written up and then subjected to rules of conduct for the residence halls.
Parent: How many kids are in the dorms?
Me: It varies, but this residence hall has around 400 students in it.
Parent: Do boys and girls live next door to each other in the dorms?
Me: Some residence halls have special interest floors in which men and women can be next door neighbors, but the rooms and bathrooms are always either all male or all female?
Parent: Will my kid be next door to a boy?
Me: You'll have to ask your student whether she is on an all-woman floor or not.

And so it would go, almost indefinitely. Boys? Men. Dorm? Residence Hall. It got to be such a running joke with us that as soon as we'd get behind closed doors, we yell, "Boys and girls have sex and do drugs in the dorms while they get rid of requirements!" To us, that was high comedy. To you, eh, maybe not so much.

Ok, I think that's it for now. Have a great day, gentle readers, and please write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything at all. I've said it before and I really mean it now: I am near the very end of things to write about, so fire away and maybe something will stick and give me enough blog fuel to extend this thing for another week or so. Thanks and shaloha.