What's going on in our schools?
A harsh look at my daughter's first year in college
This article is for educational and entertainment purposes only.
I have been on the fence for a while on if I would share my daughter’s experience in college. I think talking with your kids is critical, especially with what I have witnessed in schools over the last 8 years. During the covid days, my daughter, a sophomore in high school, did distance learning and her online classes were done via zoom. I definitely heard teachers express their political and personal views, which was something I never experienced when I was in school. I heard one of her teachers refer to covid as a plague and talk about it on many occasions to the kids and even asked how their parents were handling it. He was also asking students in his class if they were wearing masks, if they felt safe, and even encouraging the kids to tell him if they have parents not going along with the guidelines. My daughter often sent me recordings of this happening in her class. We discussed school and events going on in the world at dinner most nights because we wanted our kids to feel like they could tell us everything and then we could discuss it and help them work through their own thoughts and feelings about it. I think talking about it helped them process it too. As a parent, I felt like some of the teachers were crossing a line and should never bring their own personal views into the classroom, yet here we are.
When our youngest graduated high school, things were still a bit chaotic with mandates so she took a gap year. Many schools wanted proof of vaccination, or weekly, even daily, covid testing. We chose not to comply. (If you haven’t read Ava’s story, you can here)
By the following year, she was ready to move into a dorm and start a new life. She was excited. We were excited. She had been accepted into Ringling College of Art and Design as a film major and fine art minor as well as UH Manoa as a Marine Biology major. She loved both, but her heart led her to Hawaii. She moved into her dorm and was thrilled to finally be starting college. Like many kids, she had to get financial aid and I took out a loan to help pay for college. On the 3rd day, she called me. She was questioning her major and felt like she really needed to switch to art and fashion. So she spoke to the school and changed her major to Art. She was told she had to do a year of Art before she could major in fashion. My daughter was always very artistic and loved fashion. She wanted to study both and really find herself. She was a bit confused about having to take some of the classes they required though. She was required to take American Studies and Global Issues. She also had to take Intro to 3D. She was not happy about either class and felt like it was a waste of her time and money. She wanted to focus on learning as much as she could about what she felt passionate about and what would help her launch a career in what she loved.
In November, I received a text from her that she was having a tough time with both the 3D class and the American Studies class. She said she was given an assignment in American Studies to watch a film and do a 500 word response after.
She also had to make a video, any video, for her 3D art class relating back to the concept of “Time.” Because she chose to do a stop motion of a painting and she was taking a picture for almost every stroke, she put a lot of time into it. There was also a very emotional meaning to the piece she was creating.
When I got the text from her, she was in her dorm room watching the film she was assigned to watch for American Studies. She said within a few minutes of watching the film, she became uncomfortable. I asked her why. She sent me a quick recording, about 15 seconds of the film. My first reaction was, “ok I need to see what context this is in,” so I asked her to send me a longer video. She sent me several. I also was uncomfortable with what I was watching. I asked her to send me the entire film, so she sent the link. It was login protected so she had to send me her school login.
I was very uncomfortable with most of the film. In fact, I had to fast forward through much of it. From graphic sexual content to explicit language, the film was vulgar and very sexual. I was trying to understand what the message was supposed to be.
The film is called Sins Invalid “An untamed claim to beauty” You can watch short clips on YouTube, but have to have a student login or library card to watch it directly in the link my daughter had. Below is a mission statement from the group:
“Sins Invalid is a disability justice-based movement building and performance project that celebrates disabled people, centering and led by disabled Black, Indigenous, and people of the global majority, and queer, trans, and nonbinary disabled people.
Sins Invalid’s work explores themes of disabled embodiment and the world around us, developing provocative work where paradigms of ‘normal’ and ‘disabled’ are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and justice inclusive of all bodies and communities.”
As someone with my own health issues and disabilities and raising a daughter diagnosed with cerebral palsy and a traumatic brain injury, I am definitely sensitive to the needs of disabled people. I found the film to be more than provacative and wasn’t sure on the messaging.
Their vision, directly from their website says,
“Sins Invalid recognizes that we will be liberated as whole beings—as disabled, as queer, as Black, as Brown, as trans/nonbinary, as exactly who and how we are. We know we are far greater whole than divided. We recognize that our allies emerge from many communities and that demographic identity alone does not determine one’s commitment to liberation.
Sins Invalid is committed to social and economic justice for all people with disabilities – in lockdowns, in shelters, on the streets, mobility impaired, sensory minority, environmentally injured, psychiatric survivors – moving beyond individual legal rights to collective human rights.
Our stories, embedded in analysis, offer paths from identity politics to unity amongst all oppressed people, laying a foundation for a collective claim of liberation and beauty.”
This film did not match any of that.
I believe in human rights for all. I also believe in respecting people’s boundaries and this film was not discussed prior in class by the teacher and many kids felt it should have been. Also, maybe there should be an opt out for students not wanting to watching something so sexualized.
My daughter was not studying gender and sex studies, my daughter was also not majoring in human rights or disability studies. My daughter was an Art major and was forced to take this American Studies and Global Issues and this film had nothing to do with that. So why is the school allowing this film to be an assignment? That was what was so confusing to her and I. Who signs off on this? Who is Sins Invalid?
Why are the students watching this in an American Studies class? At UCLA, a course in American Studies offers a look at American history from the arrival of Columbus to the end of the 20th Century, which have mini-modules that explore the concepts and events in closer detail.
So I thought, “maybe this is a more modern class and they are doing a brief study on Americans with disabilities,” and maybe the teacher is not reading the room.
I started looking into the Sins Invalid YouTube and Instagram. While I was looking into that, my daughter wrote her essay.
Here are a few of the videos they have on their Youtube page. WARNING: These are vulgar and graphic.
Here is one clip I found on their YouTube that shows a tiny bit of what she had to watch.
These are recorded clips she sent me from the actual film she had to watch.
I would like to note, there are several clips on their YouTube page that talk about disabilities and have powerful messages. Those clips were not in the film my daughter watched. The film she watched was very sexualized. My daughter and several classmates said they would be uncomfortable watching anyone talk that way or do the things they were showing in the film and had nothing to do with them being disabled.
So many people will say my daughter became uncomfortable because it was outside her comfort zone or because she has a bias to disabled people. That is not true. I honestly think there are some people that will hide behind communities and labels. If you call out what you see and say you do not like it you are labeled. In this case you might be called ableist.
I think many of us have watched as some groups became very loud and labeled many people just for having a difference of opinion. Over the last few years, I watched as many young people became afraid to have an opinion on anything. They feared backlash, cancelling, and being labeled.
On my daughter’s first day in class, she was asked to say her name and give her pronouns. In college, kids are being forced to participate in things they may not want to participate in and not because they are homophobic, racist or ableist. If they refuse, the attention they get is not positive, it is negative. The message is actually very confusing. Why does my daughter have to give her pronouns? Why does she have to watch a very sexual film that is forever in her head that she would never have watched on her own? This is education? How? In my opinion, it isn’t. It is a form of indoctrination that leads kids to believe their core values growing up are small and they need to expand their thoughts and the colleges are going to help them.
Here is what the group (Sins Invalid) states on their website
“Our power comes from who we are and how we are.”
Yet, if kids really said what they were thinking when asked their pronouns or how they really felt about having to watch a film showing a women on a couch explicitly talking about someone putting foreign object in her vagina, these kids would be labeled and shunned. We watched this happen with Covid. Only certain groups can be loud and go against the grain. So yes, I think many students felt confused and many conformed to it through fear.
The next video is a clip my daughter recorded and sent me. It was very hard for me to watch. I paid this school to teach my daughter, and this was never what I thought I was going into debt for.
My daughter shared with me the discussion they had in class after. People in her class said that they were shocked by this film and even expressed that there should have been a discussion prior. A girl in her class shared that she was completely caught off guard by the film. It was clear that some of the kids were very uncomfortable. My daughter felt like the teacher was dismissive. The teacher called the film “erotic art” and insinuated the vulgar language was to get your attention.
With my daughter’s permission, I am sharing her essay.
I’d like to state that one of the only reasons I am writing this is because I have to write five more reading responses for the semester and there’s only five more options to write about. The other reason is because I do feel that it is important for me to share my opinion to you on this film and provide my feedback on this topic as a student in your class. I was not by any means going to choose to write about this film because I find it incredibly vulgar and offensive, especially with no warning on the topics, however I have to, so I’m choosing to write about my opinion on this film.
First of all, the fact that there was no warning of any kind before I watched this film is astonishing to me and, as my 21 year old brother said, deeply disturbing. I know I am in college and an adult, considering I’m 19 years of age, however, I showed this to my 51 year old mother and she said that even at her age she finds it very difficult to watch. I genuinely was astounded when I started listening to the audio at the beginning of the film where one of the performers starts removing her prosthetics and describing a sexual encounter she had in extreme detail. It’s not like she said she had sex with someone, she explicitly describes someone putting objects in and out of her “cunt” and performing oral sex on a man. Actually, that is by definition, according to Collins Dictionary, pornography, or “books, magazines, and movies that are designed to cause sexual excitement by showing naked people or referring to sexual acts.” I want to make it extremely clear that the issue I have is not with the fact that any of these people are disabled, I would be just as shocked if these people were able-bodied.
With that being said, I would like to propose this question; what does this have to do with American Studies or Global Issues? Any modest film on disabled people would have sufficed to get the point of “all bodies are beautiful” across. There are plenty of other docushorts or videos that discuss the struggles disabled people go through in regards to beauty and societal norms. I found a website called Iris Center that has an entire page titled “Films: Portrayals of People with Disabilities” that contains an abundance of films on people with disabilities of many different types. I feel that these options would have been not only a lot more appropriate, but a lot easier to be receptive to. I can’t stress the fact that I barely got through the first five minutes enough. The only reason why I didn’t shut it off was because I thought possibly it would get better from there and it quite literally did not.
I understand the purpose is to normalize nakedness in the disabled community and to push the fact that all bodies are beautiful. I just think that even if I was watching Victoria’s Secret angel bombshells do this kind of performance for 30 minutes and then have to write a 500 word response on it I would still not know what to say or how to contribute in the discussion.
And it was not this assignment or class alone. My daughter (and others) are having to experience this indoctrination over and over. Here is another assignment she was given and had to write about.
Here was her responding essay
I know I’m only supposed to write two essays that go against the typical reading response rubric, but I really can’t in good conscience finish off this class without sharing my opinion on this Zine.
I know in today’s society people think it is suddenly okay to spew hatred for straight white people for whatever our “ancestors” did, but as a white woman who grew up in a “white family” with a mixture of straight and queer relatives, I am honestly repulsed and angry about what this zine is saying. I’d like someone to explain to me what “straight people are your enemy” means exactly, and why this is being taught in a college level course. First of all, my sexuality is completely irrelevant while I’m writing this but if I was gay, straight, whatever, I would be looking at this and thinking to myself what kind of propaganda is that? This is completely wrong to say. It’s completely wrong to say on BOTH SIDES. It’s unfortunate that someone can put together all these hateful writings written anonymously by queer people and use the horrifically deadly HIV virus as a crutch to be able to say these kinds of things. I’m interested to know why people in this world think that fighting fire with fire is something that works all of the sudden. When has that ever worked? I believe that saying something as loaded as “gay people are your enemy” would only come out of a horrible person's mouth, so is it wrong of me to say the same about someone who would say “straight people are your enemy?” Also, yes, I read page 14 where it says “I hate straight people who can’t listen to queer anger without saying ‘hey, all straight people aren’t like that. I’m straight too, you know,’ as if their egos don’t get enough stroking or protection…why add the reassurance of ‘of course, I don’t mean you. You don’t act that way.’ Let them figure out for themselves whether they deserve to be included in our anger.” That kind of argument baffles me.
I’d like to bring up this quote as well from page 1, “Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they please and fuck without fear. But not only do they live a life free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face.” I’m not sure how this is directed to “straight people” as a whole, because I can assure you that it is absolutely not true for straight women especially. I have never met a woman who has only ever “fucked without fear.” I have never met a woman who was able to live a life free of fear, especially when it comes to sex and rape. I can assure you that when I hear my male friends talking about walking around alone at night, I wonder every time how that must feel to walk fearlessly and freely like that, without the thought looming in your head that someone can murder, kidnap, or rape you at any given moment. I can assure you that the “straight men” who were sexually abused and molested by their family member in their childhood are not fucking without fear today.
The point is, there is so much hate and anger in the world that I quite literally cannot get behind reading texts like this that are filled with complete and utter hatred for such a large group of people that has such a small percentage of the real “enemy.” It’s time people start asking themselves who the real enemy is and also ask themselves if having that much hatred in their heart has ever served them well. It’s time people started thinking about the fact that nobody truly knows what every person in the world has experienced in their lifetime and making broad generalizations like this is extremely dangerous and is ruining society even more.
My daughter was starting to see a pattern within the classes that leaned towards a far left ideology and hatred towards white people. She was paying to sit in classes like this…. For a degree in art.
Her next assignment was to do a a film that showed time elapsing. This piece was very personal to her and took a long time. She took photos of each stroke in the painting. She had to present it to the class. One of the secondary conditions my daughter has from her TBI (Read her story here) is anxiety. We have worked with her over the years and facing the anxiety and her public presentation fears. She faced this very difficult challenge head on in class that day.
Her classmates were very moved and some even showed emotion about the short piece. Several students gave her praise and talked about how the interpreted it.
One classmate asked her what the piece was about, and my daughter admitted it was about growing stronger and brighter after experiencing sexual assault. Her professor then asked if there were any religious connotations behind the piece and my daughter said there was none at all. The professor then proceeded to say that her piece seemed religious because of the “North Star” that appears at the end.
My daughter then told her, that is not the North Star, it is a twinkle star and it represents how I, her mother, always told her growing up to “be the light,” and how even after experiencing something very dark in your life, you can always come out brighter in the end.
Her professor then ended the conversation by telling her she should do more research before making art pieces because steering clear of religious propaganda is important.
My daughter and I have discussed this in great length. I do not believe the teacher would have said this to some of the other students. I also think art is interpreted by each person uniquely if the art is done well. I do not think any teacher should be discouraging anyone’s religion. Again how confusing this must be for some students. Should teachers be discouraging a students religious beliefs? What if the piece was about God? Does a teacher have the right to warn the students to “steer clear religious propaganda” and who decides what the religious propaganda is?
My daughter loved many of her experiences at UH Manoa. She met life long friends and created amazing bonds. She loved most of her classes too. She is so grateful for the experience and feels very blessed she was excepted to the college. I would hope the school would want to take what she told them about these incidents serious and better the experience for other students.
My daughter did not go back after summer. For a few reasons.
I was severely injured and she has stayed home to help me.
She did not feel like the education she wanted so badly that costed so much is what she was getting. When I asked her if she was willing to go into debt for her education she said “yes, if I am actually getting the education I paid for and not made to feel like my beliefs and who I am is a problem.”
She is currently taking the rest of the year off and deciding what she will do.
I did reach out to UH Manoa in Oahu for any comments. I originally emailed the Associate Vice Provost, who my daughter and I spoke with last November, about our concerns, but she is no longer with the college. She had assured us that the information we reported was relayed to the relevant parties, however we never heard back. I reached out to the school again and my daughter and I had a zoom meeting with 2 women from the Vice Provost department. My daughter told them what she experienced and how she was left feeling after the year was over. I asked if either of them had watched the film or knew of the group. Both women stated they had not watched the Sins Invalid film but did know who the group was. We were told they would look into what we discussed and get back to us.
As of yet I have not heard back.
I encourage everyone to talk to their kids about school and what is being discussed in classes and what assignments are being handed out as well. Though I think Sins Invalid probably has some good messages, I do not feel this film should be in this college class. I believe that the staff at UH Manoa would want what is best for ALL students. I hope to share a positive outcome with all of you soon.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome. I am always open to respectful conversations.