For the record

I'm a media technician on campus, and last week we had a ridiculous hassle with the college administration. I'm definitely not one of those people whose immediate reaction to everything is to call censorship, but I thought maybe some people might want to know about it.

PART ZERO (the prequel):
As a part of our Graduation planning, we realized that we would have to somehow string our 700' fiber optic cable from a building on one side of our Red Square to the middle of Red Square with the least truck-driving-over and people-walking-on as possible. We decided to hang the cable between some trees over the walkway by the CAB, and in order to a) disguise the wire because it's ugly, b) disguise the wire because we hadn't yet asked permission to hang the wire, and c) make it visible enough that any trucks or large objects would not run into it when traveling under the wire, we also decided to run Tibetan prayer flags along that one overhead portion. We figured that they're pretty, they have a good message of peace and global harmony, and everyone at Evergreen has them anyway, so it's the best possible way we could do this.

PART ONE
I got to work on Monday morning and saw that someone had coincidentally hung a string of Tibetan prayer flags from the clock tower to the tallest tree across Red Square ( a distance of at least 250'). Everyone I talked to was amazed at this beautiful gesture, and impressed by the effort it must have taken to get them up there. By ten o'clock, the college sent maintenance and facilities people to scale the tree and rappel down the clock tower to remove the flags. We all booed the removal.

PART TWO:
Thursday morning, we hung our fiber cable. We put up the prayer flags along with one of the last stretches of fiber, and as we did, people passing asked us, "Are those those flags that were up here earlier?" We told them, "No, these are ours. They're the same kind of flag, but we brought them." At one point this older guy came and asked us what we were doing, and we told him we were hanging fiber for graduation, and he said sort of ominously, "Well, I'm going to have to tell someone about this." Unconcerned, my coworker and I went up to the third floor of the clock tower and were in the process of attaching the fiber to the corner there when we heard a guy saying "Unless you have a letter of authorization from the Vice-President's office, you need to drop that right now."
I, holding the end of the 700' cable, shouted down to my other coworker, who was sort of in charge of this endeavor, "Uh, can you come talk to this guy?" and as Second Coworker climbed the stairs up to where we were, the guy pulled out his badge and said "You need to drop it right now or face prosecution." First Coworker and I were pretty freaked out, and we sort of babbled something about "But it's for Graduation!" and the guy kept telling us to drop it until Second Coworker came up and told the guy that we're media technicians, we have permission, we're hanging fiber optic cable for the video broadcast tomorrow, blah blah. Immediately the cop became a complete teddybear. He radioed in to say that we were media people, and was completely apologetic and nice. He said we had permission and he was very sorry, but he got a call that people were hanging more flags from the clocktower. We were not entirely mollified, having just been threatened with prosecution, but finished hanging the cable and ate bagels under our handywork.

PART THREE:
Here's where it gets a little unclear. Someone from the Graduation Committee, the President's Office, or the Board of Trustees came and told us we had to take the flags down. We asked why. They said it was because the other flags had to be taken down on Monday. We asked why. They said they didn't know, because they actually liked the flags, but the order came from the President's Office somewhere. We asked for an official statement before we take them down. No official statement came, but someone basically told us there was no way we were going to be allowed to keep them up. They also told us that apparently the reason the first ones were taken down was because a Buddhist monk who goes to Evergreen called in to complain that the use of the flags was inappropriate and offensive. I don't buy this for several reasons. 1) How many practicing Buddhist monks can there be who go to/work at Evergreen? I know of one, but there are only 4000 people at the school. Also the one I know isn't actually a monk. 2) What are the odds that this supposed monk was on campus on Monday morning to call in time for the school to call a rock climber to come remove the flags, all before 10 a.m. during Eval Week when classes are not in session? 3) I can't actually speak for any Tibetan people, but my one Tibetan friend confims this: while many Buddhists and Tibetan people are a little uncomfortable with the mindless ubiquity of prayer flags at Evergreen and in hippiedom in general, most I know would probably not object to them strongly enough to request their removal, when the gesture was so clearly a statement of beauty and peace. 4) One person complains, and the thing is taken down? What about when the anti-choice protesters come with their horrifying mutilated fetus posters and sit in Red Square for hours? No one ever does anything about that. Either you allow freedom of expression, or you don't. 5) (and this is the big one) Gregoire mentioned meeting the President of China in her Graduation speech.
Here's what the flags looked like before we took them down:

Note the bureaucrats discussing in the foreground.
The other ridiculousness of Thursday was that because we'd given the excuse of needing some sort of flag to protect the cable from trucks driving through, the prayer flags had to be replaced with some other sort of flag. So the head of the Graduation Commitee took time out of her no doubt insanely busy schedule the day before graduation, to drive into town and buy us new flags. They were multicolored mylar, and they were hideous. When we made the switch I wanted to cry.

PART FOUR: (this is the part that is really important)
Our Governor, Christine Gregoire, was the keynote speaker at Graduation. Some people object to some of her policies. I am quite ignorant in matters of Washington State politics, but apparently there's a bill she supports that makes it more difficult for single mothers to receive welfare, and apparently there's also some racism to this position. I will not pretend to be at all knowlegable about the issue, but the point is, there were a large number of graduates who'd been planning for weeks to protest Gregoire's presence. They'd talked to the various offices you talk to, and the Graduation Committee was anticipating the action. What I was told the day before Graduation was that there would be police guards to make sure that people couldn't go up to hang banners from the clocktower, but if they somehow did get up there, we weren't to film the banner at all. And if people in the crowd were protesting, we were not to focus on them. When I heard that, I was horrified. What was the administration so afraid of? What could be so important that they would censor the only record of the 2006 graduation ceremony? Why would they choose to cut out such an important demonstration of what makes Evergreen Evergreen? Then I thought, "What are they going to do, stand behind me and make sure I don't film this? Yeah, right." I thought that as a joke. A funny joke. But no. There actually was a PR guy from the college standing behind me during Gregoire's entire speech, making sure we didn't broadcast anything untoward. If we ever had a shot ready in which you could read a sign or that focused on a protester, the guy would say "No no no," and we wouldn't take it. It was disgusting. Luckily, two things happened. One was that the one time during the entire ceremony when I accidentally took the wrong shot it happened to be a camera that had a close-up of someone holding a sign. The other was that one time the PR guy left the tent and we really quickly got a shot of the banner before he came back in, saw it, and made us change.
The point of all this is, what has my school become? The fact that these decisions are being made and no one can do anything to stop it is terrible. I was so disgusted during the broadcast, and now no one will ever know what happened that day, because there is absolutely no footage of it. It's appalling. I cannot believe that this happened here. And for anyone who says "Of course it happened here; Evergreen is just like any other public institution, educational or not," I still don't actually believe that. I just think there's a large disconnect between the students and staff, and the administration. I would like to think that the new student government will be able to do something about this, but... Well, anyway. Think positive.

Work and weddings

When I started writing this, I was in my office at 9:30 am on a Saturday trying to get a job. Making a sample reel is somewhat more difficult than writing a resume, I've discovered. You can't really exaggerate or make yourself look better; it's all out there for the viewer to see. I've spent this school year doing documentation for many many very boring campus events, and my reel reflects just that. I've also shot some really excellent speakers (Keith Knight, Dr. Cornel West, Saul Williams, Mayda del Valle), so I'm hoping the subject matter and my fantastically spectacular camerawork (ha!) will outshine the utter lack of fancy editing (there's not much post-production you can do with one-camera shoots). The idea that in a year or less I'll have to obtain employment based solely on the skills I've learned this year is... a little scary.

I went to a wedding reception on Saturday for a guy I don't really know. He's the first person my age whom I've seen actually doing their wedding thing (I've heard about a couple of my high school friends' marriages but haven't attended), and it was equal parts nice and bizarre. I didn't go to the actual ceremony, because it was a strict Mormon family-thing-only, but I went to the reception with a couple of people who know the groom much better than I. It was a little awkward, being the only people with facial piercings and no previous experience in Mormon churches, but it worked out fine when we escaped to the other partition of the gym and played basketball with a bunch of kids.

Yesterday I got to go to Happy Land, which is a magical not-so-secret place in the basement of one of the buildings on campus. People have been going there and leaving things and rearranging things and writing things on the walls for many many (15?) years now. It was everything I'd expected from the tunnels under my high school, which are in reality just sort of dark and asbestosy. But Happy Land is truly a sight to see. I'm worried that if they end up remodeling the building like they're trying to do, Happy Land will be no more.

I'm pretty much consumed by stress at the moment. Everyone at my work is really anxious right now because it’s the last two weeks before our two biggest productions of the year. This means that people are snapping at each other and forgetting to tell people things and sending accusatory emails and doing things twice or three times because they didn’t realize other people had been doing them too. I’m taking this opportunity to lie around reading young adult novels and daydream about what I’m going to do when I get to Alaska in three days. A lot of it will involve things that Katie and I were never able to do before, like sit at the bar in this one restaurant and occasionally cast a blushing glance at the bartender on whom we’ve had an enormous crush since we were fifteen. It is entirely possible that we’ll sit in the garden at our high school at midnight and smoke a clove cigarette (mom, you don’t read this anymore, right?) while wearing lots of eyeliner. We are the epitome of chic now that we are grownups.

Apologies and alcohol

I've not updated in a very very long time. Sorry! I have a few half-completed, never-posted posts, but I haven't had anything terribly important to say. My best friend ever has a blog now, and it's terrifyingly intelligent and politically savvy and you should read it if you care anything about Alaska or the world, but mostly I don't have very much to say other than "I soldered some microphone cords today. I sure do like Buffy the Vampire Slayer." But here goes.

I'm in the last three weeks of my internship in video production at my college. Now is when things go crazy. I'm the technical director and video engineer for our graduation ceremony, and I'm feeling supremely underqualified, but I'm hoping to cram as much knowledge into my head as I possibly can in the time available. Sub-carrier, h-phase, YCbCr. Towards the end, I'll be working 12 hour days. I really do love my job.

I turned twenty-one on Sunday. I completed my pact with my father and managed to avoid all alcohol until the stroke of midnight on the 28th of May, 2006, and then I went to a gay bar and danced the night away. I tried beer. It was all right. Champagne was nicer. Tonight I went to a bar with some friends of mine, and saw approximately 90% of my local acquaintances. I'm not all that into the drinking, but the social aspect of being allowed in is sort of nice. Also that particular bar has a sticker-photo machine, so I'm pretty much sold.

I'm in a period of impermanence at the moment. Most of the people with whom I spend most of my time will be leaving town in a month or less. I'll be moving into a house across town, working where I work now, and plan to spend my free time this summer making movies in the sun. Summers are strange. It's confusing to me that I've had twenty of them and they haven't become less odd yet.