“You haven’t experienced oppression firsthand?” Professor Gomulka asked. “It’s more difficult to understand the fundamental dynamic between oppressed and oppressor without having experienced it first hand, but if you approach the class with an open mind and an open heart, I’m sure you can learn from your classmates.”
“You all have great potential to become true ambassadors for social justice,” Professor Gomulka beamed at the class as he handed out the syllabus. “Pay attention to the assigned readings, and the due dates. Next Monday, I will expect an essay from each one of you about the oppressions you’ve faced, and you’ll be reading your essay aloud to the class, so we can share our experiences with each other.”
Wonderful. The “oppressions” experienced by a class full of students privileged enough to have a free ride at Georgia Tech seemed a thin gruel from which to demonstrate an omnipresent environment of social injustice, but to hear Professor Gomulka talk, oppression was pervasive. Further, unless you identified how you were being oppressed, you were likely an evil oppressor, yourself.
He dismissed the class.
It was getting late as Amit and I walked out of the building. “I’m heading to west campus to look up some of the girls we met at orientation. Want to come?” he asked me.
I was troubled by the social-justice class experience, and my heart wasn’t in it.
“Don’t wait up for me,” Amit said smugly. “I might get lucky!” He headed off.
It may have been just as well I had some time to myself. Amit seemed to brush off his attack on Marcus, but I was in turmoil. I hadn’t thought through the consequences of my actions. I hadn’t realized that trying to fit in with the Civic Circle and their social justice crowd might mean hurting other people: good people like Marcus or Ryan. Not that they couldn’t take care of themselves against the likes of Amit and Gomulka, but I was beginning to see how the class was set up. Take a bunch of students whose college educations depended on their continuing participation in the social justice course work. Grade them according to how well they parrot back the dogma. Make them read their essays aloud to their fellow students for mutual reinforcement. To act like one of the social justice crowd was to become one. No matter how strong willed and independent you might be going into the process, four years of indoctrination would take a toll. And this was just a pilot program. If I understood the social justice initiative correctly, within a few years, every student at Georgia Tech would be required to take social justice in order to graduate.
I thought it over as I ate dinner by myself.
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” Professor Gomulka had said. That was right, only not in the way he intended. We needed a way to comfort the afflicted – to support and encourage students like Marcus and Ryan, to help them defend themselves against the Civic Circle’s social justice indoctrination. We couldn’t very well tell them about the Civic Circle’s plan, though, without risking it getting back to the Civic Circle. Marcus in particular certainly wasn’t going to want to pay any attention to anything Amit might have to say. I’d have to think on it.
I was equally determined to come up with a way to tackle the other half of Gomulka’s motto, but I had even less idea how Amit and I might be able to “afflict the comfortable” Civic Circle and derail their plans to indoctrinate students at Tech.
I cleared my head and tackled the more tractable problems assigned by Professor Graf. I’d made it most of the way through my emag homework by the time Amit returned.
“I came this close,” he said, holding his fingers a fraction of an inch apart. “But no, she didn’t feel comfortable making out in front of her roommate, and she didn’t want to come over to my place when she found out I had a roommate. Do you realize this whole system of student housing is designed to repress our sexuality by insuring everyone has to worry about the logistics of getting their roommate out of the way so they can have a little privacy? We have to find off campus housing where we can have our own private rooms.”
“It’s the buddy system, like in Boy Scouts,” I explained. “Make sure you have a friend to look out for you so you don’t get into trouble, and if you do, help get you out of it.”
“Well, I didn’t sign up to be a Boy Scout,” Amit insisted, indignantly.
“There must be some dark corners on campus where you can take a girl and not be discovered,” I pointed out. “Weren’t you fond of libraries?”
“Yeah,” he said with a smirk, probably recalling his adventures in the Tolliver Library with his girlfriend, Emma, “but I don’t know the library here well enough yet.”
Amit was tired and didn’t want to talk social justice, so we agreed to discuss what to do about Professor Gomulka the following day.
Amit was off early to one of his classes. I had chemistry class in the morning, and a lab in the afternoon. That first chemistry class made an impression on me. “Look at the student to the left of you, and look at the student to the right,” the professor said. “Of the three of you, one will not be here at the end of the year, and the other will not make it to graduation.” I looked at my neighbors and resolved that I was going to be the one of us to graduate!
I’d studied calculus at the local community college and Georgia Tech accepted the transfer credits. The reward for my hard work was to be placed in differential equations with a bunch of sophomores and juniors. By the end of class, I regretted my initiative. “Diffy-q” was complicated, and the professor spoke with a thick accent that was hard to decipher. I saw Ryan was in my class, so I went over to speak with him.
“Hi Ryan,” I held out my hand, “Pete from social justice.”
He shook my hand, but didn’t seem terribly thrilled to see me.
“I see you must have tested out of calculus, too.”
“Yes, I did,” he said.
“I was wondering if you’d like to exchange email addresses and phone numbers so we could compare notes or discuss the homework,” I offered.
“I don’t anticipate I’ll be needing your help,” he said levelly. “Good bye.”
I wasn’t sure what pissed him off, but clearly I was going to have to find another study partner.
After lunch, I had my chemistry lab. Mom was a chemist, and she always told me that the secret to success in chemistry was to be meticulous when you wash your glassware and then be even more meticulous when you wash it a second time. I missed Mom, but the press of activity getting checked into lab and inventorying the supplies soon took my mind off her.
I met Amit for dinner. He still didn’t want to talk about Gomulka.
“You can’t make saving the world your full-time obsession,” he counselled me. “There’s more to life. Like girls. I’ll make you a deal. Come to the mixer tonight and be my wingman. You need to relax and unwind. We’ll hit on girls for a while and then afterward we’ll figure out what to do about Marcus and Gomulka.”
“We need to go over the programming homework,” I reminded him.
“Pete,” Amit said, “I didn’t rush a fraternity because we need to stay together and have more privacy as we work together to take down the Circle. That’s seriously impacting my social life. The least you can do is help me out once in a while. Let’s review the homework. Shouldn’t take long. Then, off to the mixer for an hour. We can discuss social justice, after. Fair enough?”
I agreed. After dinner we went over the programming homework. It was a simple bubble-sort algorithm, and we cranked it out in about fifteen minutes. I started changing into something a little more formal for the mixer.
“No,” Amit advised. “Makes you look too desperate. Go in what you have on.”
I was still uncomfortable just going up and talking to girls. “I was, too,” Amit confided in me. “I figure by the time you’ve done a hundred or so approaches, you get used to it. And tonight’s low pressure. We’re not going to actually try to pick anyone up. Just maybe get some numbers to try later.”
We showed up fashionably late and
began working our way around the room, introducing ourselves to guys and girls alike. Amit worked the room like a master, outgoing, enthusiastic, everyone’s new best friend, but only taking a minute to talk before moving on to the next group. We watched a guy approach a gang of eight girls chatting together in the corner. He lasted half a minute before walking off with a dejected look on his face. “Tough nut to crack,” Amit said. “Let’s get warmed up and come back later. How about them?” he said, gesturing toward a pair of attractive girls chatting. “You’ve seen me do it. Your turn.” I took a deep breath and approached the girls.
“Hey girls,” I said full of confidence. “I’m Pete, and this is my friend Amit.”
They turned out to be Jennifer and her friend Ashley.
“What brings you to Tech, Jennifer?” I asked the more attractive of the two who stood almost as tall as me in her spike heels.
“I’m studying architecture,” she answered.
“It’s going to be hard finding steel-toed boots with heels like those,” I noted.
“It’s mostly indoor work,” she explained with a smile, “but I like the idea of getting to go out to a construction site.”
“I used to work as an electrician’s helper,” I offered. “You’ll have to be careful around job sites – some of those construction workers can be real wolves.”
“I can handle myself,” she said, confidently. “So what are you studying?”
“Electrical engineering,” I answered.
“Oh, a real Brainiac,” she teased me.
“I know enough not to let studying get in the way of my social life,” I offered nonchalantly. “Speaking of which, what’s your number? Maybe we could go out Friday?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Ashley and I have plans.”
“We can’t go out Friday anyway,” Amit lied. “We’re going out with those cute psychology majors from the other dorm, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, give me your number anyway, and maybe we can find some other time.”
I hid my surprise at my success while Jennifer gave me her number.
While I was busy with Jennifer, Ashley said, “I know you,” to Amit. “You’re that guy at orientation who asked about make-out places on campus.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said. “If you give me your number, maybe we can go looking for one sometime.”
“I don’t know about that,” she looked reluctant.
“Hey, maybe we could double with Pete and Jennifer,” he offered. “You’ll need an excuse to tag along and help protect her from this wolf here.”
He got her number, too.
“See you around,” I offered as Amit and I moved on.
“So how was that?” I asked him.
“Not bad,” he acknowledged. “The bit about wolves was nicely ambiguous. You might have been saying you were one or that she was in danger from one, or both,” he added knowingly as we ambled off. “What matters is we got their numbers and left a good impression.”
We were so distracted by our after-action review that we didn’t notice we were nearing Ryan standing with Marcus. “You better take this one,” he suggested quietly before continuing on.
“Hi guys,” I said. “You’re both in this dorm?”
They looked impassively at me. Finally, Marcus spoke. “You’re friends with that Amit?”
“He’s my roommate,” I said neutrally. There was another long pause.
“I don’t have anything to say to him or to you,” Marcus said, turning his back to me.
“See you around,” I said.
I saw Amit already talking with a bunch of girls. “Hey girls,” Amit exclaimed as I approached, “meet Pete. Don’t let that Boy Scout demeanor fool you, though. They kicked him out for his bad behavior.”
I wasn’t happy Amit had shared that incident. I certainly wasn’t proud of it. I was on my path to Eagle Scout when some campout pranking got out of hand. Another troop sabotaged our sleeping gear, so we cut their tent strings. Only they escaped undetected while I had the misfortune to be caught in the act by one of the scout leaders. Trustworthy? Helpful? Kind? Not exactly. They take the Scout Law seriously. That incident was the end of my career in scouting. I introduced myself to the girls.
“So what did you do to get kicked out of scouting?” one of the girls asked me.
“An unfortunate incident involving the scoutmaster’s daughter,” Amit jumped in before I could tell the truth. “Some girls just get carried away and start moaning too loudly at the most inopportune times.”
This was going a bit too far for my taste. “All lies,” I told the girls.
“Just goes to show the importance of a good gag,” Amit said deadpan. “You should see the knots he can tie. Taught me everything I know. We’ll be seeing you around,” he added.
I followed his cue to escape the embarrassment and inevitable questions.
“What do you think you’re doing spreading stories like that?” I asked him.
“Just helping you establish your bad-boy credentials,” Amit explained. “You’ll thank me later.”
“I don’t want to have to lie to a girl to date her,” I explained.
“It’s not a lie,” Amit countered, “if no one’s expecting the truth anyway. Like a politician saying what the voters want to hear, even though everybody knows he won’t really follow through on it. How many times has a girl told you she’s ‘busy’ when what she really means is she has no interest in you? Girls lie to us all the time. If you want to be successful with them, you have to lie preemptively; throw them off balance.”
“It didn’t work back there with that last group,” I pointed out.
“You were fighting me too hard for me to risk going for their numbers. You need to just go with the flow. Let’s finish up here. That last group will be tricky,” he said, looking at the eight girls we’d bypassed earlier, hanging out in the corner of the room. “They’ve rebuffed a couple of guys who’ve approached them already, so their defenses are up. That really hot brunette with the glasses looks to be the ringleader.”
My heart wasn’t in it, and I just wanted this to be over, so I took the path of least resistance. “She’s really smoking,” I acknowledged. “You think you can interest her?”
“Not directly,” Amit said ruefully. “But I have an idea for a quick hit and run.” I saw one of the girls look our way. “Perfect,” Amit said, “she’s looking at us. Maintain eye contact, and follow my lead.” We approached the group.
“Hey, Lisa!” Amit said exuberantly, boldly interrupting whatever conversation was underway, thrusting himself in the middle of the group with his back to the hot brunette. “Good to see you here!”
“I’m not Lisa,” the girl looked confused. “My name is Michelle.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Amit. “My name’s Amit, but you do look an awful lot like Lisa.”
“I’m Pete,” I said, making a show of carefully looking her over. “Have to admit, there’s a strong resemblance,” I said to Amit.
“Well, anyway,” Amit continued. “You’re looking really great tonight in that dress, Michelle. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around. Good night, ladies.” He pivoted neatly as he left the group to leave the group without ever facing or acknowledging the existence of the hot brunette.
“Help me out here,” I said once we were out of earshot. “You ignored the brunette which is going to annoy her. Won’t that make her more likely to shoot down any attempts to hook up with one of her clique?”
“Maybe,” Amit acknowledged, “but it’s better to be remembered than forgotten. She’ll be wondering about us and why we ignored her in favor of her less attractive friend. She’s the most beautiful girl in that clique, and she and all her friends know it. Besides Lisa’s probably been in her shadow so long; it’s nice to give her a moment in the spotlight. Aren’t you Boy Scouts supposed to do a good turn daily?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But it’s Michelle.”
“Wh
atever,” Amit said indifferently. “Michelle isn’t bad looking, and she’ll be favorably inclined in the future. That was probably the most exciting thing to happen to any of them all night, so they’ll all remember us in the future.”
We got up to our room and back to work.
I explained my concern that by playing along, we were helping Gomulka attack Marcus, Ryan, and the rest of the students in the class. “We’re no better than the Civic Circle, if we help Gomulka indoctrinate our classmates.”
“This is a war,” Amit said. “There may be casualties. I don’t see how we can infiltrate the Civic Circle without emulating what they do. And that means we have to be willing to bully and intimidate opponents of the Civic Circle using the same social justice ideology.”
“I don’t like it,” I insisted.
“That’s the way it is,” Amit countered. “That’s the way it has to be. We can’t behave like Boy Scouts and expect to beat the Civic Circle.”
We stared at each other in silence as he tried to intimidate me into submission. I returned the favor back at him. We were both working from the exact same playbook Uncle Rob had taught us. Finally, I smiled at the ridiculousness of playing dominance games with each other.
“Look Amit,” I explained. “Just help me figure out a way to communicate anonymously with Marcus and Ryan. We ought to be supporting opponents of the Civic Circle not helping the Circle tear them down. Part of beating the Circle is providing aid and comfort to their enemies. We can explain to Marcus and Ryan a bit about what’s going on so they can know how to play along without getting steamrollered.”
Amit looked thoughtful. “I suppose we could send an email to them anonymously,” he offered. “But anything we say could be read by the sysadmin.”
“The who?” I asked.
“The sysadmin. System administrator,” Amit explained. “The email may come from an untraceable source, but once it’s in their gatech.edu inbox, the Tech sysadmin will be able to read it. We wouldn’t be able to share anything of substance.”
“What’s that encrypted email service you set up for Uncle Rob and Mr. Burke?” I asked.
A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth Page 5