Week 1-Yingjun Huang

ASA 002 A01

Yingjun Huang

Week 1

I should confess that I just registered for this class on this Saturday and had no access to the reading material until today, so when I began reading the material I was in some relaxed mood. But after reading a page or so I can hear a voice shouting “what did she just say?!” in my brain that made me read more carefully into those passages because it was talking about something that I had never heard of before: institutional discrimination, followed with dying experience.

After reading the first time I was shocked by the fact that I have never heard of any similar story before. I may be naïve, but I have never imagined that there was such disgusting dark side in universities. Really opened my eyes. As the article described, the road of defending and fighting back was painful and every step seemed to be the most struggling. I might never felt the same way, but I can comprehend what kind of harsh situation it was. I was deeply moved by the courage of Professor Valverde.

Reading the article for the second time I felt grateful for Professor Valverde because she has got a chance to say it out loud, so more people like us students can know what happened. Voices getting heard is very important nowadays as this is the essential beginning step to solve a social problem. This leads to my worry about freedom of speech(especially in China), but that’s another topic.

This article also reminded me of if I have been treated with discrimination which is something I never thought of before. But from the article we can know: it’s there just around some corner. It made me realized that the only way to eliminate this type of discrimination is to face it, fight it, not to avoid it.

A image of what institutional discrimination may looks like in my mind. 

Questions:  

I’m curious about the dying experience. What was it like?

References:

1. Valverde, K., (2013). “Fight the Tower”: A Call to Action for Women in Academia, 12(2), 367-419. Retrieved October 1, 2017.

2. Locker Room Talk[Digital image]. (2015, June 25) Retrived October 1, 2017 from https://www.facebook.com/uniprez?fref=ts