A Greek Tragedy
March 29, 2017 5:24 AM Subscribe
"We Thought the Sun Would Always Shine on Our Lives"
Bright, beautiful, and beloved, the young women of Chi Omega had it all—until they didn't.
Well, I started crying at least. It's a good read, if horribly sad.
posted by corb at 5:45 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by corb at 5:45 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
No gory photos, but there are some slightly gory descriptions. And it is terribly sad.
I don't know. The bit on the last page about the driver bugged me a bit. This thing?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:00 AM on March 29, 2017 [94 favorites]
I don't know. The bit on the last page about the driver bugged me a bit. This thing?
The highway patrol determined that Davis, who was 45, committed no crime, that he hadn't been drinking, had not drifted off. A grand jury found the same. As improbable as it sounds, and as much as it enraged the dead girls' parents, the state police determined that Davis had simply run upon the Maxima, not realizing how slowly it was moving until it was too late.They were staging a walkathon on a busy highway, after the police explicitly told them not to because it wasn't safe. He was doing his job. He had no reason to think that there would be walkers or slow-moving vehicles on that stretch of highway. The only reason that it sounds improbable that the police determined he wasn't at fault is that he was a working-class black man in Mississippi, and they were a bunch of Ole Miss sorority women. Obviously it wasn't his fault. They hauled that poor man before a grand jury? The next year, at the age of 46, he had his first stroke? I would consider him an additional victim, rather than a culprit.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:00 AM on March 29, 2017 [94 favorites]
I was in a fraternity in 1987. I was in school 1000 miles north of Mississippi, but it seems like a story of this magnitude would have made it to the school newspaper, or to the greek community on campus. Maybe it did, and me being a 19 year college sophomore it just didn't register, as I have no memory at all of it. Or maybe back in the olden days of the late 80s this story never made it out of Mississippi.
Horribly tragic, but also uplifting as an example of how people can get past even the worst tragedies without letting it define their lives.
posted by COD at 6:01 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Horribly tragic, but also uplifting as an example of how people can get past even the worst tragedies without letting it define their lives.
posted by COD at 6:01 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
It sounds like the driver never recovered psychologically doesn’t it. It must have been a terrible experience - the guilt would be overwhelming, whether a court found you innocent or not.
posted by pharm at 6:10 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by pharm at 6:10 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
.....
As a Mississippian, this story is giving me strange feelings. A Chi Omega was everything I never wanted to be (I was too scholarly, too liberal, too interested in my own future) and everything I never could be (all of the foregoing, plus not skinny enough). I both ridiculed and envied girls like this: what must it be to have the future so gently set before you? Then I grew up, and I saw what it was for them to suffer because so much assurance had been taken from them.
I am glad that Davis did not suffer any more legally from the accident than he did, because he suffered quite enough as it was. Here it says:
After the accident, Davis never drove again. Never again laid eyes on Highway 6. He took a job at a Memphis ironworks. To get there he'd walk from Shirley's house to a gas station near I-55 and catch a ride.
-- which is a hell of a ways on some lonesome road, where folks look at pedestrians like they're murderers in waiting. Having a driving phobia in Mississippi will trap you right in place. He needed intense counseling.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:32 AM on March 29, 2017 [41 favorites]
As a Mississippian, this story is giving me strange feelings. A Chi Omega was everything I never wanted to be (I was too scholarly, too liberal, too interested in my own future) and everything I never could be (all of the foregoing, plus not skinny enough). I both ridiculed and envied girls like this: what must it be to have the future so gently set before you? Then I grew up, and I saw what it was for them to suffer because so much assurance had been taken from them.
I am glad that Davis did not suffer any more legally from the accident than he did, because he suffered quite enough as it was. Here it says:
After the accident, Davis never drove again. Never again laid eyes on Highway 6. He took a job at a Memphis ironworks. To get there he'd walk from Shirley's house to a gas station near I-55 and catch a ride.
-- which is a hell of a ways on some lonesome road, where folks look at pedestrians like they're murderers in waiting. Having a driving phobia in Mississippi will trap you right in place. He needed intense counseling.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:32 AM on March 29, 2017 [41 favorites]
On the other hand, this rings true to my memories of that stage in my life. (And by that, I mean late adolescence/ very early adulthood. I was not a sorority chick, and I don't think I would have had a lot in common with these women.):
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:43 AM on March 29, 2017 [51 favorites]
"This is the stupidest thing I've ever done," I remember thinking. I thought it but didn't say it. Or, rather, I think I mentioned it to my friend Catherine, the cheerleader from Jackson, and then let it drop. We walked and the traffic whoomed. After a few hours I caught a ride back to campus for lunch.I totally remember that sense of going along with something that I knew was a bad idea, that I knew might get me badly hurt or killed, but feeling just magically-protected enough and just worried enough about looking like a no-fun worry-wort that I went along with it anyway. Five years later, I would have been like "yeah, no. This doesn't feel safe. I'm going home." But at 19, I didn't have the confidence, and there was still a little bit of unreality about risk. There but for the grace of God go most of us, I think.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:43 AM on March 29, 2017 [51 favorites]
Yeah, I don't know how you recover from killing 5 college kids. It wasn't Davis' fault, just the worst possible case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also can't help wondering if this all could have been avoided if the police had been a little more forceful in trying to talk the girls out of it. These girls were not rebels. If the police had said, "it's not illegal, but if it's too dangerous for us to give you an escort it's too dangerous for you to be out there, please don't do this," I suspect they may have changed routes to something safer.
I also thought the side point about the dad that goes out to repaint the roadside memorials every year was interesting, because I always see those things on the side of the road, and I always wonder who keeps those things up? I've never had to deal with something like this, but I think my reaction would be to put it in the past and try not to remember. I can't imagine I'd be returning to the scene of the tragedy ever, let alone every year for 25 years.
posted by COD at 6:46 AM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
I also thought the side point about the dad that goes out to repaint the roadside memorials every year was interesting, because I always see those things on the side of the road, and I always wonder who keeps those things up? I've never had to deal with something like this, but I think my reaction would be to put it in the past and try not to remember. I can't imagine I'd be returning to the scene of the tragedy ever, let alone every year for 25 years.
posted by COD at 6:46 AM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
Reading about this really struck me - I was not much younger than those girls in 1987 - and the writer really captured 1980s youthful cluelessness.
I had never heard of this accident before and went looking around for contemporary news coverage. I found this clip of local TV news from the Memphis NBC affiliate. Everyone seems just utterly stunned. (Warning: Accident scene footage but nothing gory.)
posted by pantarei70 at 6:53 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
I had never heard of this accident before and went looking around for contemporary news coverage. I found this clip of local TV news from the Memphis NBC affiliate. Everyone seems just utterly stunned. (Warning: Accident scene footage but nothing gory.)
posted by pantarei70 at 6:53 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
Blaming them for doing something they'd done before also sounds like victim blaming. And Davis may have legally done nothing wrong, but he was the professional driver who drove into a car. Even if he just had bad luck, that's still an act that should stick with him.
Killing people, however unintentionally, has consequences. I'm glad Davis made the decision he did, because there have been tons of drivers who have killed people and then blithely driven again the next day.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:53 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Killing people, however unintentionally, has consequences. I'm glad Davis made the decision he did, because there have been tons of drivers who have killed people and then blithely driven again the next day.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:53 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Blaming them for doing something they'd done before also sounds like victim blaming.
They had police escort when they did it before. What's wrong with victim blaming, when the victims were, in part, at fault?
posted by thelonius at 6:57 AM on March 29, 2017 [38 favorites]
They had police escort when they did it before. What's wrong with victim blaming, when the victims were, in part, at fault?
posted by thelonius at 6:57 AM on March 29, 2017 [38 favorites]
Are sororities (and fraternities) as much a part of the past as I feel they are? They seem so quaint and either irrelevant or dangerous in how much malevolence they hide.
I'm sure it's my own baggage (from having been in college in an Old South state in 1988 and finding my solidly middle class ass one of the poorest kids on campus) but the first few paragraphs of that story did not set a scene that had me caring about these young women, finding them attractive, putting me in a position to sigh about their lost potential, although I should, since it's a sad story about young women, accidentally killed in a painful way that was clearly traumatic for witnesses and survivors.
I do wonder, though, why the opening of that article was so un-engaging and failed to convey how vibrant and wonderful and full of potential everyone was, as seems to be the intent from the pull quote. I suppose it's because the alienating structures of the Greek system have a longer reach than I want to believe. I was, frankly, never going to be in a sorority (and, honestly, had never been encouraged to want to be and only in passing considered whether I should be). I had no friends who were in sororities (and only 2 or 3 who were in fraternities)--even my friends from other colleges either were at schools with no national Greeks allowed or not members of any Greeks. But there nevertheless was a firm and intentional ordering of people into Greek and Non. I wonder if that lack of personal connection--in addition to the ridicule/envy dynamic Countess Elena talks about--is still enough to color the opening of this article for someone like me who has not been in college in almost 30 years.
Or maybe other people found the scene-setting more resonant? Maybe it's more peculiarly me and a personal lack of both remaining connection to my college or my class mates.
posted by crush at 6:59 AM on March 29, 2017 [9 favorites]
I'm sure it's my own baggage (from having been in college in an Old South state in 1988 and finding my solidly middle class ass one of the poorest kids on campus) but the first few paragraphs of that story did not set a scene that had me caring about these young women, finding them attractive, putting me in a position to sigh about their lost potential, although I should, since it's a sad story about young women, accidentally killed in a painful way that was clearly traumatic for witnesses and survivors.
I do wonder, though, why the opening of that article was so un-engaging and failed to convey how vibrant and wonderful and full of potential everyone was, as seems to be the intent from the pull quote. I suppose it's because the alienating structures of the Greek system have a longer reach than I want to believe. I was, frankly, never going to be in a sorority (and, honestly, had never been encouraged to want to be and only in passing considered whether I should be). I had no friends who were in sororities (and only 2 or 3 who were in fraternities)--even my friends from other colleges either were at schools with no national Greeks allowed or not members of any Greeks. But there nevertheless was a firm and intentional ordering of people into Greek and Non. I wonder if that lack of personal connection--in addition to the ridicule/envy dynamic Countess Elena talks about--is still enough to color the opening of this article for someone like me who has not been in college in almost 30 years.
Or maybe other people found the scene-setting more resonant? Maybe it's more peculiarly me and a personal lack of both remaining connection to my college or my class mates.
posted by crush at 6:59 AM on March 29, 2017 [9 favorites]
They did something that was dangerous, that they were warned by the police was dangerous, and that it sounds like they probably realized was dangerous. They didn't in any way deserve what happened to them, but their actions contributed to what happened. And Davis was completely blameless. He did nothing wrong, and I'm not convinced that there was anything he could have done to prevent the accident.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:03 AM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:03 AM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
He could have used his eyes, and the brake. He could have gone slower if he wasn't sure it was safe. I don't think any of us know enough of the details to debate this; but there is a widely accepted principle that if you run into the back of another vehicle, it's your fault. Cars break down, people stop.
posted by Segundus at 7:06 AM on March 29, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 7:06 AM on March 29, 2017 [7 favorites]
Mod note: Gently, before this becomes a quagmire of angry back and forth, I'd just like to quickly suggest that it's not really necessary to identify villains or establish a Good vs Bad scenario. It's possible for a story to have multiple victims on different axes, as well as mistakes made, etc, without coming to some agreed jury decision about Right and Wrong. There's a lot of tragedy here, and only a sketch of detail, so it would be good to try to discuss compassionately all around. Thank you.
posted by taz (staff) at 7:07 AM on March 29, 2017 [75 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 7:07 AM on March 29, 2017 [75 favorites]
Are sororities (and fraternities) as much a part of the past as I feel they are? They seem so quaint and either irrelevant or dangerous in how much malevolence they hide.
I don't think they've quite receded into the dustbin of history yet. About 10 years ago I had a distant relative who was going to go to the University of Georgia and was all about pledging the sorority of her dreams. It was okay that her dad was in the Army, but when it turned out he was an NCO instead of a higher-ranking career officer, that kind of killed that. She was heartbroken.
posted by Naberius at 7:07 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I don't think they've quite receded into the dustbin of history yet. About 10 years ago I had a distant relative who was going to go to the University of Georgia and was all about pledging the sorority of her dreams. It was okay that her dad was in the Army, but when it turned out he was an NCO instead of a higher-ranking career officer, that kind of killed that. She was heartbroken.
posted by Naberius at 7:07 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm with crush. I also felt little connection to these young women, partially because of my own baggage with southern sorority girls and partially because the description only serves to seperate them from us.
Of course, that doesn't change the tragedy of 5 young women dying on a road or the psychological damage that was done to the survivors but despite the moving and obviously painful content of the article it felt shallow. It was beautifully written and well composed, but the depth seemed lacking. How did these survivors deal with survivors guilt in a culture that tells you to be pretty and persevere? There are some hints in the article, but again, there seems to be an avoidance of the truly ugly elements of life.
posted by teleri025 at 7:08 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Of course, that doesn't change the tragedy of 5 young women dying on a road or the psychological damage that was done to the survivors but despite the moving and obviously painful content of the article it felt shallow. It was beautifully written and well composed, but the depth seemed lacking. How did these survivors deal with survivors guilt in a culture that tells you to be pretty and persevere? There are some hints in the article, but again, there seems to be an avoidance of the truly ugly elements of life.
posted by teleri025 at 7:08 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Oh, no, Greek life is still huge, at least in the southeast. They basically run lots of the big-time SEC schools still.
posted by uberchet at 7:09 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by uberchet at 7:09 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
My college fraternity is breaking ground on a new house this summer, to replace the 100 year old house that I lived in, and quite frankly, can't believe is still standing. With the budget issues in government, I think public schools are starting to gain a new appreciation for the greek system. It's student housing they don't have to pay for.
posted by COD at 7:12 AM on March 29, 2017
posted by COD at 7:12 AM on March 29, 2017
In the "wow, that's odd" department, I'll offer that even though I was a high school junior in Hattiesburg at the time, I have no memory of this event at all.
I don't (and didn't) know any of these women, but Facebook says I have nontrivial friend overlap with several of them.
The world is small.
posted by uberchet at 7:15 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't (and didn't) know any of these women, but Facebook says I have nontrivial friend overlap with several of them.
The world is small.
posted by uberchet at 7:15 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
He could have used his eyes, and the brake. He could have gone slower if he wasn't sure it was safe. I don't think any of us know enough of the details to debate this; but there is a widely accepted principle that if you run into the back of another vehicle, it's your fault. Cars break down, people stop.
Why wouldn't he have been sure whether it was safe to go the speed limit on a busy highway frequented by long-haul trucks? He couldn't psychically predict an obstruction on the road ahead. None of us know the precise details, but it sounds to me like it literally wasn't physically possible for him to have stopped. Do you think that the state police AND a grand jury went easy on finding evidence that a man (let alone a black man) driving a truck that killed five sorority girls was at least partially at fault?
From TFA:
Why wouldn't he have been sure whether it was safe to go the speed limit on a busy highway frequented by long-haul trucks? He couldn't psychically predict an obstruction on the road ahead. None of us know the precise details, but it sounds to me like it literally wasn't physically possible for him to have stopped. Do you think that the state police AND a grand jury went easy on finding evidence that a man (let alone a black man) driving a truck that killed five sorority girls was at least partially at fault?
From TFA:
A vehicle traveling at 2 mph may as well be at a standstill when hit by a vehicle going 55. At those speeds, on that stretch of road, the gap would have closed in about 16 seconds. Davis's truck, hauling the hay baler, was a three-ton missile. It's a miracle everyone didn't die.posted by desuetude at 7:20 AM on March 29, 2017 [43 favorites]
Sororities and fraternities are still a thing on the campus on which I work, and people who are in them seem to care about and value them a lot. I don't think they play the same role in campus culture that they did (and maybe still do) on some big Southern campuses. Nobody outside of the Greek scene would particularly care which sorority you were in, for instance.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:28 AM on March 29, 2017
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:28 AM on March 29, 2017
The story is just so sad.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 7:31 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 7:31 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty OK with blaming the adults who were allegedly supervising/chaperoning the sorority. Some of these women were probably still teenagers, and there's generally still a profound lack of awareness of your own mortality at this age. There's also a ton of peer pressure in the Greek system--arguably, peer pressure is what the system is all about--and simply saying "no, this is stupid and too risky, there has to be a less-busy road to do this on somewhere in Mississippi" probably wasn't going to happen. ("The idea of walking around in anything other than the T-shirts, tank tops, earrings, gym shorts, necklaces, and sweatshirts of Chi Omega was so intolerable that rushees had been known to collapse in grief upon being cut, and to immediately pack their bags and go home.")
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
I keep coming back to this, and while it's terrible this thing happened, it was completely avoidable.
It's was BEYOND stupid to walk, en masse, down a highway, with no escort, especially after being told by the highway patrol that it was a bad idea.
It's a tragic example of the kind of thoughtless entitlement that defines the (white, southern) Greek experience at these schools. I'm very sorry these young women were hurt and killed, but I see the driver as even more of a victim here than they are.
posted by uberchet at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2017 [21 favorites]
It's was BEYOND stupid to walk, en masse, down a highway, with no escort, especially after being told by the highway patrol that it was a bad idea.
It's a tragic example of the kind of thoughtless entitlement that defines the (white, southern) Greek experience at these schools. I'm very sorry these young women were hurt and killed, but I see the driver as even more of a victim here than they are.
posted by uberchet at 7:32 AM on March 29, 2017 [21 favorites]
This is such a sad story. Groups, generally speaking, breed conformity and competition. That's not an accusation or indictment of anyone, of course. It's just part of our existential predicament that we humans long for group belonging as much as (if not more than) personal individuation. It's all too easy to get swallowed up in group dynamics, to go along with (or not question to begin with) terrible ideas, to overlook the obvious. Hell, it's easy enough to make a tragic mistake without the powerful influence of social hydraulics. Individuality/non-conformity isn't any kind of guarantee against misfortune, either. If only life was that simple.
posted by Bob Regular at 7:45 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Bob Regular at 7:45 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
//It's was BEYOND stupid to walk...//
I got the impression from the article that this was a long standing annual charity fundraiser by the sorority. Nothing bad had ever happened before, and the teenage brain puts way too much emphasis on that particular data point. Like somebody said above, we are all guilty of doing stupid and dangerous things at that age because of peer pressure, and the inability to process the risks involved.
And I don't see how this is a racial or class thing at all. A sorority at a traditionally black college would have made the exact same call in the same circumstances. It's a stupid teenagers thing, a horrible accident that that has plenty of victims (the girls, families, Davis, the adults involved that I assume wonder if they should have known better, etc.) and nobody really at fault. Sometimes bad stuff happens without it being anybody's fault.
posted by COD at 7:46 AM on March 29, 2017 [12 favorites]
I got the impression from the article that this was a long standing annual charity fundraiser by the sorority. Nothing bad had ever happened before, and the teenage brain puts way too much emphasis on that particular data point. Like somebody said above, we are all guilty of doing stupid and dangerous things at that age because of peer pressure, and the inability to process the risks involved.
And I don't see how this is a racial or class thing at all. A sorority at a traditionally black college would have made the exact same call in the same circumstances. It's a stupid teenagers thing, a horrible accident that that has plenty of victims (the girls, families, Davis, the adults involved that I assume wonder if they should have known better, etc.) and nobody really at fault. Sometimes bad stuff happens without it being anybody's fault.
posted by COD at 7:46 AM on March 29, 2017 [12 favorites]
I'm not from the South, but I went to a state university that nonetheless had and still has a massive greek presence on campus (U of Illinois). I was never part of it, actively disliked it, and was way too broke and working class to feel much connection with the girls I knew in sororities.
But while sorority members were intensely privileged, there was still a lot of suffering and stress in that life. Every girl I know who participated in rush my freshman year (for example) had some form of eating disorder. I felt (and still feel) bad for those kids.
I don't, however, feel bad for the adults who continue to support this culture. All the pathologies that go along with campus life, such as binge drinking and sexual assault, seem to be extra-prevalent in greek culture. They are aided and abetted by a network of grown-ass adults with the money and social capital to shield those kids from most of the consequences of their actions.
20-year-olds are expected to be idiots. But alumni supporters and house mothers and university administrators are not.
posted by pantarei70 at 7:55 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
But while sorority members were intensely privileged, there was still a lot of suffering and stress in that life. Every girl I know who participated in rush my freshman year (for example) had some form of eating disorder. I felt (and still feel) bad for those kids.
I don't, however, feel bad for the adults who continue to support this culture. All the pathologies that go along with campus life, such as binge drinking and sexual assault, seem to be extra-prevalent in greek culture. They are aided and abetted by a network of grown-ass adults with the money and social capital to shield those kids from most of the consequences of their actions.
20-year-olds are expected to be idiots. But alumni supporters and house mothers and university administrators are not.
posted by pantarei70 at 7:55 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
It's a tragic example of the kind of thoughtless entitlement that defines the (white, southern) Greek experience at these schools.
That’s an odd, not to say ungenerous, way to look on a bunch of girls going out of their way to benefit others. A simpler explanation for the accident would be that they were no older than twenty two.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:56 AM on March 29, 2017 [11 favorites]
That’s an odd, not to say ungenerous, way to look on a bunch of girls going out of their way to benefit others. A simpler explanation for the accident would be that they were no older than twenty two.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:56 AM on March 29, 2017 [11 favorites]
Once in a while we all do something mildly stupid or inattentive. Once in a long while, the 300+ million failures of planning that happen every day combine into tragedy through the sheer number of lottery tickets issued. Could this have been avoided? Yes. Is anyone to blame? No. Let go of the just world fallacy.
posted by benzenedream at 8:10 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 8:10 AM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
And Davis was completely blameless. He did nothing wrong,
A while ago, I was declared at-fault for an accident (though thank god, no one was hurt). I was going the speed limit, and the car in front of me stopped short, too fast for me to brake in time. I didn't go to jail, but I did get a ticket and my insurance rates went up, because per traffic law, you should always be prepared to brake.
Likewise, the driver here, even if he didn't deserve to go to jail for it, was also at fault. What if it had been a disabled car that couldn't get to the shoulder? The instant he noticed he was closing the gap awfully fast, he should have started braking, or changing lanes to go around.
At the same time, being somewhat inattentive and not braking in time doesn't usually have such tragic consequences. Usually, it's a car going only slightly slower, and you'll have plenty of time later. I myself don't always brake even when I have plenty of warning, when I should. It doesn't make him a monster to have one moment of inattentiveness in his life, even when people died for it.
posted by corb at 8:18 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
A while ago, I was declared at-fault for an accident (though thank god, no one was hurt). I was going the speed limit, and the car in front of me stopped short, too fast for me to brake in time. I didn't go to jail, but I did get a ticket and my insurance rates went up, because per traffic law, you should always be prepared to brake.
Likewise, the driver here, even if he didn't deserve to go to jail for it, was also at fault. What if it had been a disabled car that couldn't get to the shoulder? The instant he noticed he was closing the gap awfully fast, he should have started braking, or changing lanes to go around.
At the same time, being somewhat inattentive and not braking in time doesn't usually have such tragic consequences. Usually, it's a car going only slightly slower, and you'll have plenty of time later. I myself don't always brake even when I have plenty of warning, when I should. It doesn't make him a monster to have one moment of inattentiveness in his life, even when people died for it.
posted by corb at 8:18 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
I also felt little connection to these young women, partially because of my own baggage with southern sorority girls and partially because the description only serves to seperate them from us.
I hear you. The connection I felt was from years of being unable to connect with young women like these, of a consciousness that I was in them and not of them. When I was seven I told my mother that I wanted to go to Ole Miss and she said no you are going to the Sorbonne. I did not, in fact, go to the Sorbonne, but you can see that I was given to understand that the SEC life was ... small. But everything they had was so beautiful, and silver, and they seemed to have friends and to laugh so much ...
To feel sorrow for these women is, for me, an exercise in radical empathy. I would never tell other people -- especially not POC -- that they need to do this. But personally I do, or else I will fall into an abyss.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:31 AM on March 29, 2017 [17 favorites]
I hear you. The connection I felt was from years of being unable to connect with young women like these, of a consciousness that I was in them and not of them. When I was seven I told my mother that I wanted to go to Ole Miss and she said no you are going to the Sorbonne. I did not, in fact, go to the Sorbonne, but you can see that I was given to understand that the SEC life was ... small. But everything they had was so beautiful, and silver, and they seemed to have friends and to laugh so much ...
To feel sorrow for these women is, for me, an exercise in radical empathy. I would never tell other people -- especially not POC -- that they need to do this. But personally I do, or else I will fall into an abyss.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:31 AM on March 29, 2017 [17 favorites]
//The instant he noticed he was closing the gap awfully fast, he should have started braking, or changing lanes to go around.//
I'm pretty sure he did that. If there was no sign of skid marks from braking the state police would have had evidence to find him at fault. But if he came around a curve or over a rise and there the car was, there wasn't much he could do to stop a truck of that size in time. If he had been driving a Honda Accord there would probably be no story here. But a truck of that size, once going in a certain direction, is at the mercy of physics. It isn't stopping or changing direction quickly.
posted by COD at 8:37 AM on March 29, 2017 [13 favorites]
I'm pretty sure he did that. If there was no sign of skid marks from braking the state police would have had evidence to find him at fault. But if he came around a curve or over a rise and there the car was, there wasn't much he could do to stop a truck of that size in time. If he had been driving a Honda Accord there would probably be no story here. But a truck of that size, once going in a certain direction, is at the mercy of physics. It isn't stopping or changing direction quickly.
posted by COD at 8:37 AM on March 29, 2017 [13 favorites]
A pharmacology professor told his morning students, "Regardless of how you feel about religion, I ask your indulgence," then led them in impromptu prayer
Um.
posted by tully_monster at 8:52 AM on March 29, 2017 [5 favorites]
Um.
posted by tully_monster at 8:52 AM on March 29, 2017 [5 favorites]
The impulse to find fault after something horrific happens--to find someone or something to blame--that's on display in this thread is maybe little distasteful, but it's pretty common and totally understandable.
I think maybe it's how the deep lizard part of our brains works to convince us that something like this could never happen to us, nuh uh, not us, because we'd never do anything as dumb / careless / dangerous / whatever as [X].
Whether that part of our brain decides that X="walk down the middle of a busy highway" or X="ram into the back of a stopped/slowly moving car," depends, I suspect, on which of those two things we (unconsciously?) see ourselves as more likely to do (or have done).
posted by dersins at 8:56 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
I think maybe it's how the deep lizard part of our brains works to convince us that something like this could never happen to us, nuh uh, not us, because we'd never do anything as dumb / careless / dangerous / whatever as [X].
Whether that part of our brain decides that X="walk down the middle of a busy highway" or X="ram into the back of a stopped/slowly moving car," depends, I suspect, on which of those two things we (unconsciously?) see ourselves as more likely to do (or have done).
posted by dersins at 8:56 AM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
If you didn't watch the news clip linked above go watch it. It's a total time warp to a time when the news just reported the facts of the story. Just imagine how this story would be covered if it happened today?
posted by COD at 8:59 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by COD at 8:59 AM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
I had a bit of a hard time really digging into the story at first; I think some of that was the sense that, akin to what Countess Elena notes, when I was in college sorority girls were both everything I never wanted to be and everything I couldn't aspire to be anyhow, all rolled up into one big ball of gut-level dislike. But one feeling that emerged in the part where she begins to deal with the aftermath and ultimately the reunion is how events in our lives, big and small, send us pinging off in different directions that were not what we imagined at the age of 18 or 19, when we and those we chose to keep near us all seems to be headed along the same relatively linear path. How those scattered marbles of life trajectories could bring you to crossing paths with a late-1980s sorority sister from Mississippi with whom you would have never thought--at 18 or 19--you would have much common ground or fellow feeling.
posted by drlith at 9:01 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by drlith at 9:01 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
To feel sorrow for these women is, for me, an exercise in radical empathy. I would never tell other people -- especially not POC -- that they need to do this. But personally I do, or else I will fall into an abyss.
Me too. I can't tell you how devastating the Iowa State and Virginia Tech shootings were to me. As the spouse of a physics professor who is dedicated to the education and well-being of both his graduate and undergraduate students, that scenario is my greatest nightmare, and I identified intensely with the victims and survivors.
I'm a little ashamed, actually, that I take sorority women less seriously--their activities on campus kind of encourage that prejudice, but I'll try not to let that influence me so much.
posted by tully_monster at 9:08 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
Me too. I can't tell you how devastating the Iowa State and Virginia Tech shootings were to me. As the spouse of a physics professor who is dedicated to the education and well-being of both his graduate and undergraduate students, that scenario is my greatest nightmare, and I identified intensely with the victims and survivors.
I'm a little ashamed, actually, that I take sorority women less seriously--their activities on campus kind of encourage that prejudice, but I'll try not to let that influence me so much.
posted by tully_monster at 9:08 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm really disturbed-- and, frankly, disappointed-- by how uncharitable (and, frankly, cruel) people are regarding these girls. If feeling sympathy for a group of young women who live through the deaths of many of their close friends takes "radical sympathy" because of the privileges you assume they have, if you are conflating the woman's description of sorority culture with fraternities, I think you should, at the very least, stop commenting in this thread.
I have no doubt many of these girls voted Republican. Many of them probably grew up in wealth and with the privileges that being white in the South can give them. That doesn't make losing friends or legs any easier.
This was an essay narrated by one of the sorority sisters, writing in a woman's magazine. She's writing with a broad brush and working from stereotypes because that's how she knows how to write.
At the very least, comment with the (very likely) assumption some of these women may read what you are saying about them one day. I'm seeing a lot of otherizarion here, and it's not what I am used to seeing on MeFi.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:24 AM on March 29, 2017 [32 favorites]
I have no doubt many of these girls voted Republican. Many of them probably grew up in wealth and with the privileges that being white in the South can give them. That doesn't make losing friends or legs any easier.
This was an essay narrated by one of the sorority sisters, writing in a woman's magazine. She's writing with a broad brush and working from stereotypes because that's how she knows how to write.
At the very least, comment with the (very likely) assumption some of these women may read what you are saying about them one day. I'm seeing a lot of otherizarion here, and it's not what I am used to seeing on MeFi.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:24 AM on March 29, 2017 [32 favorites]
She's writing with a broad brush and working from stereotypes because that's how she knows how to write.That strikes me as vastly more insulting than anything about these women that has been said on the thread, tbh. And the author appears to be no slouch.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:29 AM on March 29, 2017 [18 favorites]
I did attend Ole Miss, about ten years after this event. The appeal of doing a charity walkathon on Highway 6 is easy to understand -- it's the most visible spot for a long-distance walk that doesn't require you to go in circles or plan a route on different streets, and everyone knows the distance between Oxford and Batesville. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and the sheer scale of the carnage wouldn't have been believable.
A pharmacology professor told his morning students, "Regardless of how you feel about religion, I ask your indulgence," then led them in impromptu prayer
Um.
Having been an atheist student at Ole Miss, I find this one forgivable and one of the few scenarios in which I wouldn't have complained about somebody getting their religion mixed up in my secular state school.
when I was in college sorority girls were both everything I never wanted to be and everything I couldn't aspire to be anyhow
It's a lot easier for me to empathize with them now than it was then, for pretty much the same reasons. Distance helps a lot, and we were just all so ridiculously young. My sympathies are pretty much always with pedestrians in any situation, but I'm not sure the driver could have avoided this, and he clearly suffered for the rest of his life.
. . . . . .
posted by asperity at 9:31 AM on March 29, 2017 [19 favorites]
A pharmacology professor told his morning students, "Regardless of how you feel about religion, I ask your indulgence," then led them in impromptu prayer
Um.
Having been an atheist student at Ole Miss, I find this one forgivable and one of the few scenarios in which I wouldn't have complained about somebody getting their religion mixed up in my secular state school.
when I was in college sorority girls were both everything I never wanted to be and everything I couldn't aspire to be anyhow
It's a lot easier for me to empathize with them now than it was then, for pretty much the same reasons. Distance helps a lot, and we were just all so ridiculously young. My sympathies are pretty much always with pedestrians in any situation, but I'm not sure the driver could have avoided this, and he clearly suffered for the rest of his life.
. . . . . .
posted by asperity at 9:31 AM on March 29, 2017 [19 favorites]
She's writing with a broad brush and working from stereotypes because that's how she knows how to write.That strikes me as vastly more insulting than anything about these women that has been said on the thread, tbh. And the author appears to be no slouch.
Agreed. This article was well written and likely had just the right tone for the kind of site Oprah is. I'm sure that her "broad-brush" treatment was what the form demanded (and may even have been a response to editorial feedback). She's not teaching journalism at Harvard for nothing.
I'm glad the other survivors Williams interviewed seem to have found some resilience and are thriving.
posted by tully_monster at 9:45 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
Having been an atheist student at Ole Miss, I find this one forgivable and one of the few scenarios in which I wouldn't have complained about somebody getting their religion mixed up in my secular state school.
Having been a refugee from evangelical Christianity as a student in Pennsyltucky, and now as a high-church Anglican who crosses herself and says a silent prayer whenever she hears an ambulance, I won't apologize for saying that this still made me squirm.
posted by tully_monster at 9:54 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
Having been a refugee from evangelical Christianity as a student in Pennsyltucky, and now as a high-church Anglican who crosses herself and says a silent prayer whenever she hears an ambulance, I won't apologize for saying that this still made me squirm.
posted by tully_monster at 9:54 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
I think maybe it's how the deep lizard part of our brains works to convince us that something like this could never happen to us, nuh uh, not us, because we'd never do anything as dumb / careless / dangerous / whatever as [X].
this is called the "just world fallacy"
posted by thelonius at 10:05 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
this is called the "just world fallacy"
posted by thelonius at 10:05 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I won't apologize for saying that this still made me squirm.
Me too (and no apology should be given for that!), but immediately following something like this I'd give a pass on it. People gotta grieve.
posted by asperity at 10:09 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
Me too (and no apology should be given for that!), but immediately following something like this I'd give a pass on it. People gotta grieve.
posted by asperity at 10:09 AM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
The rear-end rule on highways is one of those things where yes formally the driver is supposed to always be able to stop in time and yes formally you should be able to halt your car in the middle of the highway and skip lightly to the side without being touched... but in actual fact there are stretches of interstates where there is no way that a tractor trailer carrying heavy machinery can possibly come to a dead stop in time no matter how attentive the driver is. It's like asking a train to stop because someone stalled out on a crossing. And if trucks travelled at the speeds and separation needed for it to happen, the highway system wouldn't function as a highway system.
But I'm surprised and heartened that in Mississippi in the 1980s that that rule wasn't used to destroy the truck driver any more than he had already been destroyed by the accident. Given he was poor and black and they were from the white ruling class of the state.
posted by tavella at 10:34 AM on March 29, 2017 [12 favorites]
But I'm surprised and heartened that in Mississippi in the 1980s that that rule wasn't used to destroy the truck driver any more than he had already been destroyed by the accident. Given he was poor and black and they were from the white ruling class of the state.
posted by tavella at 10:34 AM on March 29, 2017 [12 favorites]
I went to Ole Miss in the Mid '00s and one of the victims was from my hometown. There always seemed to be some tragic accident each year at Ole miss. The specter of the Chi O accident was of course there, but the year before I started, Laura Treppendahl was hit by a drunk driver after she left a friends house. In 2005 three Tri Delts were killed in a car accident coming back from Jackson. In 2006 Officer Robert Langley stopped a 20 year old kid who appeared to be under the influence. Officer Langley was drug 200 yards when he tried to reach into the kid's car and (apparently) shut it off.
After each tragedy there were banquets and fundraisers for the families or for causes in the honor of the lost. We wondered how this could happen. The school administration tried a new tactics to deal with DUIs or underage drinking or safety of Greek events. The cycle continued each year.
Looking a back on these tragedies, I realize that they have more impact on me now. They have colored and scared the memory of what Ole Miss is to me. I haven't lived there since '08. Some people will never leave. They are permanent fixtures as plaques and white crosses.
posted by GreatValhalla at 10:42 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
After each tragedy there were banquets and fundraisers for the families or for causes in the honor of the lost. We wondered how this could happen. The school administration tried a new tactics to deal with DUIs or underage drinking or safety of Greek events. The cycle continued each year.
Looking a back on these tragedies, I realize that they have more impact on me now. They have colored and scared the memory of what Ole Miss is to me. I haven't lived there since '08. Some people will never leave. They are permanent fixtures as plaques and white crosses.
posted by GreatValhalla at 10:42 AM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
There always seemed to be some tragic accident each year at Ole miss.
Ole Miss has about 25,000 students. The US has about a 10/100K rate of traffic fatalities per year, which would suggest a rate of about 2.5 deaths per year for Ole Miss students. So, if there was only one tragic incident per year, that seems less like a problem and more like a virtual inevitability.
The university I attend has a reputation for being dangerous. But when compared to a city of about 60K people, which is essentially what our campus is, I doubt our crime rates are significantly higher than expected.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:02 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Ole Miss has about 25,000 students. The US has about a 10/100K rate of traffic fatalities per year, which would suggest a rate of about 2.5 deaths per year for Ole Miss students. So, if there was only one tragic incident per year, that seems less like a problem and more like a virtual inevitability.
The university I attend has a reputation for being dangerous. But when compared to a city of about 60K people, which is essentially what our campus is, I doubt our crime rates are significantly higher than expected.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:02 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
. None of us know the precise details, but it sounds to me like it literally wasn't physically possible for him to have stopped.
I'm pretty judgy about drivers always being responsible for their cars but I do keep in mind that one time I was flying along with the traffic on the QEW and crested the slight rise as it curves into Toronto and was suddenly confronted with completely unexpected stopped traffic. There were probably at least thirty cars all braking as hard as possible without losing control and lots of people wiggling while braking to try and get some extra stopping distance. I stopped about a foot before hitting the car in front of me. The car behind me had even less space. That was just the momentum of small fuel conscious cars. I suspect it would work out much worse nowadays with all the SUVs, crossovers and trucks.
This is part of why I stopped driving twenty years ago.
posted by srboisvert at 11:46 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty judgy about drivers always being responsible for their cars but I do keep in mind that one time I was flying along with the traffic on the QEW and crested the slight rise as it curves into Toronto and was suddenly confronted with completely unexpected stopped traffic. There were probably at least thirty cars all braking as hard as possible without losing control and lots of people wiggling while braking to try and get some extra stopping distance. I stopped about a foot before hitting the car in front of me. The car behind me had even less space. That was just the momentum of small fuel conscious cars. I suspect it would work out much worse nowadays with all the SUVs, crossovers and trucks.
This is part of why I stopped driving twenty years ago.
posted by srboisvert at 11:46 AM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
It's a tragic example of the kind of thoughtless entitlement that defines the (white, southern) Greek experience at these schools.
To see just how much entitlement this tragedy embodies, imagine a black sorority walking down Highway 6 for charity.
You can't because they'd never do it! And it would never even cross their minds to do it.
They'd know all too well that the very least they could expect would be the most vicious, obscene, and degrading sexual harassment human depravity can devise (coupled with deliberate endangerment) from a certain group of white male drivers -- it's tempting to say 'class' rather than 'group', but this kind of behavior reaches into all classes.
And Southern white sorority girls know this, they know it in their bones. They know that terrible things are being done all around them, and done in their name -- what did Dylan Roof say to the black church ladies before he murdered them in their pews?
And they know that they are largely immune from those terrible things.
And this charity walk was, among other things, a performance of and a ratification of that knowing immunity -- which is one of the essential elements of upper class Southern White Womanhood.
posted by jamjam at 11:53 AM on March 29, 2017 [15 favorites]
To see just how much entitlement this tragedy embodies, imagine a black sorority walking down Highway 6 for charity.
You can't because they'd never do it! And it would never even cross their minds to do it.
They'd know all too well that the very least they could expect would be the most vicious, obscene, and degrading sexual harassment human depravity can devise (coupled with deliberate endangerment) from a certain group of white male drivers -- it's tempting to say 'class' rather than 'group', but this kind of behavior reaches into all classes.
And Southern white sorority girls know this, they know it in their bones. They know that terrible things are being done all around them, and done in their name -- what did Dylan Roof say to the black church ladies before he murdered them in their pews?
And they know that they are largely immune from those terrible things.
And this charity walk was, among other things, a performance of and a ratification of that knowing immunity -- which is one of the essential elements of upper class Southern White Womanhood.
posted by jamjam at 11:53 AM on March 29, 2017 [15 favorites]
Wow jesus lord it is not white women's privilege that Dylan Roof killed for, it is the toxic masculinity that views white women's bodies as belonging to white men.
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:04 PM on March 29, 2017 [12 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:04 PM on March 29, 2017 [12 favorites]
There's a spot on the 401 where it crests a hill about a mile ahead of the 401/404/DVP interchange. And if things are backed up at the exits, traffic can end up stopped pretty close to the top of that hill. It's dangerous as hell, and it all went wrong one day when I was on my way to work.
A bunch of traffic crested the hill to discover that we were practically on top of the stopped traffic ahead of us, and it was taking up 3 lanes instead of the more normal 2 (exit lane + one other full of people who missed the back of the line trying to get into the exit lane). I was expecting to have to pull off into the exit line pretty quickly past the hill so I was slowing down, and I managed to stop, but the semi-truck a couple of cars behind me jack-knifed as he slammed on the breaks, and the trailer came around, taking out a whole bunch of cars in front of him as they also frantically tried to stop. A bunch more hit him from behind.
He didn't hit me, and I was ahead of a highway closure that lasted most of the day as they investigated the accident, because there was at least one fatality, so other than the moments of terror as I saw the side of a tractor trailer coming at me way too fast in my rearview mirror, it didn't really affect me. But I remain pretty certain that I have never been closer to dying than in that moment.
I'm not sure there's a realistic engineering solution for that kind of problem -- the expectation at highway speeds is that the stuff in front of you is also going at highway speeds and sometimes due to bumps and turns in the road, you don't have visibility out to your entire stopping distance. Maybe reduced speed limits, but that would cause increased bottlenecks, and probably more (although less serious crashes). Some kind of computer vision system that provides a warning light of stopped/slow traffic over the crest of the hill?
posted by jacquilynne at 12:07 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
A bunch of traffic crested the hill to discover that we were practically on top of the stopped traffic ahead of us, and it was taking up 3 lanes instead of the more normal 2 (exit lane + one other full of people who missed the back of the line trying to get into the exit lane). I was expecting to have to pull off into the exit line pretty quickly past the hill so I was slowing down, and I managed to stop, but the semi-truck a couple of cars behind me jack-knifed as he slammed on the breaks, and the trailer came around, taking out a whole bunch of cars in front of him as they also frantically tried to stop. A bunch more hit him from behind.
He didn't hit me, and I was ahead of a highway closure that lasted most of the day as they investigated the accident, because there was at least one fatality, so other than the moments of terror as I saw the side of a tractor trailer coming at me way too fast in my rearview mirror, it didn't really affect me. But I remain pretty certain that I have never been closer to dying than in that moment.
I'm not sure there's a realistic engineering solution for that kind of problem -- the expectation at highway speeds is that the stuff in front of you is also going at highway speeds and sometimes due to bumps and turns in the road, you don't have visibility out to your entire stopping distance. Maybe reduced speed limits, but that would cause increased bottlenecks, and probably more (although less serious crashes). Some kind of computer vision system that provides a warning light of stopped/slow traffic over the crest of the hill?
posted by jacquilynne at 12:07 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
So, about halfway through the second page, I had to take a moment to think through the antipathy I was feeling for the girls. What was so special about these girls that they deserved a 3000+ person memorial? Not a thing! Their familial wealth, membership in an exclusive sorority, or even their youth and beauty doesn't entitle them to any more consideration than you or I.
But it doesn't mean they deserve any less, either. Once I accepted that, I could finish the article and find compassion for everyone in it. The author recognizes there are multiple tragedies in this story -- I think the fact that we are so inconsistent and capricious in the care we show our fellow travelers in life can just be added to the list.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:10 PM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
But it doesn't mean they deserve any less, either. Once I accepted that, I could finish the article and find compassion for everyone in it. The author recognizes there are multiple tragedies in this story -- I think the fact that we are so inconsistent and capricious in the care we show our fellow travelers in life can just be added to the list.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:10 PM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
I stand corrected about the author. I still think the article's context justifies most of the apparent flaw.
I'm glad to know that young women don't deserve sympathy because of their race. And that they are responsible for the violence performed by others.
I'd like to present a thought experiment here. Pretend this were a story about a fraternity. Pretend this were a story about a bunch of young, stupid frat boys. Let's make them even dumber than here: let's say ten frat boys jamb into a car and drive to a party just out of town, only for the (somewhat intoxicated) driver to drive off the road as they're returning home.
And let's make this a story about how those young men fall apart. How the few survivors of that accident try to deal with the fallout, how the friends who stayed home are scarred, how their school comes together or falls apart.
Unless you can say that you would express as little sympathy for those frat boys, what you are doing is using class and race issues to hide your misogyny.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 12:14 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm glad to know that young women don't deserve sympathy because of their race. And that they are responsible for the violence performed by others.
I'd like to present a thought experiment here. Pretend this were a story about a fraternity. Pretend this were a story about a bunch of young, stupid frat boys. Let's make them even dumber than here: let's say ten frat boys jamb into a car and drive to a party just out of town, only for the (somewhat intoxicated) driver to drive off the road as they're returning home.
And let's make this a story about how those young men fall apart. How the few survivors of that accident try to deal with the fallout, how the friends who stayed home are scarred, how their school comes together or falls apart.
Unless you can say that you would express as little sympathy for those frat boys, what you are doing is using class and race issues to hide your misogyny.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 12:14 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
in actual fact there are stretches of interstates where there is no way that a tractor trailer carrying heavy machinery can possibly come to a dead stop in time no matter how attentive the driver is. It's like asking a train to stop because someone stalled out on a crossing. And if trucks travelled at the speeds and separation needed for it to happen, the highway system wouldn't function as a highway system.
Which means that the efficient operation of our economic system, as it depends on regular delivery by long-haul truckers, requires the occasional human sacrifice. I wonder how much driverless trucks will change that? I assume that they'll be safer, but not perfectly safe.
posted by layceepee at 12:15 PM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
Which means that the efficient operation of our economic system, as it depends on regular delivery by long-haul truckers, requires the occasional human sacrifice. I wonder how much driverless trucks will change that? I assume that they'll be safer, but not perfectly safe.
posted by layceepee at 12:15 PM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
Unless you can say that you would express as little sympathy for those frat boys, what you are doing is using class and race issues to hide your misogyny.
I am pretty near 100 percent certain that no one here would not express as little sympathy, and in fact far less, for those frat boys.
posted by Etrigan at 12:19 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
I am pretty near 100 percent certain that no one here would not express as little sympathy, and in fact far less, for those frat boys.
posted by Etrigan at 12:19 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
And some of us have said outright that the introduction of the piece, designed to make the young women interesting and relatable to us, to prime our empathy for the tragedy, failed to do so. Some of us here have wondered whether it was a flaw in the writing or a result of our experiences as young women, in college, who were alienated from sorority girls by choice or by the design of sororities.
A few have noted that, even now, the racial divide in Mississippi is stark and grotesque, but that's really not been a dominant theme in this thread, to my reading anyway.
posted by crush at 12:33 PM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
A few have noted that, even now, the racial divide in Mississippi is stark and grotesque, but that's really not been a dominant theme in this thread, to my reading anyway.
posted by crush at 12:33 PM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
We are at a very specific moment in American history when visceral loathing of wealthy white people and their multiple blind privileges among many of us on this site is pretty fucking high--especially of white women--and super-especially of rich white women from the south. This story is complex, and it's not an excuse, but I think recent events and their aftermath go a long way to explaining the hostility and lack of empathy on display in the thread.
posted by tzikeh at 12:33 PM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by tzikeh at 12:33 PM on March 29, 2017 [6 favorites]
And I'm not excluding myself, either--even knowing all of this logically, I have very little sympathy to spare for the victims of this story right now, except for Davis. I think I might have felt differently in a different year.
posted by tzikeh at 12:37 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by tzikeh at 12:37 PM on March 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
Worth pointing out, maybe, that this article first appeared in the magazine back in 2012 (according to the note at the bottom of the page), when a piece asking for empathy for privileged white people was, maybe, a little less fraught.
posted by soundguy99 at 12:42 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by soundguy99 at 12:42 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Folks, it's a hard time in the world and people are stressed, let's please have some grace for each other, and not go after each other in here. This is a tragedy, the US has lots of bad oppressive social structures, these things can both be true. If you don't care about these women or think other people shouldn't care, that's fine but maybe step away from the thread then. If you're in here, let's be decent to one another.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:47 PM on March 29, 2017 [18 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:47 PM on March 29, 2017 [18 favorites]
I kind of want us all to chew on the idea that in other posts we have no problem railing against people who can't or won't empathize with people who need healthcare, or immigrants, or .... but in here we have outright contention over how much empathy these women deserve for watching their friends die in a horribly graphic way.
I really don't mean that to be veiled moral superiority. I mean, let's actually think about how little it takes for any of us to decide that Those Other People shouldn't get empathy. We have to do better.
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:55 PM on March 29, 2017 [34 favorites]
I really don't mean that to be veiled moral superiority. I mean, let's actually think about how little it takes for any of us to decide that Those Other People shouldn't get empathy. We have to do better.
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:55 PM on March 29, 2017 [34 favorites]
I'm really disturbed-- and, frankly, disappointed-- by how uncharitable (and, frankly, cruel) people are regarding these girls.
me, too - i don't think these people realize it, but it's actually a PRIVELEGE to get through your college days without having something tragic happening to a good friend of yours
i don't have to imagine this - like me and our other friends, K was wandering the world like keroauc and got hit by a car by big sur and that was that
so his girlfriend was devestated and his best friend was too - maybe it had nothing to do with it, but he killed himself 10 or so years later, i recently heard
come to think of it, it's a privelege to get through high school without something like that happen - my nephew decided one day not to take the bus, but take a ride with a friend - even though he always wore a seat belt, for some reason he didn't - and for whatever reason, the kid that was driving turned the corner too fast and he was ejected from the car and broke his neck and that was that
he was the most popular kid in school, i guess - just about everyone from his high school was there for the service and the funeral, hundreds of people - they all seemed like it was utterly incomprehensible to them that this could have happened ...
shit happens - count your blessings, people - and being lucky is not a license to snark
posted by pyramid termite at 1:00 PM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
me, too - i don't think these people realize it, but it's actually a PRIVELEGE to get through your college days without having something tragic happening to a good friend of yours
i don't have to imagine this - like me and our other friends, K was wandering the world like keroauc and got hit by a car by big sur and that was that
so his girlfriend was devestated and his best friend was too - maybe it had nothing to do with it, but he killed himself 10 or so years later, i recently heard
come to think of it, it's a privelege to get through high school without something like that happen - my nephew decided one day not to take the bus, but take a ride with a friend - even though he always wore a seat belt, for some reason he didn't - and for whatever reason, the kid that was driving turned the corner too fast and he was ejected from the car and broke his neck and that was that
he was the most popular kid in school, i guess - just about everyone from his high school was there for the service and the funeral, hundreds of people - they all seemed like it was utterly incomprehensible to them that this could have happened ...
shit happens - count your blessings, people - and being lucky is not a license to snark
posted by pyramid termite at 1:00 PM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]
You can sympathize with their loss and simultaneously recognize and discuss the privilege that underlies every aspect of the story. Hell, it's unlikely that the police officer would have been so carefully deferential if they weren't both white and marked as superior class by their particular Ole Miss sorority -- which as the story points out they were very careful to constantly display the markers of. So the fact that they were in that disaster-waiting-to-happen situation was a result of their privilege; anyone non-white would be unlikely to do this frivolously, as jamjam pointed out, and even poor white people would likely have been told to leave or be arrested by the officer when they decided to block the road with the car.
posted by tavella at 1:06 PM on March 29, 2017 [14 favorites]
posted by tavella at 1:06 PM on March 29, 2017 [14 favorites]
That Thursday morning, March 26, Beth, an honors student with deep red hair, drove us to Batesville in the Nissan Maxima her parents had given her for high school graduation. We piled in on each other's laps, as many as could fit. Beth had organized the walkathon because she was our activities chairman, and she planned to do it the same way the chapter had done it for years: start in the McDonald's parking lot, walk to benefit the Mississippi Kidney Foundation, assign cars to deliver fresh crews throughout the day and take the tired ones home.
This paragraph, for instance, introduces us to Beth by telling us her parents gave her a car that cost around $17,000 in 1987 (around $37,000 in 2017 dollars). She's an honor student, but why? Because she's smart? Because she plans to be a doctor? Because she's driven? We don't know--she's just a girl whose parents gave her an expensive car and does things the way they've always been done. I had to read the piece twice to realize she was one of the dead.
We're told their promise is "congenital"--that is to say, not theirs, but an accident of their birth. When the author mentions telling her friend she's nervous walking like this, there's no explication. Was anyone else scared? Was everyone blithe? She gives the girls names, but no personalities. The author grieves in the moment by buying a funeral dress.
I know it's a short piece and not a novel, but the thrill of being in a sorority is defined by the swag, not the fellowship. And that swag telegraphs particular desirable qualities about the wearers, which the author mentions. That could be humanizing, if it's presented as a folly of sheltered youthfulness or as a false promise of untouchability, which it is not.
One victim, Maggie, is identified as a person in the story by the company her father owns, not by the qualities she had. So when the author, at the end, talks about reuniting with her, we have no idea of any contrast in Maggie before and after the accident.
I'm a middle class white woman who was in college in 1988 and who had a friend die in college--it should take no effort at all for the author to be able to give me something to hang relatability on, but she just fails to make these young women human in the part of the article before the accident.
There is always a lot to unpack with regards to empathy and which victims get the bulk of our tears, but I'm willing to suggest that there's a failure to sketch the sorority as comprised of vibrant or multi-dimensional women at the outset which undermines emotional response to the piece.
It, honestly, almost feels deliberate. When the author writes After college I lost touch with most of my Chi O friends. I moved to Washington, D.C., and then to Charlotte, away from the everyday lives of anyone I knew. I didn't stay in Mississippi to marry a houseboy, or be in my friends' weddings, or to raise my children alongside theirs—not because I rejected that life but because the option simply never occurred to me. The voice that told other girls to stay told me to go. I get the hint that she really did not have much to say about her sisters as individual people because she never thought of them that way in college. They were all just Chi O Templates.
It would have been much more interesting to read about that. How the accident may have served as an acceptable excuse for her or others to step away from the inevitability of post-sorority life paths. Or how reconnecting with the others later showed her that her dichotomy of marrying a houseboy or explicitly rejecting that (note: the author claims she did neither) was false all along.
I dunno. I'm still a little surprised to have been so unmoved by the article, but it's not because I hate privileged young white women, despite whatever internalized misogyny I have.
posted by crush at 1:18 PM on March 29, 2017 [14 favorites]
This paragraph, for instance, introduces us to Beth by telling us her parents gave her a car that cost around $17,000 in 1987 (around $37,000 in 2017 dollars). She's an honor student, but why? Because she's smart? Because she plans to be a doctor? Because she's driven? We don't know--she's just a girl whose parents gave her an expensive car and does things the way they've always been done. I had to read the piece twice to realize she was one of the dead.
We're told their promise is "congenital"--that is to say, not theirs, but an accident of their birth. When the author mentions telling her friend she's nervous walking like this, there's no explication. Was anyone else scared? Was everyone blithe? She gives the girls names, but no personalities. The author grieves in the moment by buying a funeral dress.
I know it's a short piece and not a novel, but the thrill of being in a sorority is defined by the swag, not the fellowship. And that swag telegraphs particular desirable qualities about the wearers, which the author mentions. That could be humanizing, if it's presented as a folly of sheltered youthfulness or as a false promise of untouchability, which it is not.
One victim, Maggie, is identified as a person in the story by the company her father owns, not by the qualities she had. So when the author, at the end, talks about reuniting with her, we have no idea of any contrast in Maggie before and after the accident.
I'm a middle class white woman who was in college in 1988 and who had a friend die in college--it should take no effort at all for the author to be able to give me something to hang relatability on, but she just fails to make these young women human in the part of the article before the accident.
There is always a lot to unpack with regards to empathy and which victims get the bulk of our tears, but I'm willing to suggest that there's a failure to sketch the sorority as comprised of vibrant or multi-dimensional women at the outset which undermines emotional response to the piece.
It, honestly, almost feels deliberate. When the author writes After college I lost touch with most of my Chi O friends. I moved to Washington, D.C., and then to Charlotte, away from the everyday lives of anyone I knew. I didn't stay in Mississippi to marry a houseboy, or be in my friends' weddings, or to raise my children alongside theirs—not because I rejected that life but because the option simply never occurred to me. The voice that told other girls to stay told me to go. I get the hint that she really did not have much to say about her sisters as individual people because she never thought of them that way in college. They were all just Chi O Templates.
It would have been much more interesting to read about that. How the accident may have served as an acceptable excuse for her or others to step away from the inevitability of post-sorority life paths. Or how reconnecting with the others later showed her that her dichotomy of marrying a houseboy or explicitly rejecting that (note: the author claims she did neither) was false all along.
I dunno. I'm still a little surprised to have been so unmoved by the article, but it's not because I hate privileged young white women, despite whatever internalized misogyny I have.
posted by crush at 1:18 PM on March 29, 2017 [14 favorites]
Mod note: A couple comments deleted; let's back it up and focus on the actual article rather than other people in the thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:35 PM on March 29, 2017
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:35 PM on March 29, 2017
There is always a lot to unpack with regards to empathy and which victims get the bulk of our tears, but I'm willing to suggest that there's a failure to sketch the sorority as comprised of vibrant or multi-dimensional women at the outset which undermines emotional response to the piece.I kind of wonder if that's a distancing mechanism to deal with her own trauma. She's a fairly prolific writer who has published a lot of stuff, and it took her an awfully long time to write about this. I'm wondering if some of the oddness has to do with her own coping mechanisms, which maybe don't let her write about it with as much emotional intensity as she would write about something that didn't affect her so personally.
Anyway, it's an odd piece. It kind of made me think of this very different essay by a woman who also walked away from what later that day became a site of tragedy.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:45 PM on March 29, 2017 [10 favorites]
(And I should say that the oddness is not what it has in common with "The Fourth State of Matter." "The Fourth State of Matter" is not odd. It's a pretty great piece of writing.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:49 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:49 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
As far as liability in the accident is concerned, a lot of people think that any driver that rear ends another is always considered to be at fault, but that is not true. Some years ago a friend of mine borrowed my truck and got rear-ended. The other driver claimed she had cut him off and she was charged with the accident. I don't remember if she got a ticket, and I wasn't there so have no idea what really happened, but it is possible to be rear-ended and still be at fault. Additionally, most, if not all, states have laws against impeding traffic or something similar which would likely apply to the girls in this case. Of course, it would have been incredibly callous for the police to charge them after such a horrific event, but then again, law enforcement isn't always so compassionate.
posted by TedW at 1:49 PM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by TedW at 1:49 PM on March 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
She starts the article by saying she moved away and didn't really stay in touch. I get the impression she wasn't returning for homecoming every year and generally wasn't engaged as an alumnus of the sorority or school. When I think back to the guys in my fraternity that weren't my closest friends back then, and that I haven't kept in touch with since, do you know what I can remember about them? The car they drove, their taste in music, where they were from, their girlfriend, all very shallow type of stuff. That is the stuff that is important to you at 18 years old, so it's what sticks when you think back 25 years later. It's not indicative of anything other than how the 18 - 22 year old brain works.
posted by COD at 1:58 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by COD at 1:58 PM on March 29, 2017 [4 favorites]
(adds sorority girls being dismembered in traffic accidents to list of things we don't do well)
posted by thelonius at 2:32 PM on March 29, 2017 [23 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 2:32 PM on March 29, 2017 [23 favorites]
Wow. This thread has really made clear to me that most Mefites who like to contextualize (or legitimate) their own opinions through reference to systemic inequality don't understand the actual theories of structural power which inform contemporary rhetoric about politics, inequality, and social justice.
Pretty much all paradigms of structural power have one thing in common: none of them neatly allows for individuals to be assigned full agency within a particular configuration of power. In fact, the workings of systemic power cannot be perfectly isolated at the level of the individual, period. (If they could be so located, then structural power wouldn't be so insidious and difficult to resist.) Thus, ascribing the sins of the system to an individual location within the system is a gross misinterpretation of what such theories allow.
In other words, you should find some other reason not to care about fellow human beings killed on a charity walkathon while white. Structural power isn't a valid reason.
posted by mylittlepoppet at 2:58 PM on March 29, 2017 [33 favorites]
Pretty much all paradigms of structural power have one thing in common: none of them neatly allows for individuals to be assigned full agency within a particular configuration of power. In fact, the workings of systemic power cannot be perfectly isolated at the level of the individual, period. (If they could be so located, then structural power wouldn't be so insidious and difficult to resist.) Thus, ascribing the sins of the system to an individual location within the system is a gross misinterpretation of what such theories allow.
In other words, you should find some other reason not to care about fellow human beings killed on a charity walkathon while white. Structural power isn't a valid reason.
posted by mylittlepoppet at 2:58 PM on March 29, 2017 [33 favorites]
... that's a remarkable act of projection, there. I have the same sort of mild regret I would have on hearing of anyone dying young and hard, and it's about as generic as you would expect from an article that portrays them very generically -- do you come away with any sense of personality in the dead girls beyond 'happy sorority girl'? Part of why we are interested in the driver is that his sister's comments about him never driving again, how he would walk and hitch a ride rather than get behind a wheel again, paint such a quick vivid portrait of pain and sorrow.
The parts the author thinks are the core of the story just aren't made that interesting, despite what would seem a vivid subject matter. What's more interesting is what's under the surface, especially if you have some knowledge of the time and the place. A better writer might have investigated *why* Davis wasn't charged. The usual line is that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, yet that didn't happen here. Chi Omega has powerful alumnae, I can't imagine it wouldn't have been to the prosecutor's career advantage to try him. Was it a contrary jury? A surprisingly ethical prosecutor?
Even when we meet the older women, they are all chirpy survivors, even Snowe who seemed to have been the most traumatized. The brief mentions of the sorrow of individual parents at the end do work better -- the one who leaves flowers not because her daughter died there but because she didn't in particular.
posted by tavella at 3:52 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
The parts the author thinks are the core of the story just aren't made that interesting, despite what would seem a vivid subject matter. What's more interesting is what's under the surface, especially if you have some knowledge of the time and the place. A better writer might have investigated *why* Davis wasn't charged. The usual line is that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, yet that didn't happen here. Chi Omega has powerful alumnae, I can't imagine it wouldn't have been to the prosecutor's career advantage to try him. Was it a contrary jury? A surprisingly ethical prosecutor?
Even when we meet the older women, they are all chirpy survivors, even Snowe who seemed to have been the most traumatized. The brief mentions of the sorrow of individual parents at the end do work better -- the one who leaves flowers not because her daughter died there but because she didn't in particular.
posted by tavella at 3:52 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]
I thought this was a moving article about a very sad tragedy. I cannot remotely imagine what it must be like to be involved in an accident like this - either as a victim or a bystander.
But holy wow, the lack of sympathy in this thread because the girls were in a sorority is totally gross. Would you feel the same if it were a service organization on campus? Or a church group?
posted by tryniti at 6:30 PM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
But holy wow, the lack of sympathy in this thread because the girls were in a sorority is totally gross. Would you feel the same if it were a service organization on campus? Or a church group?
posted by tryniti at 6:30 PM on March 29, 2017 [16 favorites]
"The Fourth State of Matter" is not odd. It's a pretty great piece of writing.
Agree; it was powerful. Thanks for sharing it.
posted by TedW at 6:34 PM on March 29, 2017
Agree; it was powerful. Thanks for sharing it.
posted by TedW at 6:34 PM on March 29, 2017
Apparently there were 2 escort cars. The driver swerved to avoid the first escort car, and as a result, hit the second. Seems to me he did his best to avoid an accident. The adults supervising/advising the sorority should really have stopped them from walking on that highway.
posted by aielen at 12:50 AM on March 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by aielen at 12:50 AM on March 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
Fairly sure that this is the site. 400m west is (I think) the top of a rise & a crossing junction.
Yes, these girls were privileged, but going on a charity walkathon is not some act of oppression that holds down the underclasses: Surely the whole point of social justice is to open up those kind of choices to everyone? (Even if sometimes, as in this case, they turn out to be terrible choices.)
posted by pharm at 1:46 AM on March 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
Yes, these girls were privileged, but going on a charity walkathon is not some act of oppression that holds down the underclasses: Surely the whole point of social justice is to open up those kind of choices to everyone? (Even if sometimes, as in this case, they turn out to be terrible choices.)
posted by pharm at 1:46 AM on March 30, 2017 [4 favorites]
This is such a sad story. Count me as another person who is baffled that you can read the subtext of this article as "thoughtless entitlement that defines the (white, southern) Greek experience."
posted by laptolain at 7:16 AM on March 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by laptolain at 7:16 AM on March 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
It's subjective how you judge the artistic merits of the piece, I guess. The responses are as varied as the ones to a fictional movie I posted about on FanFare, Margaret, about a wealthy white Jewish teenage girl in New York who comforts a dying woman in an accident that the girl partly caused.
There are objections on artistic grounds (it doesn't place emphasis on any of the things a reasonable person would value about an incident like that) and on grounds of the worthiness of the protagonist (rich white girl thoughtless entitlement).
From a non-US outside perspective, the negativity is repugnant coming from Americans, an irredeemably white supremacist nation poisoned with ugly identity politics, that chose Donald Trump to represent and enforce your values to the rest of the world. I am in no way being sarcastic when I say this. It doesn't make you look nearly as virtuous as you think it does.
posted by tel3path at 3:57 PM on March 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
There are objections on artistic grounds (it doesn't place emphasis on any of the things a reasonable person would value about an incident like that) and on grounds of the worthiness of the protagonist (rich white girl thoughtless entitlement).
From a non-US outside perspective, the negativity is repugnant coming from Americans, an irredeemably white supremacist nation poisoned with ugly identity politics, that chose Donald Trump to represent and enforce your values to the rest of the world. I am in no way being sarcastic when I say this. It doesn't make you look nearly as virtuous as you think it does.
posted by tel3path at 3:57 PM on March 30, 2017 [3 favorites]
I almost killed a pedestrian. My butt was off my seat. I was actually standing on the brake pedal.
Western Ave., DC. Rain. She closed her eyes and stretched her arms towards me. When I'd managed to stop her fingers were on the hood. That close. People honked at us. I will never forget the way she looked. Just holding her hands out for death.
My instinct was to grab her and get both of us off the road before somebody hit my car and she kept apologizing. It was weird. She was thinking about how I would have felt.
I drove her to the courthouse. This thread makes me think about how different I'd be if she had entered my car through the windshield.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:17 PM on March 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
Western Ave., DC. Rain. She closed her eyes and stretched her arms towards me. When I'd managed to stop her fingers were on the hood. That close. People honked at us. I will never forget the way she looked. Just holding her hands out for death.
My instinct was to grab her and get both of us off the road before somebody hit my car and she kept apologizing. It was weird. She was thinking about how I would have felt.
I drove her to the courthouse. This thread makes me think about how different I'd be if she had entered my car through the windshield.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:17 PM on March 30, 2017 [7 favorites]
I think it's a sad story, but I feel like the piece really, really wants me to have extra bonus sympathy for them because they were so pretty and full of promise. Like, we're supposed to mourn them harder because of how special they were. That's basically gross.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:28 PM on March 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 11:28 PM on March 30, 2017 [8 favorites]
So I'm an alumna of a sorority. I joined because I was kind of lonely on campus after my core friend group drifted apart. I wanted a community to be a part of, and I wasn't really sure about greek life, but I happened to meet some people in one and we really clicked so I pursued it and joined. Sure, it was one of the "weirder sororities" on campus, so we probably don't fit any of the stereotypes that yall hold very neatly - but very much a sorority nonetheless. It was a truly special community of people who make a commitment to get to know you and to be there for you on a whole 'nother level - with a pretty impressive level of pointedly doing good (including but not limited to fundraising for a very meaningful cause) thrown into the mix. For someone like me who is otherwise really insecure about whether I'm, like, bothering people by trying to be their friend, it was heaven.
I could talk for a long time about the complexities of being within that system and personally benefiting immensely from the community but also resenting the hell out of the system and the factors that keep people out, but I know it's a little out of scope, so all I'll say is that it's a little bit like (to give an example that some mefites have experience with) attending an elite university. Like a university, if you fit well with the place that you are (recognizing that the factors that help you fit in don't exactly arise in a vacuum), there are some awesome benefits and you get to spend some time building truly unique relationships and developing as a person and all that...while still existing within an institution rooted in a lot of grossness, and acknowledging that, and many of your peers acknowledging that too. As much as I can, I apologize on behalf of, like, the panhellenic council for the exclusion and hegemony and racism and other negative things placed on people in the name of these organizations, and (if it helps) I'd like you to know that there are a ton of number of people who fight those parts of the system internally too. And we're painfully aware of the stereotypes...I'm careful to hide pictures and affiliations with letters and things in them on social media, because I don't want people who hold those assumptions to think less of me. It's not unusual, either.
We never walked out on a highway, but like any college students, we did occasionally do things that assumed some nonzero level of risk (though nationals was damn strict about assessing and mitigating risk for every event, and this would have never ever flown in a million years). I sure hope that if I had died in an accident during a fundraising event, people wouldn't be talking about how hard it was to summon any sympathy. Shit. Hopefully my perspective can help you humanize these women a little more?
posted by R a c h e l at 3:48 PM on March 31, 2017 [11 favorites]
I could talk for a long time about the complexities of being within that system and personally benefiting immensely from the community but also resenting the hell out of the system and the factors that keep people out, but I know it's a little out of scope, so all I'll say is that it's a little bit like (to give an example that some mefites have experience with) attending an elite university. Like a university, if you fit well with the place that you are (recognizing that the factors that help you fit in don't exactly arise in a vacuum), there are some awesome benefits and you get to spend some time building truly unique relationships and developing as a person and all that...while still existing within an institution rooted in a lot of grossness, and acknowledging that, and many of your peers acknowledging that too. As much as I can, I apologize on behalf of, like, the panhellenic council for the exclusion and hegemony and racism and other negative things placed on people in the name of these organizations, and (if it helps) I'd like you to know that there are a ton of number of people who fight those parts of the system internally too. And we're painfully aware of the stereotypes...I'm careful to hide pictures and affiliations with letters and things in them on social media, because I don't want people who hold those assumptions to think less of me. It's not unusual, either.
We never walked out on a highway, but like any college students, we did occasionally do things that assumed some nonzero level of risk (though nationals was damn strict about assessing and mitigating risk for every event, and this would have never ever flown in a million years). I sure hope that if I had died in an accident during a fundraising event, people wouldn't be talking about how hard it was to summon any sympathy. Shit. Hopefully my perspective can help you humanize these women a little more?
posted by R a c h e l at 3:48 PM on March 31, 2017 [11 favorites]
I'm a middle aged male coastal type, and I didn't feel much of a connection to the opening stories of sorority women in the south. I definitely felt recognition on the description to walking on the side of a busy road, unsafely, while cars zip by and thinking damn, this is stupid.
Even if I hadn't I wouldn't have thought that reading about a crowd getting dismembered in a horrific accident, so bad that the driver that hit them, still scarred decades later, still a victim . . . well, I'm not sure how much I need the writing to be top notch or some feeling of close connection to get the impact.
I was going to post yesterday how, if this were a half-dozen white male Google engineers killed on the AIDS Ride the type of responses would have been overwhelmingly different. Dispassionate musings about privilege, people posting primarily to say how interesting it is that they lack sympathy, and literary criticism lite would be hard to imagine. Certainly not as the main thread of discussion. Even though in the scheme of things some 20-year old women from a poor state attending a state university are relatively far down the privilege ladder compared to ultra fit Bay Area programmers.
Unfortunately we actually have a story about a white cyclist killed on the front page of the blue. I'm glad the response there is 100% sympathy because it would've been crappy if someone chimed in about how easy his life was. But this thread here is leaving me in a crappy mood.
Thinking about one's own privilege to countercheck any knee jerk judgments about someone else's situation makes a lot of sense. Forgetting about it--for example, even the simple privilege of being alive and having made it into full adulthood--to muse aloud on a lack of sympathy for dead youths doesn't really seem like it's actually at all on board with any element of social justice.
posted by mark k at 8:05 PM on March 31, 2017 [6 favorites]
Even if I hadn't I wouldn't have thought that reading about a crowd getting dismembered in a horrific accident, so bad that the driver that hit them, still scarred decades later, still a victim . . . well, I'm not sure how much I need the writing to be top notch or some feeling of close connection to get the impact.
I was going to post yesterday how, if this were a half-dozen white male Google engineers killed on the AIDS Ride the type of responses would have been overwhelmingly different. Dispassionate musings about privilege, people posting primarily to say how interesting it is that they lack sympathy, and literary criticism lite would be hard to imagine. Certainly not as the main thread of discussion. Even though in the scheme of things some 20-year old women from a poor state attending a state university are relatively far down the privilege ladder compared to ultra fit Bay Area programmers.
Unfortunately we actually have a story about a white cyclist killed on the front page of the blue. I'm glad the response there is 100% sympathy because it would've been crappy if someone chimed in about how easy his life was. But this thread here is leaving me in a crappy mood.
Thinking about one's own privilege to countercheck any knee jerk judgments about someone else's situation makes a lot of sense. Forgetting about it--for example, even the simple privilege of being alive and having made it into full adulthood--to muse aloud on a lack of sympathy for dead youths doesn't really seem like it's actually at all on board with any element of social justice.
posted by mark k at 8:05 PM on March 31, 2017 [6 favorites]
Even though in the scheme of things some 20-year old women from a poor state attending a state university are relatively far down the privilege ladder compared to ultra fit Bay Area programmers.This seems like just a fundamental misperception about where Ole Miss fits in Mississippi society and the role that the Greek system there plays in sustaining and reproducing that state's ruling class. I take your point, but I also think you're missing some serious context here.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:46 PM on March 31, 2017 [7 favorites]
So many victims here- from the women who died, the women who survived, their loved ones, and the driver. Just a tragic accident really.
posted by daybeforetheday at 10:04 PM on April 1, 2017
posted by daybeforetheday at 10:04 PM on April 1, 2017
ArbitraryAndCapricious is right. Ole Miss itself isn't entirely rich kids, but the kids who join the top tier Greek houses are very, very often scions of the wealthiest and most connected families in the state.
Bay Area programmers are not in their league, or really even playing the same game.
posted by uberchet at 12:01 PM on April 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
Bay Area programmers are not in their league, or really even playing the same game.
posted by uberchet at 12:01 PM on April 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
Serious question: ARE THERE any sororities or fraternities that are meaningfully integrated?
Greek life at Alabama remains incredibly segregated. The old-line, old-money houses are exclusively white. I'm sure it's the same at Ole Miss, or at Tennessee, or Georgia, or Texas, or LSU. I'd be surprised if it were different at Michigan or Wisconsin or Cal or Oregon, really. There appears to be something in the DNA of those organizations that makes them racist.
(Yes, there are also exclusively or nearly-exclusively black greek organizations, and no it's not the same thing.)
posted by uberchet at 2:16 PM on April 3, 2017
Greek life at Alabama remains incredibly segregated. The old-line, old-money houses are exclusively white. I'm sure it's the same at Ole Miss, or at Tennessee, or Georgia, or Texas, or LSU. I'd be surprised if it were different at Michigan or Wisconsin or Cal or Oregon, really. There appears to be something in the DNA of those organizations that makes them racist.
(Yes, there are also exclusively or nearly-exclusively black greek organizations, and no it's not the same thing.)
posted by uberchet at 2:16 PM on April 3, 2017
I just found this, which is a report on Greek integration at Alabama.
As of 2016, Alabama had 34,859 undergraduates. 28,219 were white. 4,097 were Black or African-American, so about 12% of the student body.
The report helpfully breaks things out by Panhellenic groups, which may be "greek" to folks from outside this world, so I'll explain.
The Alabama Panhellenic Association is the umbrella group that covers the white Greek letter organizations. The National Pan-Hellenic Association, on the other hand, is the overarching group for the traditionally black Greek letter organizations.
So: Of those 35,000 undergrads, 7,145 are in an APA group. 6,907 of them are white, and a good chunk of the balance are hispanic (the figures allow for multiple identification, so the total is > the 7,145 figure). The killshot is that (a) only 72 of those 7,000 identify as black, and (b) this represents a 3500% change from 2012.
posted by uberchet at 2:31 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
As of 2016, Alabama had 34,859 undergraduates. 28,219 were white. 4,097 were Black or African-American, so about 12% of the student body.
The report helpfully breaks things out by Panhellenic groups, which may be "greek" to folks from outside this world, so I'll explain.
The Alabama Panhellenic Association is the umbrella group that covers the white Greek letter organizations. The National Pan-Hellenic Association, on the other hand, is the overarching group for the traditionally black Greek letter organizations.
So: Of those 35,000 undergrads, 7,145 are in an APA group. 6,907 of them are white, and a good chunk of the balance are hispanic (the figures allow for multiple identification, so the total is > the 7,145 figure). The killshot is that (a) only 72 of those 7,000 identify as black, and (b) this represents a 3500% change from 2012.
posted by uberchet at 2:31 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
As of 2013, the 16 historically white sororities at UofA had accepted exactly one black woman. And not because no one tried; the article is focused around a black woman who received no bids despite the sorority members themselves saying that if she had been white, they would have been fighting over it. Interestingly, it's clear that in some cases the actual current members were angry about it, because they were flat out told by alumnae and even in one case a faculty advisor that they were not allowed to pledge her. It is very much a case of the ruling class, specifically the ruling white class, of Deep South states doing their best to replicate themselves and control access to power.
As for Old Miss, it wasn't until 2014 that any of the elite sororities allowed a black woman to join.
Now, I'm pretty sure that most of the members of the segregrated sororities during the 20th century would not have considered themselves white supremacists, and I'm sure most of them were individually perfectly nice people. Because that's not how it worked, or even how it works now; the assassination, the lynching, the dogs, those were for when the system broke down. On a day to day basis, white supremacy was enforced by perfectly lovely sounding and genteel men and women.
posted by tavella at 2:45 PM on April 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
As for Old Miss, it wasn't until 2014 that any of the elite sororities allowed a black woman to join.
Now, I'm pretty sure that most of the members of the segregrated sororities during the 20th century would not have considered themselves white supremacists, and I'm sure most of them were individually perfectly nice people. Because that's not how it worked, or even how it works now; the assassination, the lynching, the dogs, those were for when the system broke down. On a day to day basis, white supremacy was enforced by perfectly lovely sounding and genteel men and women.
posted by tavella at 2:45 PM on April 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
And I say this as a Virginian who went to another old line Southern university in the 1980s. I saw how the system worked.
posted by tavella at 2:46 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by tavella at 2:46 PM on April 3, 2017 [1 favorite]
And because I can't edit -- I meant "it" in "fighting over it" to mean fighting over the bid opportunity, not referring to the woman in question! Didn't realize what it could sound like until I reread.
posted by tavella at 3:00 PM on April 3, 2017
posted by tavella at 3:00 PM on April 3, 2017
Silicon Valley is also overwhelmingly non-black and male, yet I suspect a story about a bunch of dead programmers would *still* garner sympathy from people.
The same holds true for a story about a group of missionaries. Or, hell, about a bunch of girls from an elite high school.
I don't think it's some sort of nuanced understanding of how racial privilege is propagated through teenagers that's preventing people from sympathizing with these women.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:59 PM on April 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
The same holds true for a story about a group of missionaries. Or, hell, about a bunch of girls from an elite high school.
I don't think it's some sort of nuanced understanding of how racial privilege is propagated through teenagers that's preventing people from sympathizing with these women.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:59 PM on April 3, 2017 [6 favorites]
Did anyone here not think that Alabama was a deeply racist society throughout the C20th? It seems highly unlikely.
I still don’t get what the relevance is to this story. Unless it’s some variant on: These women were part of the social apex of a racist system supported by violence and therefore they deserved to get mown down on the highway. But everyone is busily tip-toeing around that one, because it’s unsayable even if that’s what they really think. Hence all the hedging?
I’m open to other interpretations though. Anyone?
posted by pharm at 7:55 AM on April 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
I still don’t get what the relevance is to this story. Unless it’s some variant on: These women were part of the social apex of a racist system supported by violence and therefore they deserved to get mown down on the highway. But everyone is busily tip-toeing around that one, because it’s unsayable even if that’s what they really think. Hence all the hedging?
I’m open to other interpretations though. Anyone?
posted by pharm at 7:55 AM on April 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
(To be clear: I don’t agree with that line of thought, but I can see that it could be quite compelling.)
posted by pharm at 7:56 AM on April 4, 2017
posted by pharm at 7:56 AM on April 4, 2017
I still don’t get what the relevance is to this story.I guess that for me, it became relevant when she decided to find the man who was driving the truck. She raises the fact that he was black, they were white, and they were in Mississippi, but she dismisses it. She says "I wondered if he, like me, was relieved that nothing was made of his race." And I'm wondering if he would agree that nothing was made of his race. I'm wondering if he, a black man from Mississippi who was a year younger than Emmett Till, didn't expect to make it to the hospital or police station alive after he was involved in an accident that killed a bunch of aristocratic white women. I can't hear about enraged parents demanding that a black man pay for getting in an accident that killed their white daughters and not think about the specter of lynching. Because there is a history, and it is there whether the author wants it to be or not.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:05 AM on April 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Isn’t that the point of that line? She almost expected there to be a bad outcome for him because of the race issue, but nothing of the kind had happened: there was no witch hunt, no baying mob calling for his head. In a world where a prosecutor can indite a ham sandwich (as the saying has it) he wasn’t even put on trial.
Obviously the guy had an awful outcome regardless & clearly needed intensive counselling and support, but would that support have been available if he’d been white? It seems unlikely.
So yes, all those racial issues inevitably lurk in the background but in this particular case they don’t seem to have affected this awful tragedy directly.
posted by pharm at 8:19 AM on April 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
Obviously the guy had an awful outcome regardless & clearly needed intensive counselling and support, but would that support have been available if he’d been white? It seems unlikely.
So yes, all those racial issues inevitably lurk in the background but in this particular case they don’t seem to have affected this awful tragedy directly.
posted by pharm at 8:19 AM on April 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
I still don’t get what the relevance is to this story.
I think it is relevant because the author is telling a story of promising lives that are tragically cut short. The evidence presented of this promise are: membership in an elite sorority, wealthy parentage, and physical beauty. Basically, we are supposed to care because these girls were the elite children of a racist, classist society.
There really is no thought or discussion given to who these girls were as individuals. What were their ambitions? Dreams? Anxieties? Why was this charity walk so important, especially given the danger?
These are the questions the author failed to ask, making it hard for the reader to empathize with their experience.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 2:51 PM on April 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
I think it is relevant because the author is telling a story of promising lives that are tragically cut short. The evidence presented of this promise are: membership in an elite sorority, wealthy parentage, and physical beauty. Basically, we are supposed to care because these girls were the elite children of a racist, classist society.
There really is no thought or discussion given to who these girls were as individuals. What were their ambitions? Dreams? Anxieties? Why was this charity walk so important, especially given the danger?
These are the questions the author failed to ask, making it hard for the reader to empathize with their experience.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 2:51 PM on April 4, 2017 [3 favorites]
Big Al 8000 pretty much cut to the punchline, but since I had this half-drafted before I saw their comment:
Unless you go into paroxysms of grief every time you read the paper or twitter or watch the news, you will every day hear of deaths. And you will think in most cases "that's sad", and feel the small abstract grief that you feel for such abstract deaths. Sometimes something about it will hook you -- you'll identify with the people involved, or they'll remind you of someone you love, you'll see a picture that brings it home to you, or they'll die in a way you find particularly horrible. But if there's not something preexisting about the situation that you identify with, then the way an author will normally make you feel deeper grief is by making the people realer to you by filling out their hopes and dreams and sorrows. And this author doesn't touch those at all, she describes the nice stuff they have, how super happy they are to be in such an elite group, etc.
Now this is certainly a classic arc to sell, this person had it all, the rich and perfect life, and lost it. But it's not actually one that evokes much feeling for me; I grieve harder for people who had only a little and then lost it. So I am far more caught by the driver, a man who had a hard row to hoe in life, and then it got much more terrible.
And this is why people are so wildly, wildly off base when they insist that if it was only Google programmers, or frat boys, or whatever, some more privileged group, that we would grieve much more intensely. Because that's not it at all. Instead, if I heard this story and it was a bunch of Afghan women college students walking, I'd feel far more strongly. I would think about how they probably had to fight hard to get their educations, how the lives of those injured would be so much harder afterwards, how it would be such a terrible loss for their country that already had too few educated women in public life.
Now on top of this, the very things that she highlights as wonderful about the women in question were built on a system that was explicitly committed and involved in maintaining white control of the wealth and institutions of power in the state. And she doesn't seem at all aware or curious about that -- as someone above points out, she chirps about 'congenital' promise without ever considering exactly *why* it is their birthright, and what the cost of that was to other people. But if you are at all aware of the racial history of the greek system at Ole Miss, as I am and clearly others in the the thread are, it's a giant glaring void in her story.
posted by tavella at 3:41 PM on April 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
Unless you go into paroxysms of grief every time you read the paper or twitter or watch the news, you will every day hear of deaths. And you will think in most cases "that's sad", and feel the small abstract grief that you feel for such abstract deaths. Sometimes something about it will hook you -- you'll identify with the people involved, or they'll remind you of someone you love, you'll see a picture that brings it home to you, or they'll die in a way you find particularly horrible. But if there's not something preexisting about the situation that you identify with, then the way an author will normally make you feel deeper grief is by making the people realer to you by filling out their hopes and dreams and sorrows. And this author doesn't touch those at all, she describes the nice stuff they have, how super happy they are to be in such an elite group, etc.
Now this is certainly a classic arc to sell, this person had it all, the rich and perfect life, and lost it. But it's not actually one that evokes much feeling for me; I grieve harder for people who had only a little and then lost it. So I am far more caught by the driver, a man who had a hard row to hoe in life, and then it got much more terrible.
And this is why people are so wildly, wildly off base when they insist that if it was only Google programmers, or frat boys, or whatever, some more privileged group, that we would grieve much more intensely. Because that's not it at all. Instead, if I heard this story and it was a bunch of Afghan women college students walking, I'd feel far more strongly. I would think about how they probably had to fight hard to get their educations, how the lives of those injured would be so much harder afterwards, how it would be such a terrible loss for their country that already had too few educated women in public life.
Now on top of this, the very things that she highlights as wonderful about the women in question were built on a system that was explicitly committed and involved in maintaining white control of the wealth and institutions of power in the state. And she doesn't seem at all aware or curious about that -- as someone above points out, she chirps about 'congenital' promise without ever considering exactly *why* it is their birthright, and what the cost of that was to other people. But if you are at all aware of the racial history of the greek system at Ole Miss, as I am and clearly others in the the thread are, it's a giant glaring void in her story.
posted by tavella at 3:41 PM on April 4, 2017 [5 favorites]
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The web site cut me off on the third page of the story, accusing me of being a bot because I have javascript turned off. No pictures of gore in the first two pages, just the written description.
posted by XMLicious at 5:35 AM on March 29, 2017