Awareness week will promote awareness
Alyssa GregoryTo the reader: This article originally appeared in Student Life’s annual April Fools’ issue. Please don’t take anything in it as fact. We made it all up.
The Social Justice Center has announced that next week will be Awareness Awareness Week (AwaAwaW). This is the first year for the program, and events will take place from April 7 to 11 on both main campus and the South 40.
“While there are various specific awareness weeks throughout the year, our Awareness Awareness Week seeks simply to promote awareness of the need to be aware,” said Stephen Cheryls, director of the SJC.
The SJC is well known for its “Ism of the Month” program, which highlights a different “ism” each month, including racism, ethnocentrism, and ageism. This year, Awareness Awareness Week will highlight a different, underemphasized “ism” each day of the week.
The following is a calendar for the week, including a description each of the injustices to be addressed:
Monday-Lactism
Lactism is discrimination against those who are lactose intolerant.
“You don’t hear about it often, but lactose intolerance intolerance is a growing problem on this and other campuses-a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Specifically, lactism is a system of oppression that assumes that full lactose tolerance is the only “normal” mode of lactose tolerance,” said Cheryls.
“What message does it send about society when McDonald’s doesn’t offer soy milk sundaes? And can you imagine being continuously reminded by that persistent advertising campaign on TV?
“‘Got Milk?’ ‘No, I don’t-I was born this way.’”
Tuesday-Criticism
Criticism is the belief that any one action can be better or worse than any other action. It implies that an exchange of ideas is necessary for growth. It can lead to negativity and/or honesty and precludes the use of moral relativism.
Wednesday-Prism
Prism is the structural mechanism that creates a strict segregation of the colors of the rainbow. This belief has been made famous by its outlandish Southern proponent, Roy G. Biv, and the ongoing public feud between Grimace and the Kool-Aid Man, who are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Thursday-Individualism
Individualism is the belief that one person can hold ideas different from the ideas from other people and believe in them, thus creating a value system in which one person is prejudiced against other people for not being part of that individuality. This speaks to the essential nature of discrimination and prejudice. By encouraging individualism, we get further from communism-and that’s bad.
Friday-Algorism
This doesn’t mean what Cheryls originally thought it did, but the flyers were already made.
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On November 19, 2009 at 9:14 pm James O'Siris said
The November 19, 2009 issue of the Onion rips-off the concept of this article and does an inferior job of concept execution, in my opinion. You be the judge! http://www.theonion.com/content/news/december_named_national_awareness