Trapped on Duty Night One: The Help

I have talked about my job several times, but there is one aspect in which I have not talked about, being on duty/on call.  Part of being a Residence Director (RD)  on call, involves being on duty for about half of the Northeastern campus, answering the duty phone for potential emergency situations, and basically staying on campus or in my apartment so I can help solve any number of problems.  

Sounds awful right?   There are a couple of perks that come with this, I am able to clean my apartment (something I frequently put off), get laundry done, get work done, and most importantly watch a ton of movies, and catch up all of my television shows from the week.

Being on duty starts on Thursday around 12 noon and goes until Thursday at 12 noon the following week.  I am the lucky person who volunteered for Parents Weekend, but more importantly Halloween weekend.  I love getting to dress up for Halloween but unfortunately I have to wait until next year to celebrate, and my costume idea will still be relevant.  There would be no way I am doing a Honey Boo Boo (you still suck TLC).  So aside from missing out on Halloween my nights have been filled with lots of television and movies.

This past Thursday night was my first night on duty, and while the night was uneventful, I got to hang with my RAs and some of my residents.  It was nice to get to spend some quality time with them, most of my work day is spent doing administrative tasks, which take up too much time, and do not let me get to know my students enough.  My RAs held a floor meeting, had pizza, and ended up watching the movie The Help.

The Help was released during August last year, and was a major player at the Academy Awards with four nominations for Best Picture, Best Actress (Viola Davis), and two Best Supporting Actress nominees (Jessica Chastain, and winner Octavia Spencer).  The film centers around the perpetual racism in Jackson, Mississippi.  In the film several characters act pious, and use white authority to enact privilege creating a system of separate but equal.

Throughout the film one of the other central characters, Skeeter (played by Emma Stone) starts to take down the story of the help, in order to reveal the social injustice which exists specifically in Jackson, but to tell the world this is not alright.

In today's society we often let terrible folks still use their white skin to enact laws, or state hate speech which has perpetuated this problem on a different level.  People like Ann Coulter believe that the real racists are liberals, who use political correctness incorrectly most of time.  The problem with Coulter and most liberals is that people are afraid to dialogue, the conservative end up yelling while the liberal guilt has people cowering behind something.

The next problem appears to be with the politicians (mostly Republicans) who have started creating voter registration laws, to prevent fraud, which disenfranchise a large number of minorities.   The Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai stated that this voter registration law would help Romney win, and mainly because it prevents letting black voters get to the polls.  This is racist legislation, and i grateful the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against it, but there are other states that are letting this go forward.  This proves that we are looking at race as key element, and that elements from the past have not died, this is sad, and proves that States do not always know best!