Community guidelines

An important part of our initial class conversation is co-creating a set of community guidelines. Here are some important starting components that will hold for the rest of this course.

  1. Don’t be an asshole. This is far and away the most important rule in our class. It is your job to treat everyone in our class with care so that we can all learn together. Please expect to be both challenged and valued. As such, I will not tolerate harassment in the classroom. A corollary: an important part of not being an asshole is making a good faith effort to do the work. We will never have the correct answer when it comes to these complicated issues, but it is important to make a good faith effort to try and understand the stakes of the problem.

  2. No bullshit. Intellectual community is a precious resource, so we should make the most of it. In class, we will always respond to the best possible version of an opposing argument and do so after carefully engaging with the reading (and each other). While I’ve tried to make “bangers only” a guiding policy to choosing readings, there is no getting around the fact that there is a lot of reading in the class. Please don’t fake your way through class, particularly through the summarization feature in Chat GPT; being in class with that person sucks. If you’re in a time crunch — it happens to the best of us — see if you can finish the absolutely essential readings marked with an asterisk (*) and take the time to step back from today’s conversation if you are not sufficiently informed. Conversely, if you find yourself often taking up a lot of space in class, please encourage others to step up and highlight ideas who have not been getting the same air time. A corollary: no devil’s advocates.

  3. Create a space for open learning and trust. One goal of the class is to allow us to critically and productively examine issues around media, science, and technology that are often sensitive, controversial, and challenging. This means that while there will be materials from the course available for access purposes, I will not record our sessions to protect both student privacy and the intellectual honesty / openness of our shared discussions. If you have any questions as to what or whether to share something publicly from the class, particularly on social media (BeReal counts!), please practice active and enthusiastic consent and reach out to the speaker you are quoting for explicit approval. In this class, we shall use the Chatham House Rule when it comes to sharing specifics from our conversations, so please do not tag others publicly without their consent. That being said, please feel free to widely share the course materials (syllabi, recommended materials, reading) from this class, and to adapt the materials for your own purposes (e.g., workshops, IAP courses, etc) — I only ask that you practice responsible citation practices. I would love to know how this class has a life outside of our time together and I love seeing students succeed!

  4. It’s okay not to agree with one another. This also means that you do not have to agree with me, the assigned readings, or even the majority of your classmates to do well in the course. You are, however, obligated to demonstrate an understanding of the course material regardless of whether or not you agree with it.

We also discussed and created additional guidelines in class. These collaboratively designed guidelines will also apply to our discussions.

  1. Be an active listener and don’t be on your phone while other people are talking.
  2. Let other people finish their thoughts and don’t interrupt them.
  3. Stay open-minded during our discussions.
  4. Come prepared to discuss the readings.
  5. Encourage those who haven’t spoken to step up, and step back if you’ve done a lot of the talking. To encourage accountability between us, members of the class will proactively ask folks who haven’t contributed as much to speak up (e.g., “what do you think, ___?).