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Longitudinal Trends in Depression and Associated Lifestyle Behaviors: Insights from the SWAN Study
No full textThis study investigates the association between depression and lifestyle behaviors, including smoking, alcohol consumption, and medication use, using longitudinal data from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). Data from visits 1 to 10 were analyzed to find out the relationship between depression and lifestyle factors in midlife women. The study revealed significant associations between depression and the use of nervous condition medication, smoking status, and alcohol consumption. These findings highlight the intricate interplay between mental health and lifestyle behaviors, suggesting that comprehensive interventions targeting these behaviors are essential for managing depression in midlife women
Multiplicative Weights: An Elegant Application to Maximum Flow
Get PDFMultiplicative weights is a class of meta-algorithms commonly found in learning theory. It typically carries out several rounds of queries to oracles/agents, each time learning weights in an online manner given feedback from the current system to capture proficiency of them. It has found its use in game theory, machine learning, fast algorithms for optimization, etc. We begin with the classical example of multiplicative weights weighted majority. In the second part, we will see a delicate usage of multiplicative weights for approximating the maximum network flow, a well-known problem in theoretical computer science with many practical usages, accompanied by visualization from our simulation. The algorithm approximates maximum flow by repeatedly solving a related, computationally easier problem, the electrical flow of a circuit, whose parameters are derived from multiplicative weights. Multiplicative weights come in to adjust the resistances of the circuit online so that edge capacities are gradually obeyed. It is an elegant piece of work drawing insightsfrom learning theory, physics, numerical methods, and theoretical computer science.This journal is intended for undergraduate readers broadly interested in mathematics and theoretical computer science, who have developed some mathematical maturity and are familiar with basic algorithms
THE ETHICAL STARTUP? Lessons from DNA Marketplaces
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Abstract
Emerging DNA marketplace startups aim to empower individuals with greater control and potential profit-sharing over their genetic data, but they face ethical tensions in navigating uncertain technological and commercial environments. Drawing on ethnographic research and ELSI scholarship, this piece uses the lens of bounded ethicality to show how limits in information, consent, and decision-making call for distributed “ethics supports” beyond individual users and firms. Focusing on cases such as LunaDNA, it outlines strategies, such as decision-support tools, transparent communication, and collaborative ethics infrastructures, to strengthen collective responsibility and ethical capacity in genomics and related fields.
Introduction
With universities in much of the world placing more emphasis on entrepreneurship and technology transfer,[1] the private sector is depicted as a key to advancing both basic and applied sciences. At the same time, widely publicized data breaches and stories of fraud have fueled skepticism about whether private sector innovation serves the public good.[2] In response, some biotech startups have begun to position themselves as ethical alternatives to traditional research and business models.
This paper examines the ethical and institutional burdens that accompany corporate promises to empower consumers in managing their own health data, using emerging DNA marketplaces as a case study. Unlike earlier biobanking models, which relied on broad consent to data use and offered little direct benefit to individual participants, the profit-sharing approach promises more consumer control. These companies let individuals decide how their data can be used and share in the financial benefits when companies sell access to that data. But even companies that think carefully about these dynamics face challenges as they create technologies for a future that is difficult to anticipate. Startups can respond to the ethics challenges that come along with such uncertainty; this paper provides guidance on some key pathways. My interviews, surveys, and focus groups with employees and leadership confirm that many companies are searching for guidance on how to embed ethics into their operations.[3]
DNA marketplaces offer a compelling site for examining ethical challenges that arise when companies promise to empower individuals with control over their health data, in part because companies, such as LunaDNA and EncrypGen, explicitly frame their platforms as “empowering” users.[4] Yet, these companies blur the boundaries between consumer platforms, research intermediaries, and data brokers, placing particularly complex ethical demands on users and institutions alike. This paper argues that such models reveal not only the limits of individual decision-making under conditions of complexity and uncertainty but also the ethical shortcomings of systems that shift responsibility onto consumers without sufficiently engaging the broader obligations of companies, platforms, and institutional actors.
A Framework for Ethics Supports
Among the many genomics products launched in recent years, a series of companies has emerged that offer a means for individuals to “rent” their DNA to companies and universities for research and product development. These DNA marketplaces have promised compensation in exchange for personal data, as well as privacy and transparency through novel technologies. Nebula Genomics, co-founded in 2016 by George Church, offered free genome sequencing in exchange for data-sharing on their blockchain-secured platform, or redeemable Nebula tokens for sharing genomic data sequenced elsewhere.[5] The following year, EncrypGen launched a blockchain marketplace which uses proprietary cryptocurrency to pay individuals for de-identified data,[6] and LunaDNA launched an offering of non-voting shares in the company in exchange for data use—e.g., 300 shares for a whole genome shared, a 21 value according to the company’s preliminary offering circular.[7] The marketplace model also allows participants to specify which types of studies their data would support, enabling them to opt in or out of research domains based on topic, perceived risk, or institutional or corporate affiliation of the research team. LunaDNA regularly invites participants to review and approve data use for new studies, including those with different levels of data access or revised shared offers.
In addition to the challenges faced under prior models of consumer genetic data sharing (e.g., through Ancestry.com, 23andMe), these companies have struggled to meet the expectations they set around user control, data ownership, and financial benefit. LunaDNA was founded as a public benefit corporation, with the premise that by receiving shares, participants would benefit financially from any proceeds LunaDNA earned from that data. The company failed to build a steady revenue stream and eventually closed in early 2024, without issuing payouts to contributors, as the company reported no cash reserves.[8] Ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) researchers have noted the challenges that these DNA marketplaces face as data brokers that must gather ongoing consent and manage data privacy.[9] In this piece, I highlight the broader ethical challenges that such marketplaces face, considering the startup sector’s demand for continual innovation and often grandiose speculation, even in the face of frequent organizational change and evolution.
While firms may have ethics infrastructures, such as ethics committees or institutional ethics policies, ethical issues today increasingly cluster beyond the confines of an individual company. Many problems emerge in the complex landscape of angel investors, venture capital firms, private wealth management entities, crowdfunding, accelerators, incubators, co-branded partnerships, tech transfer offices, service providers, and industry networks. While ethical approaches, such as anticipatory ethics, have been developed to predict and address ethical challenges early in the development of emerging technologies,[10] many issues today arise in spaces that lie beyond the control of a single platform, ranging from downstream data sharing by a DNA platform customer to further data use by unknown subsequent parties, to company acquisition, bankruptcy, breaches by partners, and other challenges.[11]
To analyze these challenges, this paper applies the theory of bounded ethicality. Bounded ethicality suggests that social, psychological, and practical pressures limit people’s ability to make ethical decisions. For example, limits on available information, time constraints, decisional complexity, and bias contribute to ethical decision-making. [12] These limits point to the importance of moral supports to promote ethics and justice. Bounded ethicality recognizes the limits of the individual moral agent, instead spreading moral labor across platforms, collectives, supportive technologies, and contingencies. As shown below, combining this lens with a focus on downstream thinking can help companies and individuals establish well-designed ethical supports.
Ethics Challenges for DNA Marketplace Platforms
DNA marketplaces risk overpromising the degree to which they can protect data. In response to criticisms of earlier genomics companies that sold user data to pharmaceutical and other companies, including data brokers, without sharing benefits, these companies have created data use policies and means to allow participants to benefit.[13] But even so, substantial risks to data privacy remain. Data breaches, government or law enforcement demands that override privacy protections, and within the limits of both users' and technologists' capacity to anticipate abstract future scenarios.[14] The bounded ethicality lens draws attention to the importance of caution in companies’ framings of their offerings, recognizing the limits even with our best efforts for ethical practice, thus guiding us toward hedging the zeal with which companies advertise privacy protections, untraceability, and individuals’ control over their data’s use.
Difficulties also arise because of the complexity of tasks DNA marketplaces ask of their users. The complexities of these tasks include taking control of their genetic data, assessing scientific risk, postulating future scenarios, quickly learning enough genetic science to become ably informed as part of a consent process, and engaging in ongoing monitoring of developments with the platform. Growing research shows that decision fatigue, readerly limitations, distraction, comprehension and educational factors, momentary mood or energy levels, and more impede sound decision making.[15] Unlike other industries where consent may be a one-time hurdle, DNA marketplaces demand repeated, proactive choices about whether to share their genetic data, opt in or re-consent to new studies, allow certain types of future use, and decline participation in others based on study type, affiliated institutions or companies, or perceived risk. It is crucial that companies describe the terms and conditions to help customers grasp the yet unknown ways in which data could be used, including adverse scenarios. At the same time, lengthy consent documents cannot fill this need, as they overwhelm participants and do not invite deep engagement with the issues at hand.[16]
Another ethical issue is that significant debate persists about the risks of re-identification of ostensibly de-identified genomic data, which is possible with limited public information.[17] While some argue that little incentive exists for re-identification, there is insufficient evidence to support this claim.
Companies must remain responsible for protecting users, rather than placing responsibility on consumers for protecting themselves via consent procedures.[18] Many ethical frameworks acknowledge that consent alone does not waive organizational obligations. But in practice, many organizations have consent procedures and documents that resemble legal contracts more than tools for participant understanding, designed more to limit liability than to foster meaningful participant engagement.[19] Beyond these legal shields, companies owe participants real efforts to support truly informed consent, given the substantial asymmetries in expertise and control that make meaningful consent difficult without institutional support, and the broader ethical imperative to build public trust in data systems where risks are often collective, long-term, and structurally mediated. Companies can implement insights from the robust consent literature, including offering decision support tools such as interactive or pre-highlighted written information, digitally enhanced user support tools, and re-consent cues at key moments, such as when a company is acquired or when scientific developments enable new unanticipated uses of genetic data.[20] If DNA marketplaces have models that presume ongoing user engagement, support to sustain such engagement is essential.
This discussion makes it clear that platforms cannot reasonably suggest to users that they will maintain the privacy that many companies tout. A more ethically grounded approach could include planning for and explaining to users recourses for when a site is hacked, compromised, or down, etc. Privacy is more than a platform security issue. The future contains new kinds of capabilities that can "de-privatize” previously privatized data by way of future datasets that we never predicted, IT capacities that we cannot yet envision, and other difficult-to-predict circumstances.
The Way Forward: Expanding Moral Capacity
Actionable strategies include tools to help consumers make informed decisions. Again, using the lens of bounded ethicality, I propose possible areas of intervention, but such strategies cannot completely solve moral problems or guarantee “right” moral choices; rather, they can support ethical action by redirecting attention and resources, including personal, organizational, institutional, and even technological, to spaces of moral risk, and expand capacity in those areas.
Innovate in Comprehension and Decision Support
Since DNA marketplaces ask users to perform complex mental tasks, including analytic, abstraction, anticipatory, and calculative work in decisions about sharing, privacy, future risks, and personal benefit. Bounded ethicality points to the need for more assistance so that consumers are not too limited when making important decisions. Significant research discusses the challenges of consent as well as possibilities for addressing them.[21] And while I advocate the use of decisional, visualization, and simulation tools to support consumers at crucial moral moments, literature in the social sciences and humanities make the dangers of expecting technology to solve all challenges clear.[22] Instead, I am advancing a vision of how today’s technologies can be designed to support the structural interventions needed to advance justice and equity.[23]
Lead with Limitations
Substantial empirical data show that in the face of goals that we, as moral agents, really want to achieve, we enact what many refer to as “willful blindness,” sidelining moral considerations.[24] Ethics supports would then involve leading by introducing potential limitations through marketing, communication, explanations, consent processes, etc. Leading with limitations may be the only way that users cognitively “register” the downsides of given options. Companies need to overstate the limitations of their platform’s security, the exceptional vulnerability of all digital data, the prospect that sharing their data may not lead to potential, specific cures, and the possibility that market demands may impact the company’s future practices or unravel its present policies. While this may seem counterproductive to current business goals, the very emergence of DNA marketplaces selling themselves as equitable and just alternatives to older models suggests that ethical practice can increasingly be seen as a selling point for some companies.
While bounded ethicality supports enhancing the capacity of users (say, overemphasizing that which data shows we are psychologically prone to tune out), the model also requires migration away from an ethics powered mostly by sole subjects. Ethics strategies that load most of the moral risk onto individuals via the consent process, the self-report, or “honor systems” discharge too much moral labor onto a single subject, often imagined to have indefatigable capacities. Instead, the view proposed here would ask companies to do more to prevent or decrease the risk of a breach of privacy, unexpected later use of data, and reidentification. Companies should use more systems, personnel, practices, and tools to help shoulder the risks. Regulatory frameworks such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) provide important protections and set meaningful legal baselines. But as technologies and data practices evolve, ethics strategies can be a key site for anticipating emerging forms of risk and responsibility that may fall outside current regulatory scope.
Ethics Beyond Individual Platforms
DNA marketplaces are also subject to concerns that genetic data, accessible through genetic databases of various types, could be used for deleterious purposes – to make claims, for example, about the genetic superiority of certain groups over others. LunaDNA addressed this by creating a data access committee that would grant research rights only to parties engaged in health research. Again, solutions have focused on the individual company level. But by requiring us to address and compensate for limits on ethical decision making, the approach described involves thinking beyond the self in much the way thinking about accessibility involves thinking about assistance at both technological and structural levels.[25]
There have been increasing efforts to build collaborations across the private sector genomics industry for addressing ethics and policy issues.[26] Such approaches would multiply the power of efforts at the level of individual companies. For example, creating a common database of suspicious or declined data access requests, accessible by all DNA marketplace companies, could help protect against nefarious uses and users and facilitate collective moral problem-solving. Responsibility should be distributed widely and across actors, since relying on individual moral exemplars (who leave), company cultures (which change), or terms of service (which ignore out-platform problems) puts too many of one’s ethical eggs in one basket. Thinking beyond individual moral agents in ethics breeds strategies that go beyond individual executives, platforms, policies, and even users.
Applying empirical data about limitations on ethical decision making leads to solutions that empower consumers and individual companies by eliminating the limitations that impede high-quality moral decision making (unbinding the ethicality). Because DNA marketplace platforms like LunaDNA have specifically sold themselves as a more ethical alternative to older models, they are an ideal place from which to build these approaches.
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[1] Robert E. Litan, Lesa Mitchell, and E.J. Reedy, “The University As Innovator: Bumps in the Road,” Issues in Science and Technology 23.4 (2007); Jordan Eidlisz, Isabelle von Simson, and Gabrielle Gold-von Simson, “Exploring the current state of technology transfer in the United States: perspectives and improvement strategies from the experts,” Frontiers 9 (2024): doi.org/10.3389/frma.2024.1376185; William R. Meek and Peter T. Gianiodis, “The Death and Rebirth of the Entrepreneurial University Model,” Academy of Management Perspectives 37.1 (2023): doi.org/10.5465/amp.2020.0180.
[2] Cathy Hwang et al., “The Lost Promise of Private Ordering.” Cornell L. Rev. 109 (2023-2025): 1-61. https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawreview/2024/01/30/the-lost-promise-of-private-ordering/
[3] Alexis Walker, “Diversity, Privacy, Profit: An Empirical Study of Industry Employees’ Views on Ethics in Private Sector Genomics,” AJOB Empirical Bioethics 13(2022):166-178. https://doi:10.1080/23294515.2022.206399; Elizabeth Adetiba and Alexis Walker, “‘Forget the Age of HIPAA and Lean Into The Age of Consumer Privacy’: Exploring Ethics and Responsibility among Private Sector Genomics Leaders Using Group Interviews.” New Genetics & Society. Forthcoming.
[4] LunaPBC, “LunaPBC Raises 4.6 Million to Accelerate Company Growth and Drive Health Breakthroughs,” PR Newswire (2019), https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lunapbc-raises-4-6-million-to-accelerate-company-growth-and-drive-health-breakthroughs-300846139.html; Innovations of the World, “LunaDNA: The World’s First People-Powered Health Data Platform,” Innovations of the World (n.d.), https://innovationsoftheworld.com/lunadna/; LunaPBC and Genetic Alliance, “Genetic Alliance and LunaPBC Partner to Support Personal Health and Accelerate Medical Breakthroughs,” PR Newswire (2018), https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/genetic-alliance-and-lunapbc-partner-to-support-personal-health-and-accelerate-medical-breakthroughs-300781275.html.
[5] Molteni, Megan. “These DNA Startups Want to Put All of You on the Blockchain.” Wired (2018), https://www.wired.com/story/these-dna-startups-want-to-put-all-of-you-on-the-blockchain.
[6] Ben Herschler, “Cashing in on DNA: Race on to Unlock Value in Genetic Data.” Reuters (2018), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-genomics-blockchain/cashing-in-on-dna-race-on-to-unlock-value-in-genetic-data-idUSKBN1KO143
[7] U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “Offering Circular: LunaDNA, LLC,” Form 253G2 (2018), https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1741687/000119312518340286/d631377dpartiiandiii.htm.
[8] Jonathan D. Grinstein, “Total Eclipse of LunaDNA: Once Touted Genome Data Sharing Platform Goes Dark,” Inside Precision Medicine, January 18, 2024, https://www.insideprecisionmedicine.com/topics/precision-medicine/total-eclipse-of-lunadna-once-touted-genome-data-sharing-platform-goes-dark/.
[9] Eman Ahmed and Mahsa Shabani, “DNA data marketplace: an analysis of the ethical concerns regarding the participation of the individuals,” Frontiers in Genetics 10 (2019): 10.3389/fgene.2019.01107.
[10] Philip A.E. Brey, “Anticipatory ethics for emerging technologies,” NanoEthics 6 (2012): 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-012-0141-7.
[11] Donna M. Gitter, “Informed consent and privacy of non-identified bio-specimens and estimated data: lessons from Iceland and the United States in an era of computational genomics,” Cardozo Law Review 38.4 (2016); Julie Cook Lucas et al., “Donating human samples: who benefits? Cases from Iceland, Kenya and Indonesia,” in Benfit Sharing, eds. Schroder et al (Springer, 2013), https://doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6205-3_5; Stephen J. O'Brien, “Stewardship of human biospecimens, DNA, genotype, and clinical data in the GWAS era,” Annual Review Of Genomics And Human Genetics 10 (2009): 193-209, 10.1146/annurev-genom-082908-150133.
[12] Dolly Chugh and Mary C Kern, “A dynamic and cyclical model of bounded ethicality,” Research in organizational behavior 36 (2016): 85-100, https://doi:10.1016/j.riob.2016.07.002; Dolly Chugh, Max H. Bazerman, and Mahzarin Banaji, “Bounded ethicality as a psychological barrier to recognizing conflicts of interest,” in Conflicts of interest: Challenges and solutions in business, law, medicine, and public policy, eds D. Moore, D. Cain, G. Loewenstein, & M. Bazerman (New York: Cambridge Universit
Understanding the Threat of Victor’s Justice: The Case of Transitional Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda
Get PDFThe Rwandan genocide of 1994 remains a chilling reminder of the depths of cruelty and violence that humans can inflict upon one another. While Rwanda has since emerged as a symbol of successful post-conflict recovery, the scars of the genocide continue to fester beneath the surface. This paper delves into the concept of Victors' Justice in the context of the Rwandan genocide and the Transitional Justice efforts that followed, with a specific focus on the actions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Victors' Justice, a term fraught with ethical implications, emerges as a central theme in this analysis, highlighting how it manifested in the proceedings and outcomes of the ICTR. Employing a theoretical approach and drawing upon the work of experts in the field, this research rigorously examines the dynamics of Victors' Justice and its enduring impact on Rwandan society.
At first, the paper establishes the foundational concepts of Victors' Justice and Transitional Justice, tracing their historical roots and relevance to the ICTR. Then, by providing the historical context for the Rwandan genocide, it elucidates the complex power dynamics leading up to the massacre and establishing the International Criminal Tribunal. Furthermore, it delves into the accusations of Victors' Justice, analyzing the actions of the RPF during 1994, its interference with the ICTR's operations, and the injustices witnessed in national courts. Finally, it explores the challenges of Transitional Justice and Social Reconciliation in Rwanda, including restrictions on freedom of expression, persecution of political opposition, and mechanisms of social control.
This paper synthesizes the findings and data accumulated throughout the study. It offers recommendations to address the social and ethnic divisions that persist in Rwanda, emphasizing accountability, political freedom, and the significance of historical narratives in fostering true reconciliation. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics in post-genocidal societies and the implications of Victors' Justice for pursuing lasting peace and Justice
Preserving Parts of Ourselves: Rethinking What Makes English Good and English Teachers Great
Get PDFOn the first day of tenth grade, Mr. Reese looked like a substitute teacher to me. His teaching attire consisted of Adidas sweatpants, a soccer zip-up, and black sneakers—not the collared shirt, slacks, and dress shoes that I had expected based on how all the other teachers dressed. I had also anticipated a white teacher, partially because I assumed that the last name “Reese” was Dutch or German, but more so because I had only ever had white English teachers before. From kindergarten until twelfth grade, I went to the same private school. In all that time, Mr. Reese, a half-black and half-Korean man, was my only non-white English teacher.
Mr. Reese was also my only English teacher to use what he called “hood language” in class, often saying phrases such as “that’s messed up, yo” and “quit playin’.” Still, how Mr. Reese spoke wasn’t as surprising as what he spoke about. Mr. Reese talked about his personal life almost every single day, unlike my previous teachers who never dared to muddy the line between their private and professional lives. My previous teachers connected in-class texts to societal problems such as racism or gender inequality, but Mr. Reese connected academic readings to his own personal experiences and memories.
The newness of Mr. Reese and his teaching style intrigued me, and, by the end of the year, he was my favorite English teacher I’d ever had. For my last assignment of tenth grade English, I wrote a letter to my younger self who had not yet met Mr. Reese. In the first line of that letter, I wrote, “Victoria, you might not know this yet, but English 10 Honors is much more than another academic class” (Ngai 1). In other courses, I simply completed classwork with the course material that I’d been taught in class. In Mr. Reese’s class, I looked at writing assignments as a chance for self-expression. I replaced my mechanical essays that simply got the job done with passionate essays that I felt excited to write. I discovered the joy of writing. For this reason, Mr. Reese was my most effective English teacher, even though he didn’t look, speak, or act the way that I had expected.
Mr. Reese is not the only teacher to understand the power of deviating from expectations. In his chapter “Casualties of Literacy” from Your Average N****: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, black literacy teacher Vershawn Ashanti Young argues that “code meshing” of black English vernacular (BEV) and white English vernacular (WEV) in classrooms ought to replace the normalized “code switching” pedagogy—an approach that permits only WEV to be used at school and sidelines BEV to the home and playground. Young practices what he preaches by incorporating BEV at the beginning of his chapter, writing, “BEV ain’t goin’ nowhere” even though WEV has been the norm in academic writing (105). Similarly, Mr. Reese used “hood language” in the classroom even though this wasn’t the norm at my school. For both Young and Mr. Reese, an adjustment to WEV was expected. By “code meshing,” Young and Mr. Reese set an example for their colleagues and students to be inclusive of non-white vernaculars, expanding the idea of what qualifies as classroom language.
But, if code meshing could so easily be implemented in classrooms, everyone would do it. The persistence of a norm suggests that there is difficulty in deviating from the standard of code switching. Richard Rodriguez, a Mexican American second-generation immigrant, sheds some light on this difficulty. As the only non-white student in his elementary school, Rodriguez recalls that he was “fated to be the ‘problem student’” (25). The word “fated” implies that Rodriguez’s race and culture doomed him to be involuntarily viewed as problematic because he differed from his classmates who were white and spoke English. Rodriguez believes his native culture and language prevented him from finding a sense of belonging among his classmates. Mr. Reese faced similar difficulties fitting in as the only half-black, half-Korean teacher in an otherwise majority-white English department. Unlike how Rodriguez saw his difficulties as a reason to assimilate, Mr. Reese resisted the impulse to assimilate, even when other teachers reported him as unprofessional for using “hood language,” wearing sweats, and not tying his afro into a man bun. Though Rodriguez avoided his fate of being “the problem student” by learning and speaking English, Mr. Reese continued to dress and act in the way that made him most comfortable. Thus, he remained the problem teacher.
To be honest, the ease with which Mr. Reese spoke “hood language” in class was also concerning to me at first. I had never considered the possibility of an effective English teacher using “hood language” in class, just as Rodriguez never believed it “possible for a child . . . to use his family’s language in school” (26). The purpose of English class, I thought, was to help me achieve a sense of belonging in intellectual and, eventually, professional environments by elevating my formal diction from my casual diction. Similarly, Rodriguez advocates for students to replace their family language with English in the classroom because he believes learning English will help students find the sense of “[belonging] in public” which he himself previously lacked before switching to English (31). Like Rodriguez, I believed that separating an everyday way of writing and speaking from the proper English taught in class was a necessity for acceptance amongst our peers and, especially, our superiors. However, quoting Victor Villanueva, another linguist, Young points out that “[l]imiting the student’s language to the playground and home . . . still speaks of who’s right and who’s wrong, who holds the power” (112). Considering both Rodriguez’s and Young’s thoughts, we realize that, though the intention behind promoting a formal English is to help students feel confident in academic and social spheres, doing so still creates a hierarchy of language which encourages certain dialects to be viewed as inferior. Attempts to extinguish Mr. Reese’s nonstandard teaching language were carried out with the belief that his “hood language” was inherently lesser-than and ineffective for teaching students the English skills they needed for success as future scholars.
Nevertheless, because of my transformative experience in Mr. Reese’s class, I have come to agree with Young when he argues that “[o]ur job should be educating students, not refashioning them into what we imagine the ‘marketplace’ demands they should be” (112). The “marketplace” is the professional world that students enter post-education, a place that we typically assume rewards formal language. Our solution, however, should not be to sift out the unique parts of our dialects in an attempt to produce cookie-cutter formal voices. If teachers continue teaching students to be like one another, then we lose diversity and the valuable knowledge founded in it. For example, Young tells us about Guamán Poma, a skilled thinker who wrote in his native language, Quechua. “[T]hose who used [Quechua] were considered illiterate,” and, because Guamán Poma used Quechua, “it took 350 years for Guamán Poma’s letter to be recognized as the ‘extraordinary intellectual tour de force that it was’” (119). The reason scholars didn’t recognize Guamán Poma’s brilliance until much later is because they let their reluctance to deviate from the standard language limit their reception of new knowledge. Likewise, my initial reluctance to Mr. Reese’s “hood language” and casual classroom attire prevented me from seeing the value of his style of teaching.
You would think that my bias, on top of the fact that I knew it was Mr. Reese’s first year teaching, would have prevented me from learning from him indefinitely. However, I’ve since realized that, along with Mr. Reese’s “hood language” and hoodies came something more. Because he chose not to assimilate, Mr. Reese did not face (or at least face to the same extent) the “‘self-annihilation’ and ‘cultural suicide’” described by English professor Keith Gilyard in relation to Richard Rodriguez’s rejection of bilingual education (Young 111). Mr. Reese brought an aspect of himself to class that my previous teachers did not. Prior teachers connected literary texts to broad universal themes—topics that would help me write essays that were socially relevant—whereas Mr. Reese connected texts to his mother’s passing, his love life, and his experiences with God. Mr. Reese’s stories told in his “hood language” were specific, which made them more engaging than the general lectures on racism, misogyny, and social structures that I received year after year from my previous English teachers. Just as I compare Mr. Reese’s way of telling stories to my previous teachers’ lectures, Rodriguez compares his father’s speech in Spanish to his father’s speech in English. He notes, “Using Spanish, [his father] was quickly effusive. . . his voice would spark, flicker, flare alive with varied sounds. In Spanish he expressed ideas and feelings he rarely revealed when speaking English” (Rodriguez 33). Mr. Reese’s stories, told in “hood language,” had an immediacy that would have been missing if he tried to speak in the same vernacular as my previous English teachers—vernacular that was not his own.
Beyond the initial engaging aspect of Mr. Reese’s “hood language,” it also felt personal, as if I were not just a student but a friend. Rodriguez experiences a similar sensation when reflecting on his Spanish interactions with his parents: “To hear [Spanish’s] sounds was to feel myself specially recognized as one of the family” (28). When Mr. Reese taught, I felt like our class was special compared to the other English classes that I’d been in, as if we were being let in on secrets about Mr. Reese that only his students had the luxury of knowing.
The difference between Rodriguez’s situation and mine, however, is that Rodriguez and his parents were both comfortable with Spanish. I, on the other hand, had never spoken “hood language.” My connection with Mr. Reese’s way of speaking, though different from my own, is not unique. Citing Gerald Graff, a white American English professor, Young recounts a similar situation. As Graff comments on American linguist William Labov’s interview with Larry, a black teenager, he describes Larry’s BEV as “powerful, cogent, and interesting” (qtd. in Young 106). Despite the difference in Larry’s vernacular from his own, Graff extracted value and meaning from Larry’s interview answers. However, the answers were “powerful” because Larry’s vernacular differed from Graff’s, and it allowed him to express himself. Similarly, even though I never spoke “hood language,” I was able to connect with Mr. Reese more deeply because he did, so I was even more receptive to what he taught.
And why wouldn’t I be? Rodriguez argues that “[i]ntimacy cannot be trapped within words; it passes through words” (41). So even Rodriguez might see that I connected with Mr. Reese’s personality and voice that was so present and passionate in his language. I think Mr. Reese would be pleased to hear this. He once explained that English class isn’t just a place where you learn how to write. It’s a place where you learn to care about what you write. As an author himself, Mr. Reese told me that the difference between a writer and an author is that an author cares enough about what they write that they feel other people have to know about it. For Mr. Reese, this meant writing and publishing poetry about his personal life. He showed me that our personal lives are something worth authoring. What impressed me as I read Mr. Reese’s poetry was that the universal themes that my previous teachers had taught me—themes of family and love and death and heartbreak—were all present in Mr. Reese’s writing.
His willingness to transcend traditional barriers, to upend the typical notions of what was “correct,” and to explore his identity even in unforgiving settings inspired me. Because Mr. Reese was bold enough to author his own life, I realized I could do the same. I connected my essays to universal themes not by avoiding my personal input but by speaking through my own life. I grew invested in writing in a way that I’d never been before. I wrote to myself at the end of tenth grade, “[i]f you do nothing else, carry one lesson with you throughout the rest of the school year: writing requires a personality,” because readers connect with the people behind the words, not the words themselves (Ngai 1).
At the end of my letter, I told myself, “[b]e passionate about the topics you choose. The prompt never confines you as much as your mindset does” (2). My old mindset was that a good teacher would be unlike Mr. Reese and that a good student would write about anything but herself. That mindset convinced me to hide the parts of myself that would eventually make my essays exciting both to write and to read. Thankfully, Mr. Reese helped me realize the place that my personal life has in my writing. Without Mr. Reese, I wouldn’t care about my writing as much as I do now. Now, I approach everything that I write with the hopes of having somebody connect with me through it. As an author, it is my job to put myself into my essays, to provide something for my readers to connect to, just as Mr. Reese gave me something to connect to by preserving the parts of himself that made him different.
WORKS CITED
Ngai, Victoria. “Letter to My Younger Self.” 29 May 2020. English 10 Honors, Valley Christian High School, student paper.
Rodriguez, Richard. “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood.” The American Scholar, vol. 50, no. 1, winter 1981, pp. 25–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41210690. Accessed 24 Oct. 2022.
Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Casualties of Literacy.” Your Average N****: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, Wayne State University Press, 2007, pp. 105-23
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