"The Medium is the Message"

There are people in your life who you cannot live without. Those are easy to understand. The far more difficult to place within the context of your own life are the ones who make such a subtle, yet profound impact. In many cases, you might not even realize they are there until they’re gone.

I was a senior in high school, looking for an English credit when I signed up for Media Analysis. I wasn’t particularly passionate about the class. It just sounded interesting.

It didn’t take long, though, for the teacher to prove his incredible passion and enthusiasm for the media. He would say, on an almost daily basis, “the medium is the message.” It wasn’t until years later that I found out that, no, in fact, my 12th grade media teacher had not coined that phrase. For all I knew, he was a visionary.

I was right. He was revolutionary in the way he was able to convey his teaching to young people. It was like he spoke our language. He took an interest. He asked the football players about their games. He checked in about our lives. He even helped one boy ask a girl to homecoming. In the middle of class. As a student journalist, I always knew which office I could go to if I needed a really brilliant quote or even to bounce an idea around. There were some teachers who had to “fit me in” to their busy schedules. I never felt that way with the man who so excitedly would share his ideas about the way media can impact our lives.

What had been, in August, an academic whim, turned into a pretty deep passion for the media by December. I didn’t know it yet, but I would, three years later, get a college degree in Telecommunications, with a focus in “Media and Society.” The enthusiasm and dedication to learning was so contagious in Doug Koski’s class, it changed my educational pursuits.

It was, then, with great shock, that I found out that Mr. Koski passed away last week. I hadn’t known he was ill. I hadn’t spoken to the man in three years. Yet, as my mother shared with me one of her usual, seemingly random tidbits of news, I could feel the impact that this man had on my life.

This was a man whose simple job had become extraordinary. We’ve all had teachers, many of them very good. This great one, though, epitomized what every educator hopes to become: an inspiration to his students.

Even more so, the piece that strikes me as particularly meaningful is that this wasn’t just any inspirational teacher: it was my media analysis teacher. His message was about how media impacts our lives, influences our decisions, changes the way we think. He taught us how to take the raw information that the media was giving us and look for the angles, look for the reasoning. How profound it is, then, that the man who taught me so much about media analysis is continuing to teach me about life in far more meaningful and, in some ways, mysterious ways.

“The medium is the message.” Doug Koski taught me that, repeating it at an almost daily rate. Now, as I sit here thinking about the man who shared his enthusiasm for media with me, I can’t help but think about how his teaching was the medium for one very important message.

May his memory be for a blessing.

What Can "Most Men" Do?

Social media has, since it’s very beginnings, been a vehicle for social change. This is, after all, the origins of this blog.

This concept reared its head when, after the shooting two weeks ago at UC-Santa Barbara, a group of men went to defend themselves on Twitter. They used the hashtag #NotAllMen, representing the sentiment that it isn’t a universal rule that men feel hate or rage toward women. The meaning was well-intentioned. It just didn’t go quite as these men had planned.

In response, the hashtag #YesAllWomen took off, and caught fire. The tweets center around calling into the spotlight the many ways that women feel oppressed or overlooked in society.

Two of the tweets I found online were particularly disturbing to me. The first was tweeted by an unknown account. It stated “#yesallwomen because “I have a boyfriend” is more likely to get a guy to back off than “no”, because they respect other men more than women.” Having never thought if this situation that way, this was a troubling observation. The behavior of these men demonstrates that they are only interested in the woman’s availability, rather than her decision-making. This devaluation is so subtle that most wouldn’t even consider it, but, when called out so bluntly, it is uncomfortably accurate.

The second tweet was one by actress and director Sophia Bush, who tweeted “I shouldn’t have to hold my car keys in hand like a weapon & check over my shoulder every few seconds when I walk at night #YesAllWomen”. This took me for a loop. The feeling of such fear that simple tasks, like walking home at night, can illicit is something that I, as a man, have never really experienced. I worked at a sporting goods store that sold pepper spray in a college town. I knew we sold almost two or three cans per day. I never really thought about why. Was that ignorant of me? Perhaps. Was it maliciously ignorant of me? Of course not. But that is exactly the point of the hashtag.

Here is the most frightening part: this sense of fear is a learned trait. Mothers teach their daughters that they need to be afraid. Young girls learn so early that the world is a scary place, and they need to be prepared to protect themselves. I’m not saying that this isn’t true or necessary, but there is a certain part of me that asks the question: at what point do we create fear, rather than actually experience it? It this sense of danger actually perpetuating danger, rather than supporting security? We don’t really have an answer, and we aren’t at a point in society where we can really test the theory. All we know is that the number of women living in fear is too high, and we need to do something about it.

That being said, we know the origins of this situation come from men trying to say that not all males are looking to take advantage of women. Not all men are violent, not all men are hateful, not all men are chauvinistic. Yet all women feel the effects of these terrible experiences.

The really big, scary, tough part of all of this is what do we do. How can we fix this? How am I, as a man, supposed to help, if my behavior is already demonstrating the kind of values society is striving for? Of course, nobody has it perfect, and any man can learn how to be even more caring and respectful, but what are the men who are overall good people supposed to do to help?

The biggest danger of social media campaigns like this one is the precarious line between calling out a problem and shaming an entire group of people. The even tougher part is that, in this particular case, there is a lot of preaching to the choir. Those who are most likely to see, understand, and internalize these comments are actually the ones who are already behaving in respectful, thoughtful ways. We, as both men and women, need to begin to consider what can be done by the allies, the caring fathers, the loving boyfriends, the good guys, to help make the need for that deeply ingrained fear go away.