So So Immune

Today I had the pleasure of being in a Math class where the professor managed to offend me just about very time he spoke.  On Monday we discussed the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the United States where he spent time in class addressing students by saying things like: "You don't have AIDS do you?" or "Let's pretend that you have AIDS."

This is, unfortunately, not a joke.  I think that there is this horrible assumption that at Swarthmore and other elite institutions like Swarthmore we are "too smart" to get AIDS/HIV.  Like this is something that we are somehow immune to and it is something simply effecting communities outside of our campus.  To assume that we are not personally affected within our bodies or within our own networks of friends and families is insensitive and rooted in a disconnectedness from the realities of many people in the classroom.

Furthermore when a woman in the classroom brought up the idea that he perhaps be more sensitive when discussing issues like AIDS/HIV and other things that may effect us and our families he made a mockery of this situation and said that we needed to be "sensitive dammit" and then turned it on the classroom and told us that we should be more sensitive.

This class reminds me that actual knowledge/research/sensitivity to and around a topic is not required to teach a class.