Art and activism were mixed once again by a group of students in Lake Forest College, a small liberal arts school north of Chicago, Illinois. They presented a set of monologues titled "A Day in the Life of an Undocumented Student". School newspaper The Stentor quoted an audience member, who was touched in the way we hope you will be by following this blog:
To be honest, this is something I've never thought about before. You can't really tell the difference between undocumented students and United States citizens
Elsewhere, Kansas University is looking to reach out to Hispanic students in an effort to boost minority enrollment, and hoping to debunk the myths about undocumented students:
During the dialogue, Anderson also specified to locals that misinformation concerning undocumented students is a concern. Undocumented students are allowed to enroll at KU without objection to their status, though their access to financial aid is limited because they cannot apply for government aid.
Finally, a judge in my favorite anti-immigrant state, Arizona, took a step towards rhetorical clarity in spoken legalese, striking down the use of divisive terms such as "illegal aliens" and "open borders advocates".
There are a couple of things to analyze from this story.
First, the obvious one that we have discussed before, and that is the corrupted pejorative "Illegal Aliens" getting a free pass by the media and the courts as a supposedly neutral term to describe someone who is undocumented. We told a columnist not long ago to calibrate her words with more specificity, given that not even all "illegals" are technically, well, "illegal":
The state of California has the largest population of immigrants in the nation, and they have diverse backgrounds and legal standings. There is the common 'my parents brought me across the border' type, the also usual 'we came as tourists and overstayed a visa' team, the media-friendly 'we were refugees because of a storm or earthquake' team, and stranger ones involving 3 or 4 countries, two fixed marriages, a soccer world cup, and Erik Estrada's real estate infomercials.
Secondly, the amount of hate and lunacy might really be getting out of hand when some of the words that had to be taken out were "anchor babies" and "reconquistadores". How could you possibly use those two in court? Anybody got any idea?
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