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PODCAST: THE CIVIL EXPERIMENT
A four-part podcast analyzing various resolutions passed by the University of Washington’s student senate in 2017-18 on their validity and effect on campus after their passage. Hosted and produced by Niva Ashkenazi and co-edited by DD Madigan and Christine McManigal.
An introductory episode to give you the gist of what the ASUW student senate does and what its role is at the UW, and orient you on the overall theme explored in this show.
The fight over the National Real Food Challenge
The multi-year-long effort to convince administrators to buy better food for the UW culminates in last year’s debates in the student senate. It also became more complicated, as some students claimed that the initiative may compromise the university’s scientific integrity, others remained committed, and preached the UW’s need to address the social realities of the U.S. food industry.
Grappling with UW’s complicated relationship to state prisons
This episode is an audio version of a print article published in the wake of the national prison strike that took place nationwide throughout the summer of 2018. The student-led effort to get the UW to divest from suppliers that use the labor of inmates at Washington state prisons started a little over three years ago. It has been going on periodically ever since, and this story chronicles that journey, which is yet to have a definite ending.
The success (and ultimate failure) story of Callisto campus
After almost a year of lobbying within the university system, a student group of advocates for survivors of sexual assault finally managed to pass a bill through the student senate and begin collaborating with administrators to bring a much needed sexual assault online reporting service to the UW. After that effort unfortunately fell through, students are left to consider what the UW still has to offer, and how new Title IX regulations from the U.S. Department of Education will change that.
FIRST DAYS PROJECT: AMEER TALAL MAHMOOD
This story was originally published on the First Days Project website in February 2018 in partnership with the Seattle Globalist. Click here to view the final published work.
Ameer Talal Mahmood is not your ordinary Pakistani immigrant. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1994. One year after Ameer was born, he moved back to Pakistan with his parents and lived there until the age of 18. He’s American-born, but Pakistani-grown. On paper, he’s a U.S. citizen, but because he did not experience an American childhood, he still felt like an immigrant when he arrived in America.
At first, Ameer was excited to come to the United States, he expected to do a lot right away, but got bored pretty fast. Through his initial experiences in the United States, Ameer realized that America is not always how it is portrayed in films and television. Apart from the weather, he felt that middle-class living in America did not differ all that much from the daily life in Pakistan that he remembered.
After graduating from high school in Pakistan, Ameer moved to Seattle to pursue higher education. During his first year in the United States, he lived with his relatives in Everett in order to be eligible for in-state tuition at Washington state colleges and Universities. In the meantime, he worked at a 7/11 on 3rd Avenue in downtown Seattle, what he describes as “the ugly side of America,” filled with homelessness, shoplifting, and “gangster behavior.” It was a difficult working environment, but Ameer still liked it. He found the danger scary, but also exciting. He’s grateful to have worked there, it taught him how to be brave, mature and responsible. It was an experience he knows he would never have had back in Pakistan.
Click below to listen to an excerpt from Ameer's personal history: