Open source software is the cheapest and most efficient way for a company or organisation just starting out to manage the informatics sector of their businesses. Yet, this well kept secret need not be reserved to for-profit organisations. Those organisations needing cheap (free), highly customisable, and stable software to run on older donated, or recannibalised hardware must look towards open source as a legitimate route with regards to their information management.
Jun 012001
May 292001
When I arrived at the center I was surprised to find out that there was a church group there finishing up their Sunday meeting. It was a predominantly black congregation; its minister was dressed in an African gown with brilliant colors, and a small oval shaped hat with a flat top, of the same color configuration, which covered and snugly gripped his head. He came up to me and asked if I was the volunteer who was supposed to come in at 1:00PM. When I told him that I was indeed that person, he asked if I had a key to the center. I did not, so it immediately worried him that there might not be anyone to lock up after he left. Immediately he started dialling several different staff members’ phone numbers to ask them to come in and take over. Someone finally did come in, or at least said that he was coming in (which he eventually did, four hours later.)
As it was the weekend before the last week of classes as an undergraduate, I had a load of assignments and papers to finish. I had brought in my laptop computer to finish much of that work. I like Sundays; the front desk duties are not that demanding. You also have many hours alone that you can use to read or, in my case, work on my papers. When the staff member eventually came in, I started explaining the modifications and the such for their database. I explained the semantics, and practicality behind switching to Linux based systems. The major advantage is the ability to use legacy systems, and little to no upgrade costs.
It seems like there was going to be a problem attempting to persuade the board or trustees or some other officious body of this change. He said that he would have to go with them for a reason why switching to Linux is better for the center now. In talking with Miguel Antunes, though, it seems to be a prevalent problem in the social services (Management becomes stultified and stagnant.)
May 292001
There will be a series of journal entries as to my experiences attempting to apply social theory in a practical manner. This is to be done mainly through volunteer work at various places. The one I have selected, and concentrated on is the William Way Community Center, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
- Journal 1
- Journal 2
- Journal 3
I was scheduled to train on front desk duty last Wednesday at the William Way Community Center; having been somewhat familiar with the layout of the building from my previous orientation, I went straight up to the room. I met up with a colleague of mine from Drexel University also volunteering her services for the community center.
During orientation for the front desk we were told of the standard, “do’s” and “don’ts” of being the central point of contact. It really is being the central point of contact because all of the telephone calls get routed through the front desk, and you are the first person people see when they enter the building. In fact, one of the things that the center stresses completely is information dissemination. Many of the people calling, or walking in, are seeking information on special events, clubs, or “Queer-friendly” shops or eateries. They stress the fact that we should use every means at our disposal to find the information requested. Above all, we ought to never say “I don’t know.” Instead, if a quick answer cannot be found, request the individual’s telephone number so that the front desk person can find the answer from one of the center’s more experienced individuals and call them back. In all of my years at working for various places that stress “customer satisfaction” and “clients first” I have never come across this type of resoluteness to serve constituents.
One thing that rather scared me was the lack of security. Understandably, William Way Community Center (WWMC) cannot afford to hire full time, or even part time, security personnel. Ben, the volunteer co-ordinator, and person leading the orientation, assured us that there have not been very many problems-and even less that could not be resolved by full time staff members. An older member of our group named Dick, apparently familiar with problems that strike community based organisations like WWMC, asked many questions about problems which would have never even occurred to me.
For example, he asked about the problems involved with sex soliciters. To which, Ben suggested that we report such incidents to the staff member on duty, and not interfere in any way (mainly due to the seriousness of the charges involved.) Ben said that such an issue has actually come up in the past, and it was quickly resolved by the staff member on duty. The person was banned from returning to the center.
Another relevant problem was one of teenage panhandlers. How would one deal with panhandlers at WWMC, after all, panhandling is illegal? Ben recounted a story which had quickly turned into an “incident.” A young man entered WWMC and started asking for change of the people seated up front. When he approached this one woman, she exploded in anger. She started to shout epithets at the kid. It was not long before a staff member arrived and attempted to resolve the situation. The kid retorted that he had been kicked out of his home for being gay. To which, the staff member replied that the same thing had happened to her, and yet she was still able to make it without panhandling. Further, that if she could make it, so could anyone else… that no one deserved any special treatment. Ben quickly rushed to the scene when it was apparent that the shouting had increased threefold. He separated all of them, gave him some money and asked him to leave. At this point, Ben said to us, that he was sick and tired of the myth of meritocracy in America. I was already beginning to raise a fuss when I heard that him recount the bit about “if i can make it, you can.” When he explicitly mentioned the myth of meritocracy, I could but hold my extreme approval for his statement. I almost started clapping! I thought to myself: “Yes! He gets it!” Someone outside of my bubble (SSJ, and professors) gets it!
I found it ironic that in a place where people have been repressed socially, that the extremist libertarian views are still upheld. Here’s a kid who’s been kicked out of his home for being gay, and we (as a community) are throwing back into his face the rhetoric of “just desserts.” That kind of depressed me too, though. A conservative Republican psychologist friend of mine (the type of friend that you love to hate, so you will fruitlessly argue politics, nature-nurture etc.; but when it’s all over, you still count that person as a friend) asked of me: “As a sociologist, gay pride-fest, and gay pride-day must be an interesting subject of study.” To which I answered after much thought: “ a capitalist, is a capitalist.” Capitalism knows no borders of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, to name but a few of our social schisms. Capitalism will exploit for a profit anyone and everyone.
There’s an interesting quote from the movie called Stonewall. It is historical fiction of a country kid who comes to New York City several months before the Stonewall Inn gay riot on 28 June 1969 at 3:00AM. During one point of the film, the protagonist and a local civil rights group leader have invited a Village Voice correspondent to write an article on the unconstitutional anti-gay state laws. One of those laws was that a proprietor of a shop was forced to refuse service to any known homosexuals. So the men went around NYC and announced that they were homosexuals before requesting service. Over and over again, they kept getting served. The only thing they got was a quizzed look from the bartenders, as to say: why should I care? At one point they ask a waitress why she is continuing to serve them. Her answer: “fag money is still money.” She smiles and walks away to fulfil their order. Although non-race bias was stressed, represented as “Queer without borders.” No group has learned this better than the bourgeoisie.
Make no assumptions! That is what was told to us by Ben. Just because someone comes in looked like a man, and asks for the bathroom, it does not necessarily entail that they need the men’s room. The instruction was to direct them to all three bathrooms, unless the person explicitly said which one to go to. I thought to myself that this was simple enough. Unfortunately, when I was actually on duty, someone flew really low under my radar, and stumped me. A young man, five o’clock shadow, male jacket, male acting, male speaking, no makeup, but wearing a loose flabby dress approached me. He asked if I had seen a girl around here, who was a friend of his. I had seen no one for hours, except for a heavy-set girl sitting in the lounge area. I had told him that there had been no one except for that girl. He went away and came back without approaching the girl seated in the lounge. He reiterated, “are you sure that there hasn’t been anyone around?” I said to him that I hadn’t seen anyone except for her. I asked him, “are you sure it’s not her?” He let out a small chuckle, and replied (in a manner akin to: well, of course not, you blockhead) “um, heh, nnno. That’s not her.” I shrugged and suggested that he wait for a bit. When he got up to leave, the girl was this older man dressed similarly to him.
I never saw that one coming. I guess I’ll start to get used to these inversions of internalised roles. There are so many different combinations, with regards to sexuality, and sexual expression. I have never really thought about it before. I really only thought that it was black and white: straight, gay, bisexual, transgender. Now, it’s becoming more and more apparent that there seems to be a very grey scale in between. Each gradation seems to have its own set of rules and customs; each slightly different with their own nuances; yet when not expected these slight aberrations from socially imposed norms could cause quite a bit of paradigm changes.
This journal entry is going to predominantly be about the first several chapters in Putnam’s Bowling Alone1 regarding the general trend in the declining interest in social capital experienced first hand. I am not going to go over every point that Putnam makes in Bowling Alone. Instead I am going to go over my margin notes and items of particular interest to me. I will then touch upon my orientation of my volunteer services at the William Way Community Centre.
With all aspects involving social capital, the trend points downwards. People are becoming more individualistic now-a-days and more isolated, according to Putnam. It seems, though, that Putnam has been able to put in writing only what we (as a society, or group of concerned individuals) have been feeling all along. He has investigated and given “proof” through “facts” for the very real disengagement of individuals from communal activities. The big question is whether this trend is going to continue, or plateau at some point? Only continued reading would tell.
In the chapter of Political Participation, Putnam notes that “electoral abstention is even more important as a sign of deeper trouble in the body politic than as a malady itself.”(Putnam, 35). Could this possibly be with America’s displeasure with the results of the political system in place now. Noam Chomsky in January’s Z-Magazine that the only explanation for the 50/50 split between the candidates points to a randomisation of pure votes. Chomsky argues that people were voting at random; looking towards pure statistics, would explain why the vote was split. If this is the case, then the American body politic were split between the two candidates which were, for the most part, quite similar. In hindsight, it seems like President Select G. W. Bush was playing the centrist line (pretending), while Vice-President Al Gore was actually riding the standard Democratic centrist line. Currently, Bush is playing every radical right card in his hand, which may actually hurt his career in the mid-term elections.
Technology also seems to be playing a major role in isolating individuals. Over and over again, I am wondering if the so-called “information revolution” played a role in the downward trends. Consider the widening gap in the news and information among the generation X. Putnam cites the drop in daily newspaper readership under 35. What about the concept of working too much to read the news? The last thing I do, when I come home is work. I usually plant myself down in front of the computer and read some email, visiting some websites. I don’t sit down and read the paper, mainly because I would have had to purchase it, and carry it… then what to do with it after you are done, throw it out: why do so, when you can get it on the WWW for free, without “killing trees.” Further, what type of news is being shown on television or in the newspapers has a lot to do with the quality of the newscasts. Media, for the most part, caters to the status quo and sensationalism; they often opt for the entertainment route of offering news because it will get more ratings than, say, an interview of Noam Chomsky. Consider people coming all the way from foreign countries to see the steps of the art museum, and Rocky’s footprints rather than the statue of William Penn down the street.
Turning towards the volunteer orientation at William Way Community Center, I noticed that they often reference the centre with the acronyms LGBT, standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. What is amazing is the consistency with which they refer to these groups together through use of the tongue twisting acronym. I am not commenting on the normative use of such an acronym as something which is negative per se. I am, however, surprised at the stress on inclusiveness; i thought, up until this point, that gay was all-inclusive. I understand the reason for “covering of all the bases” though, mainly because these individuals have been ostracised, if even implicitly, all of their lives by society.
Alternative sexual roles at a “Gender-Bender” ball, redefined formal dress for me. It gave way for a change in my worldview in regards to something as simple, and at the very same token, as complex, as the social event called `a ball.’ Again, I am not making any judgements of a normative and qualitative nature; what I am pointing out is that in my very narrow world, the ideal types (in a Weberian sense) of formal dress attendants are: males in a tuxedo, females in a long evening dress, going together as couples. Indeed, if I were going to a formal dress ball or dinner party, the first instinct would be to play out my role as male, bringing along my roommate, who is female. It never occurred to me that the (very social) rules of the formal dress dinner party, could be altered to allow for males dressing as females (in formal dress) and vice-versa, including male-male couples and male-female couples.
I suspect that as time goes on, there will be much to learn from this experience as far as consciousness shaping is concerned.
1Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster 2000.
Follow me on Twitter 
