Content warning: mentions of
gun violence.
O
n the morning of April 17,
1981 — Good Friday — I
awoke in my dorm room
to the clanging of the fire alarm
at the un-student-like hour of 6
a.m. Like most college students,
I scoffed at the interruption. I
wasn’t prepared to pull myself
from a morning’s sleep, so I
listened for footsteps or slamming
doors out in the hallway, as if
my fellow students’ behavior
was ever any sort of barometer
for emergency preparedness. I
reluctantly tumbled out of the
lofted bed and peered down the
hallway. Not a soul heading for the
exits. Everyone was asleep like I
should have been. All indications
of a false alarm.
I tried to get back to sleep.
Finals were just weeks away and
I knew rest would be in short
supply. I’m sure I was still awake
when I heard the sirens squealing
outside.
I was a 20-year-old sophomore
at the University of Michigan. I
still hadn’t settled on a major. I
lived in Bursley Residence Hall
on North Campus, a bus ride
from Central Campus. North
Campus was in its infancy in
1981 as the University started
relocating all the engineering,
art and architecture programs
from Central Campus. North
Campus at that time was a bucolic
environment,
with
tree-lined
walking paths and gentle hills for
winter traying (sledding on lunch
trays). Removed from the more
frenetic Ann Arbor campus area,
North Campus was an oasis of
sorts.
I had planned to stay most
of the weekend in Ann Arbor
even though it was Easter. I
planned to be home for Sunday
dinner, but I cherished whatever
uninterrupted study time I could
get, especially in the quietude of
this near-pastoral setting.
As the sirens’ roars grew
thunderous, I pulled aside the stiff
residence hall room curtains. Our
room’s window faced the circular
drive that ran past Bursley’s main
entrance. The firetrucks, police
cars and ambulances were all
parked along the oval strip. What
a massive false alarm, I thought.
I saw police and medical
responders going in and out of
Bursley’s front doors. A stretcher
with
an
unidentified
person
was being whisked toward an
ambulance. The IV bag shook in
the transport. Another identical
white gurney, unknown occupant,
hurried
out
into
another
ambulance.
By now, there was stirring in
our dorm hallway. As I watched
the scene below, someone joined
me at the window. Pointing
toward the departing ambulances,
he said, “One of them is our Doug.”
Over that nearly completed
school year, my awareness of
gun violence had surged. This
current swelling of interest was
the result of a flurry of shootings
of celebrated and famous people.
In
December
1980,
John
Lennon was gunned down in
front of his New York City home
by a fan asking for an autograph.
A scroll ran across the bottom of
our hand-me-down TV set that
night while we watched Monday
Night Football: Ex-Beatle Dead.
40 years old.
On March 30, 1981, another
crazed person fired several rounds
at President Ronald Reagan. The
president’s communications chief
sustained severe and lifelong head
trauma. A valiant Secret Service
agent took another bullet. The last
slug ricocheted and struck Reagan
as he was being rushed from the
mayhem into his limousine. In the
emergency room, doctors found
the bullet precariously close to
Reagan’s heart.
I was pasted to the activity
around the residence hall’s front
entrance. In time, a man exited,
escorted by two policemen. The
handcuffed man was hastened
toward an awaiting police cruiser,
and then he was gone too. At some
point, the emergency vehicles
departed and peaceful Bursley
life had the illusion of normalcy,
though we all knew at that instant
our college experience had been
profoundly altered.
Then on May 13, 1981, a Turkish
assassin fired four bullets from
a
Browning
Hi-Power
semi-
automatic pistol at Pope John
Paul II in St. Peter’s Square. All
four bullets entered the Pope
as he greeted the faithful from
his Popemobile. Though gravely
wounded,
the
Pope
would
recover and eventually forgive his
assailant in his prison cell.
It didn’t take long for word to
bolt throughout the dorm that
two students had been shot in
another wing of Bursley. The
assailant tossed Molotov cocktails
from his room onto the floor’s
hallway, igniting the carpet which
necessitated the fire alarm. As
the students hurried from their
rooms, hindered by the smoke and
chaos, the assailant came back
out of his room with a sawed-off
shotgun and fired into the cloudy
hallway.
The students I saw leaving
Bursley
on
stretchers
were
undergoing surgery. One victim
was
our
hallway’s
resident
advisor, Doug, who left his room
to locate the source of the alarm,
as required by dorm protocol.
He was a senior and was set to
graduate in a few weeks. The
other, a freshman, was acting as
the assigned fire marshal for his
floor, tasked with ensuring his
hallmates’ safety.
It didn’t seem long before
we learned that Doug and the
freshman had died.
Disbelief became chaos as
students dashed about trying to
get assurances to frantic parents.
Apparently, the local news limited
their coverage to a developing
story of an early morning shooting
at Bursley Hall on the University
of Michigan’s North Campus. I
finally reached my mom. TVs and
radios throughout the dorm were
loudly blasting news reports.
Soon,
news
trucks
and
reporters interrupted the quiet
of North Campus. The University
immediately
committed
counseling services to us affected
students. I can no longer remember
the exact details of what I did for
the remainder of that day. I called
my mom back and pleaded with
her to pick me up that afternoon
— as soon as possible. The sudden
attention to our tiny community
was unsettling. Go home for the
weekend, study for finals there
and be coddled by parents in my
old cocoon.
That summer was spent back
home working as a custodian
at our local church. I cleaned,
stripped and waxed all the
classrooms in the church’s grade
school — the same school I had
attended not all that long ago. I
took great pleasure in telling my
old grade school teachers about
my college experiences as they
dashed in and out of the building
throughout the summer.
I found solace in this little
school, where so much of me had
been formed and molded. It had
been such a nurturing period in
my life, with all the exhilarating
exploration
and
innocent
wonderment that comes with
learning — virtuous in itself.
At some point that summer, I
sat in my old bedroom with my
new Corona electric typewriter I
bought so I could type my college
papers, and I banged out my
thoughts on this last school year.
I sent my little essay to our weekly
community newspaper. My short
piece
recounted
the
various
shootings — Reagan, Pope John
Paul II and my two dormmates
— and its impact on a 20-year-
old student not yet fully launched
into life. The paper published it in
their editorial section and titled
it something like “Mom, Apple
Pie and Guns.” My new vision
of the American Dream — my
new understanding of myself.
Seemingly.
Eventually, the gunman was
prosecuted and sentenced. It was
a week-long trial. The assailant
was in his senior year. I didn’t
know him and had never seen
him
before.
Apparently,
the
night before the shooting, he was
frantically finishing a key paper
for one of his classes, only to miss
the filing deadline by moments.
The charged man raised the
insanity defense, mimicking John
Hinckley’s
successful
defense
in his trial for the attempted
assassination of President Reagan.
The defense failed and he was
sentenced to life in prison.
I wonder what the gunman
thinks about in prison, what he
thinks of guns now.
My fear of guns relates back
to my early childhood. After
playing “war” with fake guns and
knives, I was often left trembling,
consumed with images of death
much too vivid for any 10-year-
old child. In reality, my personal
exposure to guns was make-
believe: comic book gun violence
in movies and on TV. The real
warzone was in Detroit and other
inner cities, not the safe and
comfortable suburb where I grew
up. I was irrationally agitated
by guns if I gave them any real
thought. I did nothing about
it, though I suspected my fears
exceeded those of people I knew.
I avoided guns and any place
where they likely prevailed. And
that was the extent of it — both
my trepidation and my desire that
guns be less prevalent.
Graduating after two more
uneventful years, I went on with
my life. I went to law school and
took a job at a major company
where I practiced law for more
than 30 years and retired to begin
the next chapter of my life. During
my adult life, I wasn’t oblivious to
the escalating number of mass
shootings
and
the
resulting
polarization of the country on
gun control. I watched the litany
of
shooting
rampages
across
the nation. I saw the Parkland
students stand up for sane gun
laws. I witnessed the Newtown
massacre.
I
even
read
the
inevitable articles for or against
gun control that follow every
mass shooting. I was aware of the
NRA’s increased political clout
and media influence.
T
ikTok trends come and
go, but one that I can’t
stop thinking about is
“weaponized incompetence.” The
template for this trend is quite
simple: Show how poorly tasks are
done when the person expected to
do them is simply incompetent.
These videos are usually meant
to shame the person targeted by
the video, or for the creator to
get some consolation from the
internet. However, I find this
less important than the presence
of
weaponized
incompetence
beyond my For You page. It
saturates our lives, yet we rarely
seem to recognize its many forms.
Essentially, this is the mindset
of someone weaponizing their
incompetence: “If I do a bad job,
then no one will ask me to do it
again.” It’s not ignorance, and it’s
not incapability: It is a purposeful
unwillingness to try. It is TikToks
of women asking their partners
to do a household chore or task,
only to be met with such poor
results that they end up doing it
themselves. And when it comes to
doing the task again, they won’t
want to ask their partners.
This
isn’t
just
a
TikTok
phenomenon,
either.
Women
ages 15 and older end up doing
an average of two more hours
of housework daily than men
in the same age category. This
additional work goes unnoticed
in many cases — 59% of women
say that they end up doing the
majority of the household work
but only 34% of men agree that
their partner does more work. In
heterosexual partnerships, this
disparity must only be widened
by men who leverage weaponized
incompetence
to
thrust
the
least desirable tasks onto their
partners.
Considering how weaponized
incompetence
works
within
heterosexual couples is usually
where thinking about the subject
begins and ends. However, it’s
much more widespread.
Acknowledgment
of
this
mindset existed long before any
TikTok trend. A Wall Street
Journal article dating back to
2007 coined the term “strategic
incompetence,” describing it as
an “art” and “skill” that can be
used in the office for tasks that
someone doesn’t want to do.
The article suggests that this
behavior is ingrained in us at
birth. As children, we pretend not
to know how to do chores when
our parents ask us; as adults, we
continue this behavior.
Even though the article, in
comparison to TikTok, takes a
more positive view of weaponized
incompetence, the fundamental
premise remains.
Weaponized
incompetence
could be considered a universal
experience. Plenty of us have
experienced the shortfalls of
other
people’s
incompetence.
Exhibit A: The sighs and groans
that fill a room when a professor
brings up a group project. The
sadly all-too-common situation
is where one group member falls
short, and the other members
have to work harder to complete
the project, only for all the
members to receive the same
grade.
It’s a frustrating task, working
with someone that chooses to
not do the work, or even worse,
they do the work so poorly that
someone has to fix it for them.
Other students are forced to fill
in the gaps left by those who
purposefully choose to slack off
with the hopes of banking on the
competence of their group mates.
Weaponized
incompetence
doesn’t end with simple tasks — it
also damages our politics. People
in positions of power are able to
claim ignorance or dismiss the
complexities of problems that
they don’t want to discuss or fix.
Despite the headlines about
critical race theory in recent
years, seven in 10 Americans
don’t know what critical race
theory is. The same study found
that 52% of Americans support
teaching the legacy of racism
in schools, compared to the
27% of Americans who support
critical race theory being taught
in schools. To fully understand
the legacy of racism today, it’s
necessary to learn about systemic
racism. You can’t have one
without the other. Weaponized
incompetence in these situations
persists when people vehemently
oppose something they don’t even
care to understand.
To admit that critical race
theory should be taught in schools
would be to admit that white
privilege prevails within the
legal system and policies. This is
something that most Republicans
don’t want to do, in order to keep
legitimacy in the racial system
established.
Hence, they claim ignorance of
the privilege they hold.
Opinion
Op-Ed: Good Friday, 1981
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
9 — Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Weaponized incompetence is deeper
than a TikTok trend
JAMES SWARTZ
U-M Alum
JAMIE MURRAY
Opinion Columnist
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Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
SHANNON STOCKING
AND KATE WEILAND
Co-Editors in Chief
QUIN ZAPOLI AND
JULIAN BARNARD
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
Ammar Ahmad
Julian Barnard
Brandon Cowit
Jess D’Agostino
Ben Davis
Shubhum Giroti
Devon Hesano
Jack Kapcar
Sophia Lehrbaum
Olivia Mouradian
Siddharth Parmar
Rushabh Shah
Zhane Yamin
Nikhil Sharma
Lindsey Spencer
Evan Stern
Anna Trupiano
Jack Tumpowsky
Alex Yee
Quin Zapoli
JULIA VERKLAN AND
ZOE STORER
Managing Editors
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Sex won’t solve your loneliness
E
ven as we inch further
away from the apex of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the
effects of isolation are ever present.
While its toll on our physical
health has been at the forefront of
our minds, this pandemic’s most
profound and lasting effects are
on our mental health.
Before COVID-19 hit, loneliness
was already a problem that had
been exacerbated by technology
and social media. The solution
to all of this? More sex, at least
according to Magdalene J. Taylor,
author of “Many Such Cases,”
who explained her thinking in a
recent op-ed for The New York
Times. If you’ve ever wondered
what George Michael’s 1987 song
“I Want Your Sex” (parts one and
two, of course) would look like as
an op-ed, this would be it, right
down to the lyrics “Sex is natural,
sex is good; not everybody does it,
but everybody should.”
Taylor’s assessment of the
loneliness epidemic is no doubt
correct that the solution is social
connection, but misguided in
tendering sex as the solution. The
argument is flimsy, maintaining
that people are lonely because they
struggle to find sexual partners,
and the resolution to this issue,
she concludes, is to… have more
sex? Akin to “If you’re depressed,
just be happy,” sex is the logically
inconsistent solution to a moral
panic over sexlessness that Taylor
amplifies then backtracks.
What’s most telling about the
piece, however, is the fact that
sex is conflated with intimacy.
While, yes, there can often be
overlap between the two, they
are certainly not synonymous:
Sex can be either intimate or
non-intimate, and intimacy itself
can encompass a whole host of
other ways of connection and is
incredibly varied from individual
to individual.
For one, sex is not an inherent
good, but a neutral act with
benefits and consequences. While
the benefits of sex that Taylor
points out, such as reducing stress
and lowering blood pressure, are
real, sex also comes with its own
set of cons, such as STIs and, as
various comments on the op-ed
point out, unwanted pregnancies
in a post-Roe America where even
contraception is threatened. To
argue as Taylor does — that “Sex is
intrinsic to a society built on social
connection” — is to fall into the
naturalistic fallacy, to believe that
what is natural is inherently good
or right.
As we know, sex is not always a
meaningful connection for some,
whether it’s a one-time feeling or
related to one’s sexual orientation.
Sex can even be a defense against
emotional
intimacy:
Erotic
transference is a phenomenon that
occurs especially in therapeutic
spaces, describing how patients
often feel amorous attraction to
their provider in resistance to the
weight of bearing intimate fears
and anxieties.
By
intertwining
sex
and
intimacy and speaking to a sexual
naturalistic
fallacy,
Taylor’s
piece becomes an example of the
compulsory sexuality rampant
in contemporary culture. Born
from
the
term
“compulsory
heterosexuality,” referring to the
assumption that a heterosexual
relationship
is
the
default,
compulsory sexuality refers to
the assumption that every person
experiences sexual attraction and
desire, that anyone uninterested
in sex is missing out on something
that is, as Taylor puts it, “one
of
humanity’s
most
essential
pleasures.”
This idea that desire for sex
is what normal people feel —
and that sex is a supreme form
of pleasure — devalues acts
of intimacy that aren’t sex (as
well as relationships that aren’t
sexual.) It not only excludes
people who are uninterested in
sex as a means of connection, but
limits the types of intimacy we
can find in relationships of all
kinds. With friends and family,
intimacy can mean devoting time
to similar interests or meaningful
conversation. Even with partners,
intimacy need not be limited to
sex when it can span from the
physical
to
the
non-physical,
from cuddling to quality time.
To restrict intimacy to sex alone
means dwindling all the possible
connections you can discover.
There are solutions aplenty
to our loneliness epidemic. With
a loss of connection to local
institutions due to the pandemic
and other larger factors at play,
many have lost connection to
others as well as a sense of purpose.
By focusing on rebuilding these
institutions to create thriving
communities, lonely individuals
can find themselves with a
whole host of options for social
connection in their everyday lives.
At the individual level, don’t
limit yourself to the possibilities of
who might play a meaningful role
in your life. Have safe, consensual
sex if you’d like, regardless of
whether or not you’re looking for
romance or social connection.
AUDRA WOEHLE
Opinion Columnist
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com