I Just Want Cake, Man

The names are from front to back, Pooja, Marian,
Javaria and Sultana is hiding in the back.

Today was very fun and relaxing. Today in class we had a very long and engaging debate in our class on universality and relativism and in the afternoon we had a guest speaker that gave a presentation of sexual violence in the military and her work to help stop it. 

I went with a group of friends to my instructor’s office hours which is always amazing because she is very smart and obviously passionate about what she is teaching. 

Upon realizing that we had no homework for class and the day after tomorrow we would be having a four day weekend my friends and I wanted to go somewhere and do something so we decided to find a trail by a creek, but we got really lost so when we found our way we were tired, gave up and decided to do something after dinner. 

After dinner we went to a library (I forgot its name) but the view from the top was amazing, we went to a beautiful grassy slope and outside the architecture building where there were these glowing globes on a concrete slope. Today was a perfect day (I’ve been having a lot of those recently).

I got breakfast and went immediately to class because I was running a little late because I enjoyed my sleep a little too much. I made it to class and this class was great. We started off by going over relativism and universality. Relativism says human rights depend on culture and can’t be universal because of people’s culture while universality says human rights apply to everyone no matter the culture. I personally fell on the universality side because I feel relativism is used as an excuse to discriminate against a certain minority. We discussed this in greater detail when we discussed a scenario of a baker denying a gay couple a wedding cake based off of his deeply held religious beliefs. I said he had no right to do so. And many people brought up the point that his religious freedom would be suppressed if he participated or condoned something his faith says is a sin. I thought it was a valid point, but the flaw in that argument was that he wasn’t participating in the wedding or condoning gay marriage he is simply baking a cake. An additional point was brought up that denying the baker his religion is like denying a gay person a service for being gay. I got heated and said if I wanted a wedding cake I am not forcing the baker to go to my wedding or forcing him to accept it and I shouldn’t get denied a service that everyone else gets. At the end of my rant I just felt like I needed to say something so I said “I just want my cake, man.” That line became infamous. People found it funny and quoted it throughout the day. 

We had a similar debate, but applied it to abortion and an international court case called “Sahin v. Turkey”. “Sahin v. Turkey” involved a student at a university that at the end of the case was forced to take off her hijab that she wore to school every day out of her own free choice. The class basically all agreed that she should be able to wear her hijab because she isn’t hurting anyone as she is doing it out of her own free will.  

The guest speaker we had was amazing. Her name was Sharon Hickey and she discussed how she fought alongside our instructor using the international system for ending sexual violence in the United States military. It was fascinating to directly see how the systems and conventions we were learning about were used to actually enforce or attempt to enforce a human right. Sharon Hickey also went into detail about the strategy that her team used to pressure the United States because there was no real way to force America to enforce human rights. It was also interesting to see how they got around the fact that America signed little to no treaties or conventions or ratified little to no charters. This sort of attitude America has about focusing on itself for ideas and laws instead of the international community is called American Exceptionalism, but that is another can of worms for another day.

I met up with Javaria, Sultana, Pooja and Eunji and we walked to our instructor’s office. After waiting for a while we decided to go in together. We asked our instructor about last night’s reading, how to enforce human rights and any other questions relating to human rights in general. From talking to our instructor in her office hours it is clear that she is teaching summer classes not because she needs or wants more money, but it is because she loves what she is teaching. This was made clear in the passion with which she answered our questions and how happy she was to do so.

After office hour my group of friends and I decided to find a trail that was near the suspension bridge. To make a long story very short, we got lost. We got so lost that we were basically heading in the direction of downtown Ithaca. The problem with this was the heat and humidity which washed over my body in hot and miserable waves. When we found our way we just went to our dorms and decided to meet up during dinner.

After we met up during dinner we added a new friend to our group -- her name is Marian. She is very nice, artistic and smart and I met her that morning during breakfast. We walked together to the clock tower, but since we couldn’t climb it, we went to a tall library that was across the courtyard. The building may have been shorter, but the view was beautiful and gave to a nearly full view of the campus. From there we sat on a grassy hill and rolled down it (rolling down that hill was so fun fun!) We sat on the grass and talked until sundown, and then we went to the architecture building to look at and climb on top of these interesting glowing globes that would change color.

Overall this day was perfect. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s class (we are studying strategic approaches to human rights advocacy) and our class’s four day weekend. I had a perfect day and can’t wait for many more.