Robin Hood, OTS

"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vase"

                                                                               Socrates

          The proudest moment in one’s university career comes from the dignity of being able to say, “I think it because I have thought it through. I think it because I have weighed and I have measured and I have found the truth. I think it because I think it!”

          In both content and process, USC OT uses every opportunity to rob students of this dignity. In both content and process USC OT manipulates students to say, among other things, “We need to advocate for our profession.” USC OT forces students to join AOTA, whose raison d’être is to proselytize “We need to advocate for our profession.” Over the summer of 2010 I heard professors say again and again “We need to advocate for our profession.”

          In our Leadership course, one week was dedicated to USC OT’s public policy expert getting students to say “We need to advocate for our profession” at the state level. The next week the same expert came to class to get students to say “We need to advocate for our profession” at the federal level.

          We also had representatives from OTAC come for each one to tell us “We need to advocate for our profession.” This was followed by the notoriously charismatic Paul Fontana who came to tell us “We need to advocate for our profession.”

          So when a student finally takes center stage, steps up to the microphone and says, “We need to advocate for our profession,” I get a little sad, the kind of sadness that comes from watching a cowboy break a horse, knowing the horse never had a chance. Then I think of those who run USC OT and my blood boils at their theft. I know too well the provenance of the statement “We need to advocate for our profession.” I also know too well just how much those who run USC OT wanted her to say “We need to advocate for our profession.” And I know too well how hard USC OT worked to manipulate her to say “We need to advocate for our profession.” I also know too well the desire of the tyro to please those with power over her. So I know very well that when she does say “We need to advocate for our profession” the dignity that comes from saying “I think it because I think it" has been stolen from her.

          But the time for crestfallen detachment has passed. It’s now time to take back what was taken. This website is for stealing from professors and administrators what they stole from students. What USC OT steals during the daytime, this website will steal back during the nighttime. USC OT will tell you Great Britain has a superior health care system than the U.S., but I will prove to you that what USC OT says has no teeth. USC OT will tell you U.S. health care ranks 37^th in the world, but I will have the editor of the report on which that ranking is based testify on this website that the ranking is “meaningless” because the numbers used were pure “nonsense.” USC OT will promote occupational justice in the classroom, but I will show you just how hypocritical that makes them outside the classroom. USC OT will force us to join AOTA, but I will seek to have AOTA force USC OT to free the USC OT AOTA Prisoners.            

          I hope this website allows students to reclaim some of what is lost in the classroom. I hope they will read it, review it, reflect on it, and even reject it if that’s where their thinking takes them. At least there would now be a process that ends with one having weighed and measured the elements of a contested issue, and concluded, “I think it because I think it.”                

          Many may find my actions irreverent and brash. But you get out of a thing what you put into it, and in this case, what is coming out of me now is what has been put into me over my six months at USC OT: the brashness and irreverence of giving one-sided presentations, hiding what would contradict the orthodoxy; the brashness and irreverence of telling people what to do in the ballot box, ignoring that we are human beings who consist of a totality of values and interests and not just a desire to do occupational therapy encased in flesh.

         I don’t understand what kind of satisfaction USC OT gets from having students parrot slogans they are manipulated into parroting. I cannot understand that kind of satisfaction - the satisfaction of indoctrinated consent. I am quite passionately atheist, egoist and capitalist all in one but it would be an empty pleasure if I were a professor for a student to parrot my beliefs, and use my slogans as her own, if I had rigged the game so that she were left with no other option but to “choose” the views I had force fed her in class. Students should be treated as ends in themselves, not tools for some other objective.

          I guess if I saw students only as tools for my political and professional goals, then I wouldn’t care how they come to say what they say as long as they said what I wanted them to say. But then I would really be a psycho (not just an introvert), then I would really be a freak (not just someone who seeks a sense of playful drama and grandeur in life). I would then really be somebody you should fear. But I am none of these things. I am simply a kind of Robin Hood. A Robin Hood of the mind. Robin Hood, OTS.

[For the uninitiated: OTS = Occupational Therapy Student]