Stop Cherry Farming

With apologies to the cherries.

Throughout the summer, my university has been informing students that many of their classes will be “blended,” meaning mostly online but with some in-person content. And, while many students would be attending entirely remotely, a fair number would be allowed back onto campus living in single-occupancy dorm rooms.

Yesterday at 11am the university announced that (with few exceptions) classes would now be entirely online, campus closed, and the “blended” model scrapped. Move-in would have happened in two weeks, and classes will start in three. The tuition deadline was originally for tomorrow, but has been pushed back.

The decision to go fully online so close to the start of class and after a summer marketing campaign promoting an on-campus experience will strike many as cynical. And indeed, I’ve seen students on social media over the summer predicting there would be this exact sort of bait-and-switch just as the school year is about to start.

However, my program director (who I assume is better plugged into the decision making process of the higher administration than I am – which is not at all) told us that when communicating with our students we should let them know the decision was entirely on the up-and-up: “We do want to make clear that this decision was not last-minute or cynical.”

What the timing of this decision cynical?

I don’t know. But, if I wanted to make the case, I could.

I would note that the university promoted its on-campus plans while giving little acknowledgement to the increasingly high possibility that none of that would happen. I’d also consider that there were rumors circulating among the faculty that if DC public schools went online-only we’d follow suit. I’d point to numerous e-mails and Zoom meetings where it was emphasized that we keep in contact with our students for the primary purpose of enticing them to stay with us in the Fall rather than taking a semester off or picking a more affordable option. I might also think about how just a couple years ago the university had a budget shortfall, and we’ve become increasingly reliant on revenue from tuition dollars. I’d point out that the administration waiting until 2 days before the tuition deadline to make the announcement sure seems very last-minute (changing the policy after the deadline could create all sorts of legal trouble).

And if I’m feeling particularly cheeky I’d take notice of the difference between saying “We want to make clear that this decision was not last-minute or cynical” and “This decision was not last-minute or cynical and we want to make that clear,” but it strikes me as unfair to harp on what may be a completely innocent bit of wording from a Facebook comment.

With all that said, I still do not know if the timing of this decision was a cynical ploy at locking down tuition payments. And, if someone wanted to call the evidence I’ve compiled “cherry picking,” I’m not certain they’d be wrong.

But stop farming so many damn cherries.

Time and again we’ll encounter someone with an opinion about a politician, political party, media personality or news outlet, corporation, celebrity, you name it, and while you might disagree with their opinion, they’re able to summon up a parade of anecdotes and examples that all support their position.

We might think of this as a mix of cherry picking and confirmation bias. But, what I want to highlight is how often people and organizations seem to be actively farming cherries.

If you think claims of Trump being a racist are false and would point to things like the low black (pre-COVID) unemployment numbers and the First Step Act, you’d still have to contend with the number of times Trump has said or done something that looks pretty damn racist. If he’s not racist, he sure makes it easy to think he is.

Is Trump planning a coup in November if it looks like he won’t win the election? I don’t believe he is, but he sure seems to be trying to make us think that.

Is the DNC rigging primary elections in order to hand-pick nominees for President and other important races? I don’t know, but they sure make it easy to think that’s what’s happening behind the scenes.

Is Don Lemon a political hack? I don’t know, but you get where this is going.

When unfair accusations are made against a person or group, they should be called out. But at the same time we need to demand that folks stop producing so much evidence that works against them. And this is going to be a fundamental problem for the new trend of leaderless movements like Occupy and BLM. When you let everyone into the bailey to farm whatever they want, you have to expect some of them are going to start growing cherries that opponents of the movement will be able to easily come in and pick.

This isn’t to say groups need to be ideologically pure or that people can’t ever make mistakes. But, in order to make use of the cherry-picking defense, cherries need to be as difficult to get as they are in Pac-Man, rather than the produce section of a Kroger in the middle of July.

You can’t complain about you, your movement, or your beliefs being mischaracterized if you’re also actively facilitating the mischaracterization. Just stop farming the damn cherries.